The Three-Card Monte Card Con

     The Three-Card Monte is the mother of all card cons…The Set-Up: 1. Two or more people are standing around a cardboard box on a busy street. The dealer has three cards; two are black and one is red. The red is usually a queen. The dealer shows all three cards, lays them face down on the table and rapidly picks up one card with his left hand and the other two with his right hand, and drops them back on the table in new positions. He repeats this scheme a number of times. The onlooker has to bet the position of the card which is alone in its suit (i.e. the queen). 2. Someone always seems to be winning; this person is the accomplice or shill, working alongside the dealer with the intention of luring unsuspecting marks. 3. Additional accomplices will include the look-out, who watches for the cops and signals their approach so that the game can be folded up quickly; the roper, who seeks out the marks; and the muscle man, who takes care of anyone who tries to complain.

     The Sting: 4. The mark is persuaded to join the game. He never wins. 5. The dealer holds two cards in his right hand. The upper card is held between the thumb and forefinger and the lower card is held between thumb and middle finger, with a small gap between both cards. According to common sense, the dealer should drop the lower card first, but his forefinger surreptitiously ejects the upper card first, which causes the mark to lose track of the right card (the queen). This is especially difficult to see if the dealer's hand makes a sweeping move from his left side to his right side while he drops the cards…

Joel Levy, The Scam Handbook, 2004