Three Card Monte

Have you ever played Three Card Monte?

It’s a card game commonly found on some of the more, uh, lively streets of big cities.  There’s a dealer with three cards and a very light card table.  The three cards are generally a red queen (often the queen of hearts) and two jokers.  The dealer shows you the cards, flips them over and moves the cards back and forth across the table.  The object of the game is to pick the red queen.  Pick the red queen and you win.  Back and forth, back and forth.  You watch the cards move back and forth.  You watch, you pick the queen.  Your eyes grow accustomed to the rapid movement of the cards, back and forth, back and forth.  You pick the red queen again and again.  Your initial $5 becomes a twenty dollar bill. You watch, you study and after awhile you gain mastery*. Eventually you set up for the big payoff.  

But before the Big Payoff, some terminology:

A confidence trick is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. A confidence trick is also known as a con game, a con, a scam, a grift, or a hustle.  One who employs a confidence trick is called a confidence man.  A con man.  

Confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naivete, vanity, or greed. The intended victims are known as marks, suckers, stooges, rubes, or gulls (from the word gullible). When accomplices are employed, they are known as shills. 

The psychology of the con is to increase the mark's confidence until they believe they have a special ability to cheat the dealer and win easy money.  The mark starts to believe he is good enough to outsmart the dealer.  Everything the Monte mob does is geared towards creating that mindset in the mark.
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                                             photo: Mark White

More photos Mark White @spindrift65    http://thespindrift.weebly.com/

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"One of the most famous scams in the world is actually one of the easiest to beat.  You simply never play.  What's being manipulated is not the cards.  It's you."  
- R. Paul Wilson
Click on the photo below for greater insight and strategy into the Three Card Monte.  Sources: R. Paul Wilson, Wiki.

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