Where’s the ball?

You see these swindlers all the time in movies. I’ve never seen them in person and you’d think you’d find them close to dark alleys late at night. I found three the other day in Chinatown in broad daylight.

These ones are European, probably eastern euros. They have that look in there faces of “I’m not to be trusted”. But they gathered big crowds as they play these tricks that will make you wanna play. They make it look easy for you to win. Two of them used 3 thin, round rubbery foams and under one foam will be a white sticker or paper. The man would shuffle the pieces around and will make you guess where the paper is. Anyone can play for 20 quid. If you get it right, you get 1:1. The guy above (in the photo) uses three coke caps with a small piece of foam shaped like a ball. Same game rules…I stood there for at least 30 mins watching all three of them swindle people. Sometimes when you are sure which one it is, one turn away to get your money then WHAM, the man rotates the whole board 180 degrees and you lose. Or sometimes you if you think you are very sure, the man will say 40 quid to play and you are most likely to lose then mainly because the mark is not in any of the three. This latter trick is easier to do with the cap and ball because the ball can easily be squeezed and hidden away in between your fingers. If you want to win, you have to be aggressive and hold the cap down while you get your money out to bet. In fact, why not hold the money in your hand to begin with and that way you do not have to turn around and be a victim of the old switcharoo…

Eventually, I noticed that there seem to be only three people who are very active in winning (and losing) and I had the suspicion then if I was to run a scam like this, I would have dummy players to encourage activity then swindle someone in the crowd. So later that day just before I left, the pictured man above moved to another spot and bingo, the three active players I saw before are with the man in the above photo! Don’t they look normal? You have lady who you probably would suspect as being in on it. Then you have the tall guy who seem to be just walking past (he kept walking off and back), then you have the senior citizen (with the hat) who seem to be just another part of the crowd and so fixated on the game.

Unless they hook someone dumb into betting a lot of money, I watched them for a while and I don’t think you can make a lot of money this way.