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Three-card Monte, also known as the Three-card trick, Follow the lady or Find the lady, is a confidence game in which the victim, or mark, is tricked into betting a sum of money that he can find the money card, for example the queen of spades, among three face-down playing cards. In its full form, the three-card Monte is an example of a classic short con in which the outside man pretends to conspire with the mark to cheat the inside man, while in fact conspiring with the inside man to cheat the mark.
Rules
The three-card Monte game itself is very simple. To play, a dealer places three cards face down on a table. (The table is often nothing more than a cardboard box, providing the ability to set up and disappear quickly.) The dealer shows that one of the cards is the queen of spades, and then rearranges the cards quickly to confuse the player about which card is which. The player is then given an opportunity to select one of the three cards. If the player correctly identifies the queen of spades, he wins an amount equal to the stake he bets; otherwise, he loses his stake.
Drawing a player in
When the mark arrives at the three-card Monte game, he is likely to see a number of other players winning and losing money at the game. These are shills, confederates of the dealer who pretend to play so as to give the illusion of a straight gambling game. The mark is likely to notice that he can follow the queen more easily than the shills seem to be able to, which sets him up to believe that he can beat the game.
In reality, the mark does just fine at following the card he's watching—but it's not the queen.
How it's really done
Dealers employ sleight of hand and misdirection to prevent the mark from finding the queen. Several moves are in common use.
The throw
In the throw, the dealer holds the cards lengthwise by their top and bottom edges, with the face of each card oriented away from the hand that is holding it. One card is held in his left hand, a second is held in his right hand between the thumb and the middle finger, and a third above it between thumb and forefinger (index finger). Both hands are tilted up to reveal their identities to the mark and shill(s) standing opposite the dealer, clearly showing that one of the two cards held in the right hand is the queen of spades. All three cards are tossed face down, onto the table, one at a time, and placed side-by-side in several smooth motions. As they are dropped, the dealer moves his right hand sideways to separate the two cards. However, at this stage the sleight, called "the hype," occurs—while the mark thinks the lower card has fallen first, the top card has in fact been pushed out slightly early, swapping the positions of these two cards.
Done properly, the throw is virtually undetectable; even shills can't reliably follow cards through the throw. Three card Monte crews use secret signals so that the dealer can tell the shills where the queen is.
The throw accounts for the characteristic sideways motion of the dealer's hands as he moves the cards around on the table.
The Mexican turnover
If a mark should happen to pick the queen when the dealer doesn't want him to, the dealer can use a mexican turnover to exchange it with another card. First, the dealer picks up another card—not the one that the mark has chosen. He holds it by a corner between his thumb and forefinger, and slides it under the chosen card—ostensibly in order to turn over the chosen card. In fact, as the two cards come vertical, he shifts his grip from the unchosen card to the chosen card, taking the chosen card away in his hand and leaving the unchosen card to fall face up on the table. Like the throw, a properly executed Mexican turnover is virtually undetectable. But it must be added that the operators on the street (besides those in Mexico City) do not use the mexican turnover. Different variants of Monte tricks were described by mexican author José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi. His book Periquillo Sarniento was written in 1816. (Published in English as The Itching Parrot (Doubleday, 1942)
Historic
- It was taking a victim with three-card Monte, on July 7, 1898, that caused the shooting death, two days later, of infamous con man Soapy Smith.
See also
External links
- Epinions review of Three Card Monte
- Video showing Three card Monte trick with cards
- Two actors portray the Three Card Monte confidence game
Reference
- Notes on Three-Card Monte by Whit Haydn
"Three-card Monte"