The Art of the Con (36 page)

Sometimes a line is crossed and a perfectly good strategy becomes a felony. While playing in the UK and Europe, I was part of a team that used concealed computers and keypads to record and process data from several tables so that our Big Player could seemingly walk from game to game and bet large sums with a huge advantage. At this time there were no laws against these devices, but over time, we learned that this alone offers no protection to players using them. In the UK particularly, the legal system usually takes the side of the casino and has jailed players who simply processed information available to anyone watching the game. By using electronics these teams enjoyed a huge advantage but created a tangible threat to the game that could be used against them in court. In Nevada, any device that can be shown to assist the player when making decisions is illegal and there's a harsh penalty for anyone caught using one. To my mind, devices are too risky and no amount of money is worth spending time behind bars, but professional (and not-so-professional) teams continue to use technology in the hope of making a big score. For them, perhaps it's worth the risk.

The term advantage player typically refers to someone who avoids crossing that line and remains within the law, but casinos dedicate a great deal of energy to weeding these players out and barring them from the tables. It's true that a well-organized group with a solid system can take a lot of money, but any money actually lost over time is dwarfed by the amount spent to defend against those few effective players, and this itself might be insignificant compared to the amount lost by slowing down games and limiting how much ordinary players can gamble every hour.

Not all deception is criminal. Approaching any situation or transaction as a game or problem to be solved is similar to the mindset of a con artist, who is always searching for an angle or way to take an advantage. This perspective often reveals flaws or opportunities in social or business scenarios, which can be used or abused depending on one's motives. An understanding of how to interpret the world in this way can be a powerful defense and a useful skill in the right circumstances. Lines can be crossed in everyday life when someone sees a way to up their profits or ensure success at all costs. The loser might be you, and out here in the real world, it could be your house that's on the line. Learning how to identify an off-balance or crooked proposition would certainly be valuable, but I believe it's more productive to simply understand that these scenarios exist rather than having to know about every type of deception. Smart casinos will politely back a player off the game even when they can't identify what he's doing, usually telling him that he's “too good.” There's no reason you can't do the same if you feel out of your depth or don't have enough information to make an informed decision.

Finding the Edge

Some businesses deliberately design their procedures or interfaces to mislead or misdirect the consumer. Sharp practice is the art of staying on the right side of the law while offering a transaction or deal that places the customer into a situation that is either unfair, more costly, or deliberately manipulative of expectations. Payday loans, cellular contracts, investment deals, and business “opportunities” are well-known territory for clever wording, misleading figures, and concealed terms.

Terms and conditions are everywhere and most people have become trained not to read them simply because they are now comically long and deliberately complicated. How many times online have you clicked that button without even opening the window, even to just look at what you're agreeing to? In any interaction where money is involved, one party usually makes more and this is almost always because their position or strategy is preferable. For example, a loan company makes a profit and their customers lose money, but this is a fair trade-off if the cost of the loan is acceptable in return for access to an agreed amount. The loan company takes a risk, but this is mitigated by their diligence when processing each applicant. The customer chooses from whom to borrow by estimating who is offering the best deal, but in some cases, loan companies obfuscate the details of their product in order to encourage people to underestimate the cost. This is by no means universal. Legislation in some countries has forced lenders to be more transparent, but even when horrific repayment plans or harsh penalties are clearly illustrated, a person's need for the loan focuses them solely on the amount they hope to borrow,
not
how much it will cost them in the long run. This might explain why a lot of advertising concentrates on how easy it is to get the loan, rather than how difficult it will be to pay back.

The smart borrower understands that he or she has a negative expectation and takes the time to minimize their losses within the law, while the lenders do all they can to avoid this. Credit cards can be managed by switching from one card to another, taking advantage of deals for new customers in order to cut the percentage being charged. Depending on what deals are available, it might be possible to save a considerable amount over time, but the credit card companies would prefer you to ignore these options and continue paying them in a timely fashion. To this end they offer deals to encourage loyalty and penalties to restrict your options, so most people simply go with the flow and pay their bills; just as most blackjack players take whatever cards they're dealt and let Lady Luck do the rest.

In the end, this is simply capitalism at work and it's perfectly fair and above board most of the time. Even when a level of transparency is enforced, the focus is firmly directed to what the customer wants, rather than what it will cost him in the long run. When deception of any kind is employed, even subtly, then I believe this becomes sharp practice to varying degrees.

There's an old joke about a traveling salesman and his amazing watch that could do anything. Carrying two heavy suitcases, he approaches a man on the street and asks if he would be interested in owning a miracle of modern technology. Pulling back his sleeve, the salesman reveals an impressive device strapped to his wrist. “It tells time in every country, you just say the name. Japan.” The digital display changes to reveal the exact time in Tokyo. “London,” he says and the watch changes again to reflect Greenwich Mean Time. “It does much more than that. It can scan any document with this camera and can send and receive faxes—there's even a tiny roll of paper inside. It can display TV channels from any network in the world. It can tell you your exact geographical position down to half an inch either way and it can store thousands of your favorite films, music, or TV shows. It even has a tiny projector built into the side. Best of all, it only costs five hundred bucks!” The impressed stranger immediately reaches for his wallet and hands over five one-hundred-dollar bills and the salesman removes the watch and puts it onto the other man's wrist. Satisfied, the man is about to walk away when the salesman calls him back and hands him both of the heavy suitcases, saying “don't forget the batteries!”

I first heard that story in the early eighties, and those two suitcases tend to remind me of the lengthy contracts most people sign in order to own the latest and greatest gadget or gizmo.

The Monty Hall Problem

As human beings, we often see complexity where there is none, or ignore a simple solution while searching for something more satisfying. Magicians know this well. Our best secrets are often devilishly simple, sometimes counterintuitive, but mostly disappointing if the method is revealed. Con games are all about finding or creating opportunities where the hustler secretly has the upper hand, but it's possible to find an edge in legitimate situations so you can identify the best way to play. To that end, we're going to look at a classic game scenario where the best strategy has proven difficult for many people to understand.

In the well-known “Monty Hall Problem,”
*
the optimum strategy is often difficult to accept because the worst strategy appears to make more sense.

It's highly unlikely you'll ever find yourself in this exact scenario, but we can use this to illustrate that a powerful advantage can exist without being immediately obvious.

Briefly, the Monty Hall Problem works like this:

You are playing a game of three-card monte. On the table are three face down cards: one red queen of hearts and two random black cards. If you choose the queen, then you win a dollar.

You're the player and the person running the game is the performer. This is nothing more than a one-in-three guess but once you choose a card, the performer will offer a second choice.

Once you have nominated a card, the performer will turn over one of the remaining two. The card he turns over will always be a losing black card because he will
always know where the queen is
.

Once a black card has been turned face up, you are given the chance to stick with your original choice or switch to the other unseen card.

Many people believe, when presented with the second choice, that this is now a fifty/fifty proposition and that it makes no difference whether they switch or not. In fact, the odds of winning are doubled if you switch.

The problem is that most people reject this idea once the second choice is offered. They started with one in three but, once one of the losing cards is revealed, only two choices remain and those appear to each have a fifty-fifty chance of being the winner.

As with many magic effects, con games, or puzzles, it's all about how you look at it. In all variations of the classic Monty Hall problem, there are three choices consisting of two losers and one winner: in other words, one chance in three. It is important, however, to remember that the performer who is offering you this choice knows
exactly
where the winner is and will only reveal losing options. At this point the player is offered the chance to switch, but this second choice is definitely not a fifty-fifty proposition.

Let's stick with playing cards but change the numbers. Instead of one winning card and two losing cards, let's add eight more losing black cards. Now there are eleven cards on the table but there's still only
one
winner.

The rules are the same. One card can be selected but, before it is turned over, the performer will remove nine losing cards from the remainder and turn them over, leaving
just one card
from the group you
did not
choose. That card could be either the winning red card or just another black card.

If I offered you the chance to switch in this example, would you stick with your original choice? Do you still think this is just a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right?

You know that there was one red card in the packet and that the first card you took had a one in eleven chance of being that red card, so it should be obvious that the red card is much more likely to be among the other ten cards. Hopefully this makes the switching strategy more obvious.

It is the actions of the performer who's running the game that determines the odds, because he will always remove nine losing cards leaving either a tenth loser or the winning card. The remaining card will only be a losing black card
if
you happened to select the red card as your first choice, which we know is the least likely outcome.

If you chose one of the majority black cards first, then the remaining card from the other group (after nine black cards have been removed by the performer) will be the red winner
ten times
out of eleven!

This is because the procedure reverses the odds
against
the player on the first round, becoming
for
the player on the second round
if he switches
.

This is a result of the conscious intervention by the performer, who removes all but one of the remaining options because the cards he removes will always be losing options. If the winning card is in the remaining ten, the performer is forced to leave it in play. Therefore, when you make that first choice, you are isolating a card that is more likely to be a loser and will then trade it for a card that is more likely to be a winner.

If a second person enters the game after the losing cards have been turned over, they would see only two choices and their chances are fifty-fifty of picking the right card because they do not have the same information as you. This is an excellent example of playing a game according to the information available to the player. You have been involved since the start of the game, so the above strategy allows you to double your odds of success by switching. You know that one card was part of the group that had a much better chance of containing the winner, that this other card retains those positive odds and is therefore the better choice. The new player knows none of this and might as well flip a coin and take his chances.

This is where people often get tripped up because they put themselves into the position of that second player. It's important to remember that the card you first selected had the odds against it and that the remaining card (and its group) had the odds in its favor.