Walk down the right back alley in Sin City, and you can find anything
The followers of Jesus use fish as their symbol. God's trying to tell you they're fish. Who are you to disobey god?
I read the book "How to Cheat Your Friends at Poker: The Wisdom of Dickie Richard" by Penn Jillette and Mickey D. Lynn. I have not been too impressed by Penn's histrionic and frankly plain old stupid
antics in his TV show "Bullshit!", but fortunately this book is rather
different. This book is supposedly written by an anonymous card cheater
who is somehow a friend of Penn who then just edited it. But I kind of
suspect that Penn wrote this book totally by himself, inventing a
fictional character and amusing stories for him.
The book really
is about card cheating, although it has one short chapter about
preventing it, and immediately afterwards the book will explain how to
beat these cheat-proof techniques. The book doesn't really go into the
techniques such as dealing from the bottom of the deck other than to
say which books you can learn it from and that you should practice
doing any trick a million times before trying it out for real. Other
advice about how to set up games, milk each game for what it is worth
and how to split town afterwards was more interesting, including the
techniques what to do if you are caught. The book contains throughout
many wry and amusing although somewhat juvenile anecdotes and
observations about the human nature and the morality of cheating that
certainly make the book worth reading even if the book isn't genuine. I
truly wish that Penn had produced his TV show in the same manner as he
wrote this book.
It would seem to me that most of the
psychological misdirection techniques depend on the fact that the human
memory is quite short and that people necessarily run most of their
lives on autopilot, since nobody can be constantly on their toes and
think through everything from scratch. Most of the time people stick to
the first available coherent and acceptable explanation of what is
going on, and will even start inventing rationalization to support this
explanation and to get a peace of mind. Being a con artist or a cheat
is then about self-confidence and the sheer nerve to pull out simple
stunts that seem almost embarrassingly stupid and self-evident
afterwards. For example, carry a ring of useless old keys with you so
that you can leave them on the table when you feel the heat coming on
and decide to take off. You say that you'll be right back, and the
others will reason that you are coming back later, because you wouldn't
leave your keys behind, right?
Another book from the same shelf was "The Zen of Gambling"
by Wayne Allyn Root. I only read the a little bit so far, but I just
have to write about it here since... well, it is really something that
I can't even put in words, but I'll do my best. I really haven't felt
this way since picking up "The One Minute Millionaire: the Enlightened Way to Wealth".
Anybody who has even browsed that book knows what I am talking about
--- we are deeply in the Oprah and Deepak Chopra territory here, and
the writers certainly know their target audience here.
In the
short introduction, the author first tells us about his personal life.
This introduction reads like the first chapter of a typical Dean Koontz
novel except that it is amped all the way to eleven and on acid. After
reading about how the wildly successful author leads a perfect family
life with her Playboy-level statuesque wife, who, despite her having a
Ph.D. in homeopathy, is content to be the perfect American housewife
and mother to their three children Dakota, Hudson and the cheeky little
Remington Reagan. I can hardly wait to read more about this man and the
"spiritual principles behind his consistently winning hands", which I
assume are a curious mix of televangelistic fundy Christianity and
oriental Zen principles. You can already be a winner!
But I
guess that first we have to next encounter the dastardly villain who
really hates America and the middle class lifestyle and is so tense and
and on the edge all the time that he always eats more than five men,
along with the shadowy government operators who really hate guns and
rugged individualism and want to institute an European-style welfare
state in their place. But I'll certainly keep reading and will report
to my readers if I find any useful advice on how to beat the flashy
casinos in their own game. Penn's little book, on the other hand,
advices the cheaters to stay away from casinos and cheat on home games,
since it is so much easier and more profitable.
A slightly uprated version of the key-ring trick would to be leave a dead/dummy mobile phone with the keys as well. No one would do that and not come back now would they. Plus I would make sure one of the keys was a car key not just any old yale job.
Posted by Anonymous | 1:02 PM
Yep, that is exactly what the book suggested, if I recall correctly. Mobile phones are so cheap these days that it doesn't even have to be a dummy. It's a good investment if you want to get away with thousands of dollars. Cost of business.
In fact, the book adviced that the only key that should matter to you is your real car key.
Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen | 2:18 PM
What about your holiday in Las Vegas? Did you already go there? If so, have you blogged about it?
Posted by Anonymous | 12:30 PM
The Vegas vacation is still almost three weeks to the future. And of course I will be blogging about it then.
Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen | 1:46 PM