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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff front house, stuff works dot com where

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Speaker 1: smart happens. Hi. I'm Marshall Brain with today's question, how

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Speaker 1: do big city shell games and three card Monty games

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Speaker 1: actually work? If you go to any big city like

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Speaker 1: New York City and you walk around on the city

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Speaker 1: streets for a while, you are bound to come upon

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Speaker 1: a table where somebody is doing either shell games or

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Speaker 1: three card Monty games for money. These games have actually

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Speaker 1: been around in some form for hundreds of years, but

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Speaker 1: they still wrote people in today, especially tourists and big cities.

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Speaker 1: Both games are based on the same basic idea keep

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Speaker 1: your eye on the target, while the dealer, called the

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Speaker 1: tosser in this sort of game, mixes it up and

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Speaker 1: moves the cups around or the cards around to try

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Speaker 1: to confuse you. In three card Monty, the tosser uses

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Speaker 1: playing cards, typically the Red Queen and two random black cards.

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Speaker 1: The cards are creased down the middle so they form

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Speaker 1: a little tent shape. The tosser shows the player all

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Speaker 1: three cards face up and then drops them face down

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Speaker 1: on the table. He or she slides the cards around

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Speaker 1: on the table, switching their positions rapidly. The player tries

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Speaker 1: to track the position of the queen as the tosser

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Speaker 1: moves it around. When the tosser stops, the player makes

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Speaker 1: a bet and guesses the position of the queen on

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Speaker 1: the table. In the shell game, the tosser lays three

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Speaker 1: half shells or cups face down on the table and

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Speaker 1: slips a ball or a p or a coin or

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Speaker 1: something underneath one of the cups. Then here she slides

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Speaker 1: the shells around while the player tries to track the

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Speaker 1: shell with the p under it. As in three card Monty,

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Speaker 1: the player makes a bet, say twenty bucks, and guesses

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Speaker 1: where the ball is. So is there any way to

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Speaker 1: in these games? In most cases, no, there's not. The

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Speaker 1: games are riggs, so you can't win. In many shell games,

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Speaker 1: the ball isn't under any of the shells. There are

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Speaker 1: a few different ways of staging this. In one of

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Speaker 1: the most common approaches, the tosser covers the table with

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Speaker 1: pieces of newspaper. Then, when the game is in play,

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Speaker 1: he or she lifts the shell as it slides over

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Speaker 1: the edge of one newspaper sheet. The ball rolls under

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Speaker 1: the newspaper sheet and the tosser keeps shuffling. There is

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Speaker 1: no winning shell on the table In the classic three

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Speaker 1: card Monty scam, the red Queen does stay on the table,

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Speaker 1: but the tosser leads the player away from it. When

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Speaker 1: the tosser shows the cards, he or she holds a

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Speaker 1: black card in one hand and a black card and

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Speaker 1: the red Queen in the other hand. This black card

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Speaker 1: is held between the thumb and the middle finger, and

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Speaker 1: the queen is held in front of it between the

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Speaker 1: thumb and the ring finger. When the queen is in front,

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Speaker 1: the player a wombs that the tosser drops it first,

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Speaker 1: but in fact, the tosser releases the black card first

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Speaker 1: while moving his or her hand to the side. This

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Speaker 1: moves the queen out of the way so the black

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Speaker 1: card can fall straight down. The tosser does this so

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Speaker 1: quickly that spectators never noticed, so from the very beginning,

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Speaker 1: everybody is tracking the wrong card. In most cases, this

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Speaker 1: sleight of hand is actually the simplest part of this scam.

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Speaker 1: Most card and show games are very elaborate operations, involving

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Speaker 1: several crew members. In addition to the tosser. The scam

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Speaker 1: depends on a lookout to keep an eye out for police,

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Speaker 1: a roper to bring in potential players, and one or

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Speaker 1: more shills to get people to play, the show blends

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Speaker 1: in as part of the crowd. In fact, the show

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Speaker 1: will appear to be the opposite of the tosser. If

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Speaker 1: the tosser is wearing a dirty T shirt and a

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Speaker 1: baseball cap, the shell might be dressed in a suit,

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Speaker 1: carrying a briefcase or a nice dress, something like that.

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Speaker 1: The show's job is to act as a player or

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Speaker 1: as an involved spectator before others joined the game, The

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Speaker 1: tosser lets one of the shills win a couple of

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Speaker 1: times to make it look like this is an easy game.

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Speaker 1: The tosser doesn't switch the cards or ditch the ball

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Speaker 1: or anything like that, so the game looks easy to

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Speaker 1: anybody who's watching. When people see the show winning so

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Speaker 1: easily or losing by making dumb decisions, they want to

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Speaker 1: play themselves. But even if you're armed with all this knowledge,

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Speaker 1: you still can't beat this game. If you see the

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Speaker 1: card switch, track the right card and put money down

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Speaker 1: on the actual queen, one of the shills will just

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Speaker 1: put down a higher bet on another card, and the

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Speaker 1: tosser will say one bet at a time and nullify

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Speaker 1: your bet, or the show might bump the table and

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Speaker 1: that will knock everything off the table and void the game,

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Speaker 1: or the tosser might suddenly spot the police and pack

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Speaker 1: the game up. So no matter what happens, in most cases,

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Speaker 1: there really is no way to win these games. The

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Speaker 1: crew is only out to take money, never to give

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Speaker 1: any of it up. Obviously, the moral of this story

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Speaker 1: is to never play shell games or three card Monty

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Speaker 1: games that you see on the streets in any big

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Speaker 1: city for moralness and thousands of other topics. Is that

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and don't forget to check

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