The Art of the Con (33 page)

Cheating methods teach us that, with enough determination, anything might be possible, and hustlers will go to incredible lengths to get the money. Volumes could be written about cheaters and their practices, but there's an important lesson to be learned from the sheer number of cheating methods and devices that exist: If there's anything worth stealing, thieves, hustlers, and con men will find a way to steal it. Dismissing the idea of deception simply because it seems difficult or unlikely is a common mistake at both the gaming table and in life.

Consider the term “loaded dice.” For most people, this refers to opaque, numbered cubes that are weighted on one side to force a favorable roll. In fact, there are many types of gaffed dice, all of which might be called “loaded dice” by the laity: tops, where numbers have been changed to affect the odds; shapes, where each die has been shaved to favor preferred sides; spinners that help hustlers to control the dice; and juice, where each die contains magnetic material mixed with the painted spots on one side.

With weighted dice, the loads can be so subtle that they simply increase the percentage of a preferred outcome and so small and flat they can be hidden under the spots of a clear casino cube. There are loaded dice that can be set on or off thanks to an internal mechanism with a tiny weight that shifts when the die is tapped. There are even perfectly balanced dice that roll fairly but contain electronic sensors that transmit from inside a dice cup to tell cheaters which side is up in games like Pai Gow.

Delving deeper we might discuss the different combinations of mis-spotted dice, how to stamp loaded dice with casino logos before switching them into a live craps game, or the best ways to use a magnet. Eventually you might learn about controlled dice shots where an expert cheater can throw legitimate dice and have a definite effect on the outcome. The further you delve, the more variations and methods you will find because loaded dice, like all forms of deception, are designed to beat games, break rules, and solve problems.

In this chapter I will illustrate just how far a card mechanic will go, in terms of skill, to beat the game of poker and show that, when expert sleight of hand is combined with ingenious concealed devices, the results can be devastating. My intention is not to teach you how to spot these methods, because many can be completely invisible. Instead, it is important to understand that they are possible and that they are often easier to deduce than detect.

Beating the Cut

One of the main obstacles for a mechanic
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in a poker game is the cut. After the shuffle, the cards must be presented to the person sitting on the dealer's right, who cuts the cards before they are dealt. This would normally ruin any setup unless the cut could somehow be defeated. In fact, the cut
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be beaten, and the methods used range from the surprisingly simple to the fantastically difficult.

An obvious solution is to palm away a small number of cards before the deck is cut and replace them on the top or bottom as the cards are returned for the deal. Players usually practice “holding out” when they are not dealing and little attention is directed toward them; it remains a practical way to keep control of cards if the cheater has the required skill to palm cards without attracting suspicion.

A completely invisible method is when another hustler is seated to the right of the mechanic. The cheat can then set a tiny step in the cards after the shuffle, which his partner can easily cut to. This can also be attempted without an accomplice by bridging the upper portion of the deck before presenting the cards to be cut. This creates a natural point for the cards to break and, if the mark cuts in a consistent fashion, he can often be manipulated to break at the desired position.

A more direct approach is the “hop” or “shift,” where the cards are simply re-cut in the action of taking them into the dealing hand. This is a big risk—and not for the faint of heart—but expert mechanics can solve most problems with the cut and there are dozens of methods to accomplish this move. Many use both hands and a few can even be performed with just one, but all require great skill and expert timing. A much easier method is a bluff hop where the bottom half is picked up first, followed by the original top half. You might think this would appear obvious, but by performing some action between picking up each of the halves, such as tossing in a chip or moving a drink, the deception is rarely noticed and if caught, can easily be passed off as a mistake.

A few years ago, a wealthy businessman explained to me a procedure for passing the cards in his high-stakes private poker games. The deck was shuffled by the player to the dealer's right and cut by the player to the dealer's left, meaning that the person who actually dealt the cards had no control over the position of any cards in the deck. This is not an uncommon procedure to prevent cheating but it is a pointless one if two hustlers get into the game. All they need to do is sit either side of one sucker and they can easily locate cards, false shuffle, and false cut before letting the man in the middle deal the cards after they are stacked. When demonstrating these techniques to my clients, it soon becomes clear that there are many ways to beat any game no matter the conditions. I can think of hundreds of ways to beat the cut, but the most fascinating is a method that can be watched closely and does not break the cutting procedure. It requires the greatest skill imaginable.

Dealing cards from the bottom requires many years of practice and a high degree of dexterity, but in the hands of an expert, it can look exactly like the dealer is taking cards from the top. You could watch a gifted mechanic for hours without ever suspecting that he was dealing from the basement. The cut is the biggest problem for these cheaters because, if there's too much heat to move,
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culled (secretly located) cards are sent to the middle and all of the work required to set up would be wasted. This was true until Allen Kennedy, a grifter from Pleasant Hill, Missouri, invented a brilliant, seemingly impossible solution: the center deal.

The idea was simple. Instead of reversing the cut, a tiny brief was held between the two halves of the deck and maintained during the deal. Then, instead of taking cards from the bottom, Kennedy would squeeze them right out of the middle and into his right hand as he pretended to take the top card. If this sounds impossible, you're almost right! In fact, the technique is so difficult that almost everyone who heard about it thought it must be some sort of pasteboard fantasy. Even today, only a handful of experts can perform the deal deceptively because of the high level of skill necessary. Many performers have learned to fake the second deal for their demonstrations, but few, if any, would risk their neck on dealing from the middle in a live game.

Any cheater willing to perfect and use such a move would certainly have a powerful weapon at his disposal, but as one mechanic told me, the only guy who ever used the sleight was probably Allen Kennedy! Nevertheless, the mere fact that such a sleight exists shows us that card thieves, like con artists, will go to any lengths to get the money.

Up the Sleeve

The cheater's arsenal is filled with ingenious sleight of hand designed to overcome almost any obstacle. Over time, countless mechanical solutions have been invented to aid hustlers and sold through supposedly secret catalogs. Many of these contraptions claimed to replace traditional sleight of hand, but while a few were genuinely useful, they required the operator to master a new set of skills to avoid suspicion.

The 1932 issue of H. C. Evans's “Secret Blue Book” contains everything one might need to open and operate a small gambling joint or medium-size back-room casino. From cards, dice, wheels of fortune, and chuck-a-luck cages to cash boxes, measuring equipment, tables, and printed chips, Evans's catalog was a one-stop shop for all your underground or gambling needs. In the same book, among the legitimate paraphernalia, you would also find a fascinating selection of crooked dice, marked cards, machines to pull cards into your sleeve, and specially shaped spinning tops for the game of put and take.

At the time that this edition of the blue book was published, H. C. Evans & Company were in their fortieth year of successfully supplying games both fair and false and had a strong clientele on both sides of the table. Much of their merchandise was designed to give dishonest gaming establishments an unfair or unbeatable edge (there are six pages dedicated to hidden electromagnets), and a few items were sold purely for players to beat fair games, but the majority of the crooked confections were intended for gamblers to cheat each other. The truth was that many of the items being sold were fanciful contraptions with as much practical value as a pair of x-ray specs from the back pages of a comic book, but a few ingenious devices were (and still are) genuinely used by grifters and con men.

The variety of cheating devices is staggering and a few collectors have been able to build breathtaking assortments of now-rare items. In a handful of glass cabinets scattered across the globe, the catalogs of H. C. Evans, the K.C. Card Company, and others come to life and the toys and tools that were once sold from those pages can be handled and used. My own collection is tiny by comparison and visiting these secret museums can be a roller coaster ride of wonder and envy.

Most of these contraptions were impractical, but a few remain genuinely useful if the cheater is willing to master the necessary skills. “Bugs,” for example, are a simple method for hiding a card under the table and are usually nothing more than a spring or clip that would hold a card in place until needed. I own several bespoke bugs. They're about as effective as another method: sticking a plastic spoon to the underside of a table so a card can be held out by the bowl of the spoon. A close friend uses cheap plastic clips that come with their own glue spot, ready to stick anywhere. No matter what method of holding a card is being used, the cheat must still learn to invisibly remove cards from the table and insert them into the bug, which takes both gall and skill—neither of which can be purchased from a catalog.

The wide selection of “hold-out” devices perfectly illustrates the variety of methods and ideas that serve the same purpose: to steal a card, hide it, and then secretly return it to play. “Bean shooters” are made of flexible plastic with a long, thin wire that can be threaded into the lining of a jacket at the mouth of the sleeve. A length of elastic is attached and pinned near the shoulder to create constant tension, so when the bean shooter is slid out of the sleeve and a card is inserted into the clip, it automatically returns to its hiding position. This simple device allows a cheater to turn any garment with a suitable sleeve into a seemingly practical hiding place for stolen cards. In truth, the bean shooter is an incredibly difficult gadget to operate. To consistently be able to extract the apparatus so that it meets the palmed card reliably takes practice, and even in the hands of an expert, the action required to steal or return a card can easily be spotted.

More elaborate machines appear to solve these problems by extending a metal plate called a “thief” out of the sleeve and back again, and the arm-pressure holdout features a switch that the cheater can operate by merely leaning on the table so that the lever is squeezed, extending a metal arm until the thief has been loaded. Elastic bands then return the device to the safety of the sleeve. I love this machine; I own one and often include it in my demonstrations, but I would never use one for real. It might have been worn in real games by a few brave souls, but as pleasing as this Jacob's-ladder contraption might be, it is more likely to put a bullet in your head than an ace up your sleeve.

With a holdout device the cheat must learn to palm cards so that the machine can steal and return them to the same position, but many hustlers hold out without devices, simply keeping a card palmed until they find an opportunity to use it. One technique even allows a hustler to place his hand flat on the table with his fingers spread; I've even seen security footage of someone sitting for over fifteen minutes with his hand apparently glued to the same spot until he finally got the cards he was waiting for! With a machine the hands are almost always clean (empty), and when used by an expert, the secret action is completely invisible. The 1932 edition of Evans's “Secret Blue Book” contains a dozen methods to accomplish this but only one that has endured and that I have actually seen used during play.

Examining the wide selection of holdout devices offered in the Evans catalog, it is obvious there was clearly a great deal of interest in all these crooked devices. Many were intended to be nothing more than expensive novelties, especially once buyers realized the dangers of trying to use them under fire (in a live game with genuine danger of being caught). However, the Kepplinger device, named after its inventor, was a clear exception.

J. P. Kepplinger was so successful with his invention that in the late nineteenth century he became known in California as “The Lucky Dutchman.” His machine allowed him to move cards in and out of play invisibly and with much higher precision than other methods. The secret was a series of lines and pulleys, contained within a combination of bespoke narrow tubes and hinges that allowed the wearer to control the thief with a line of tight chord suspended between the knees. By opening and closing one's legs under the table, the action of the holdout can be imperceptible.