Scams and Con Games

by Curious

1. THE LIT MATCH PROP

ok first thing you do is tear a match out of a matchbook and then hold it at the very end.

Now turn your hand over so the match is now inverted.

Offer a bet to someone that you can light the match and hold it in this upside-down position while counting from one to fifty without letting go of the match and without extinguishing the flame. Anyone who tries it will soon find he has to drop the match long before reaching the fifty count to avoid getting fried fingers.

To make good your claim, hold the lit match in the inverted position, then continually move your hand back and forth slowly for a distance of eight to ten inches as you count. By keeping the match in constant motion you retard the burning process and keep the flame aimed away from your fingers. With a little experimentation, you will find that you can actually count fairly slowly and still reach fifty before things get to hot to handle. To cover yourself, in making the bet, stipulate that if the match should go out accidentally, you get a second chance.

2. THE TOSSED MATCH PROP

Before putting that book of matches away after the last bet, you might offer to give you victim a chance to win his money back with the following proposition. Tear out another match and flip it into the air as if you were flipping a coin and let it land on the tavle. Paper matches are always a different colour on each side. Make the claim that you can cause whichever colour you wans to land face up when you flip the match (but don't offer to bet). When your mark (Sucker) challenges the claim, let him call whichever side he wants to flip. Since this is only luck, the odds are you will fail as often as you succeed. But don't let this discourage you, sindce this is only the come-on.

When your friend needles you about you failure, respond difinantly that this time, when you flip the match you will cause it to land on its EDGE! rather than on one of its sides, and offer to back up your claim with money ££££.You should have no trouble drawing action. When the bets are down, pick up the match and, as you start to flip it into the air, bend it in the middle with your thumb so it assumes a "V" shape. When it lands, it will be on the edge.

3. THE KNOTTED CIGARETTE

Offer someone that you can tie a cigarette into a knot without breaking it. That has to sound like an impossibility in anybody's book.

When someone tries to call you bluff, remove the cellophane from the pack of cigarettes and tear it along one side so you are left with a flat sheet. Now roll up the cigarette tightly in the celllophane so the paper extends beyond the ends of the cigarette. All you habe to do now is grip the ends of the cellophane tubbe and tie a simple obverhand know so the knot ends up in the center of the cigarette. You can pull the knot as tightly as you wish without fear. You will be left with and undamaged, cellophane covered cigarette tied in a knot-and also a tidy profit :)

4. THE COURT CARD CUT

This simple prop should get you a good deal of action among you card playing friends. Have someone take a regulation deck of cards and shuffle it. Then have him vur the dick into three piles. Now offer to bet even money that at least on of the three cards he cuts to is a picture card: either a jack, queen, or king. You'll have to give your victim a few moments to mull over the odds, but if he has andy sporting blood, he will probably go for it. His reasoning will run something like this: there are twelve court cards in the deck; that's less than one in four; therefore, ecen if you have three tries at hitting one, the odds are against you. You would have to have at least four tries to make it an even bet.

THat logic jas cost a lot of money to the many suckers who have fallen bictiim to this prop. Most people, even among proffessional gamblers, simply have no idea how to caculate the odds on a problem of this type. They have to relly on what seems to make sinse to them. The fact is you can't simply reason out this type of bet. Commpn sende isn't enough. One way to computer the correct odds on something lik this is to use a simple probability formula for calculating combonations.

When someone cuts to three cards, he is randomly selecting a group of three cards from a group of fifty-two possibilities. The first thing we have to determine is how many different three-card groups can be selected from a fifty-two-card deck. To do so, we must create a fraction. the denominator of the fraction is derived from three, the number of objects in the selectied group. You start at one and add one unit until you arrive at the number three: 1X2X3. The numerator of the fraction is derived from fifry-two, the number of objucts from which we are selecting. You subtract one unit each time until you have the same number of factors as as in the denominator: 52 X 51 X 50. Now get out your pocket caculator and convert the fraction 52 X 51 X 50/1 X 2 X 3 to a whole number. You should arrive at the number 22,100. That means that in the selecting groups of three cards from a full deck are 22,100 different combinations you might come up with.

The next question is how many of those 22,100 different combinations will not contain even a single picture card? Suppose we had a deck of cardsfrom which all the picture cards had been removed, that would leave us with forty cards. Selecting them in groups of three would give us 40 X 39 X 38/1 X 2 X 3 possible combinations. IN plain engish that's 9,880 possible three-card combinations contained in a full deck which would not have at least one court card. If we subrract this number from out earlier total of 22,100, we find that there are 12,220 possible three-card combinations which contain at least one picture card as opposed to only 9,880 that do not. This means that the odds are almost exactly 5 to 4 in favor of the man who bets that a court card will turn up-that's you. You wo't win every time, of course . But if you use this prop frequently, in the long run you will win about 11 cents out of every american dollar wagered by you opponets. That's a bigger edge than honest gambling casinos enjoy on most bets.

If you gamble frequently, it will be worth your while to remember the little formula you just learned. It can be used to solve gambling problems as varied as the odds of getting a pat flush poker and the odds of winning on a particular keno ticket as well as the correct odds on many proposition bets like the above.