The Art of the Con (20 page)

I once made up a version of this game to demonstrate how much money a con man could make in an hour. Starting with nothing, I gathered the necessary props, had the bartender loan me a bottle (that I'd already tested), and got a crowd of people to play. By manipulating who could win and when, I made over five hundred theoretical dollars before convincing one unlucky chump to let it ride and try for three stands in a row. The first two were easy but, thanks to the way I set the third, he didn't stand a chance.

Some people take a dim view of any game with a “gaff” designed to make it seem a lot easier than it actually is. Newspaper reports and television exposes take basketball champions to the midway who find they can't shoot a single basket or special forces snipers who can't shoot out a red star that's six feet down-range. Reporters go on to reveal that the baskets are not regulation size, the balls are overinflated, or the fairground guns aren't properly calibrated. Why on earth would a carnival game observe NBA regulations or provide properly sighted weapons? In my opinion, they're looking at the wrong games. These stall owners are offering entertainment, and while I agree that there's a deception in the way they present themselves, trickery should be accepted in this world. It comes with the territory.

The Flat Joint

While the midway offers games with little chance of success, it may also feature a particular breed of game that's designed purely to steal money. A “flat joint” or “flat store” is a game where there's no real chance of winning. Many legitimate carnys dislike having these games around as they generate a bad feeling, public distrust, and, all too often, police attention. They can still be found in carnivals, but they are just as likely to appear anywhere that offers a fresh supply of unwary victims. Some games can be reworked on the fly, starting as a percentage or skill-based affair but becoming an outright scam when the operator offers to change the structure of the game.

The Work-Up

Once the carny convinces a sucker to play toward some kind of agreed outcome or score, then the prizes become much more attractive. This approach allows a crooked carny to pick and choose his targets while presenting his stall as a typical, honest game until a mark agrees to play the “work-up,” and it is no longer a game. Then it becomes more akin to a robbery.

The Queen's Cut

To help you understand how this type of scam works, it would be useful to invent our own game. I'll shuffle a deck of cards and offer you the chance to cut to any card. In this game, if you cut to a queen, you win a dollar, but every cut costs you a dollar, so I either keep your dollar or give you one of mine whenever you find a queen. This isn't really fair since, with four queens in a fifty-two-card deck, the odds are against you. But you should have a one in thirteen chance of cutting to a queen, which is much better odds than some that you'll find at the fair.

Let's also imagine that this turns out to be your idea of a great time, so you're happy to play and no one gets hurt until I offer you the chance to work your way up to a much bigger prize. Since you love this game so much, I generously offer to play for more money. This time, you get to cut the deck one hundred times. If you happen to cut to all four queens, then I will pay you five hundred dollars, but you still have to pay one dollar every time you cut the deck. That means you might have to pay me as much as one hundred dollars, but you're pretty sure that, with a hundred chances, you can cut to all four queens so you agree to play.

Sound fair? There's a catch.

Every time you cut to a heart, I'm going to add a hundred dollars to the prize, but you also have to pay double each time you cut. After cutting to five hearts, the prize fund would double to a thousand bucks—but you'd be paying thirty-two dollars for every round. Three more hearts create a prize fund of thirteen hundred bucks, but now you're paying $256 per cut! What you don't know is that I've secretly trimmed the queens so they're slightly narrower and shorter than the other cards and, because of the way you must cut and show the face of the upper half, the chances of cutting to a queen at all are slim to none. Cutting to all four queens would take an act of God, especially since I've palmed-out one of the queens!

Clearly, this is not a game at all, but rather a complete con. From the player's point of view, it might appear to be a reasonable proposition. Once he's doubled his stake a few times, the odds against him should be clear, but I can keep the player involved by offering to also double the prize money whenever he cuts to a heart. Now there seems to be a real chance to make some money, but by the time he's cut to ten hearts, each turn will cost more than a thousand dollars and most people would go broke long before that.

This imaginary game clearly illustrates how trying to work your way up to a prize, where the price to keep playing constantly increases, is a sure way to lose a lot of money; when the game is fixed or the odds are heavily stacked against you, it's just a matter of time before you're cleaned out. The important thing to remember is that real games of this nature are designed to seem beatable, that's the point. But in actuality, they continue to take the player's money until there's no more to take.

Getting Hooped

A Hoopla game features a table filled with tall and short blocks of wood. On top of these are prizes that can be won if a wooden or plastic hoop is successfully thrown over one of the blocks and lands flat on the table, and is not hooked on the block in any way. Getting a hoop over any block is difficult, though achievable with a flat-topped cylindrical block, but other shapes can make a legitimate throw almost impossible. The game of hoopla is an excellent example of a flat store that can operate a legitimate skill-based game until the right sucker walks up with deep-enough pockets to reach into.

First of all, the cheap prizes (the ones that are actually winnable) are moved away and the operator introduces more attractive prizes, including Rolex watches and bottles of expensive champagne. The only catch is that every ring costs a couple of dollars more. After the first round, the player has lost more money than he intended but has been frustratingly close to winning several times. Of course, it's designed this way. The operator offers more rings for more money in return for removing some of the blocks. This makes it much easier to concentrate on prizes the player really wants, so he accepts and loses another fistful of dollars. Before the mark can back away, the hustler now moves the remaining blocks closer, offering more rings for more money. Now it seems entirely likely that the player will win, but despite hooking the rings around the edge of the blocks several times, none fall completely over their target.

The hustler moves the block even closer and demonstrates several times that he can throw the rings over the block. Having come this far, the sucker buys a handful of rings for even
more
money, certain that this time he couldn't possibly fail. He loses again, and the game continues until the mark either walks away or runs out of money, usually the latter.

Hoopla is a brilliant little scam because it seems so easy, yet is almost impossible to win from the player's position. The wooden blocks are flat on the bottom but their top is cut at a steep angle, which makes it fantastically difficult to throw a ring over, unless you are throwing toward the highest side of the block. If the lower side of the angled cut is toward you, then you might as well throw your money into a drain. The operator is naturally on the tall side of the blocks and can easily throw hoops from there. In fact, the blocks can be incredibly close to the player without improving his chances unless he reaches forward and drops the hoop straight down, which would be a foul throw, naturally.

The hustler's ability to appear to make the game easier and improve the mark's chances while taking more money each time are the hallmarks of a work-up scam or “trap game.” The mark is moved gradually toward the prize until it seems like he can't possibly fail; then the true odds (which are enormous) do the rest. In Blackpool, a popular seaside town on England's west coast, hoopla stalls have been known to set up along the sea front, drawing people in with free throws and friendly banter until someone takes the bait and plays for bigger prizes. People regularly lose hundreds, even thousands at these grubby, ugly little stalls playing for expensive bottles of booze, jewelry, and fancy watches. This is why they are called “trap games” because, once a player has lost so much, it's very difficult to walk away. They just end up following their losses even deeper into the hole.

Speaking to friends “in the know” I was told that several people had been mugged after refusing to play and that rumors of drug dealing from these stalls were rife. I once walked up to one of these games and was quickly recognized from
The Real Hustle
and threatened. Smiling, I backed away, but it was clear that these guys meant business.

Despite claims that hoopla was merely a game of skill, Black-pool police finally managed to close the stalls down after passing the blocks to a statistician for analysis. He quickly proved that the odds were unreasonable and the operator was then charged and taken to court. Personally, I was disappointed that it took so long, especially since the FBI had performed similar tests on the same props decades earlier. When breaking down the operation, police even discovered that the prize Rolex watches were cheap knock-offs and the bottles of booze were all empty!

Mark Mason, a dear friend and now a dealer in magicians' props, was once one of the biggest game operators in Blackpool. His joints varied from mini jam auctions and trap games like the Razz to the ticket scam, where players would pick sealed paper tickets from a large basket hoping to find the name of a winning football team. Everything in the basket was a loser; Mark would secretly hide a winner in his palm and add it to their pile of chosen tickets. The objective was to pick out ten tickets, and if they could find three winning teams, they'd win a prize. By adding the winners with a little sleight of hand, Mark was in complete control of how many winners they found and could use this to keep them playing for that last golden ticket.
*

Once someone has lost a lot of money to this kind of game, it might seem easy for him to walk away, but in the heat of the moment, the player is convinced that he is
so
close that he is certain to win eventually. The con is
designed
to lure the mark into believing that winning would easily compensate for the money he has already lost. This is why prizes in a trap game must be bigger and more attractive. If the victim has lost three hundred dollars but is playing for a two-thousand-dollar prize, then he will keep playing until either he runs out of money or it no longer seems worth playing. Hoopla is a powerful trap that succeeds because it looks like a simple game that's entirely possible to win.

The king of these games comes in many different guises, is known by countless names from Lucky Numbers and Thunderball to Cuban Bingo, but most famously it's known as The Razzle Dazzle.

Razzle

I'm often asked to name my favorite scam and, like trying to decide a preferred film or book, this question is impossible to answer truthfully. The term “favorite” isn't really appropriate since we're talking about a criminal act, but the question is a natural one. I've pulled over five hundred different con games, so surely there's one that stands out? There are many con games that I find fascinating or ingenious to varying degrees (many are described in this book), but if you put a gun to my head and forced me to name just one scam that embodies everything that interests me, the Razz would be it. If fate or misfortune threw me onto the street and I had to resort to larceny, the razzle dazzle would be my game of choice.

It took several seasons of
The Real Hustle
to convince production that the razz was worth filming, because it was incredibly difficult to describe in words. Game charts with points for certain scores, a box with numbered holes, and a cup filled with marbles hardly sound like great television; but, when we finally built the props and filmed the scam, the result was everything I'd hoped for. The razzle proved to be a perfect example of how and why scams work, and after the first mark walked away penniless, my producer leapt out of hiding and ran over to the stall shouting “that was fucking fantastic!”

My interest in this particular game began with a conversation in Las Vegas. A friend told me a funny story about a hustler who was arrested for playing the razzle when the victim's wife became convinced he was either drugged or mesmerized. Later, I did a little research to learn more about the game but found that there was very little information available to me. I had trouble understanding why this particular swindle was so strong or how it could make so much money with such a simple secret.

The razzle depends on the operator to miscount quickly and without hesitation. The hustler in my friend's story had worked the razz for so long that when he was hired as a blackjack dealer, the pit boss had to constantly stop him from accidentally busting out his own hand when his mind naturally reverted to old habits. In a razzle joint, it is
when
the miscount is used that makes it such a perfect little scam. Rolled fairly, the odds of scoring any points are astronomical, but once a victim starts to play, the operator uses the miscount to give him points and keep him in the game. Put simply, you only cheat
in the mark's favor!
Over time, the player's score can creep closer and closer to the prize without any real hope of winning.