Great Gambling Scams. Howard Monte/Nigel Montgomery
more whisky to break his run, but Whackey kept winning and winning. He was ahead three hundred grand when he hit the craps table, and there he shot the dice for an incredible two hours. By the time it was all over, Whackey had the Four Queens beat for an incredible million dollars, at which point, he literally fell into the craps table, intoxicated and exhausted. In a panic, the casino manager coaxed Whackey into the best suite, and put his million in the casino cage for safekeeping, but not that lucky $1 bill which had started his incredible roll. Whackey took it up to his suite and put it safely under his pillow.
Unfortunately, waking up the next day as a millionaire – and realising he didn’t have to go back on the streets begging – sadly proved to be poor Whackey’s downfall. Having nothing better to do, he went back into the casino, where it took him a whole week to blow the entire million dollars. Before kicking him out of his suite and on to the strip, the casino manager offered him $100 for the lucky one-dollar bill that remained in his pocket. Whackey refused. The next night, he was arrested in the Four Queens Hotel gift shop for stealing a candy bar that cost a dollar.
After he finished his story, Richard asked him why he didn’t simply pay for the candy bar with the dollar bill. He should have known the answer, it was simple, really. That was his lucky dollar, and there was no way the Four Queens was getting it.
Richard had also experienced the few punters who tried to bribe him to turn the tables against the house. Dealers are vulnerable to this, being persuaded to flash their hole card at blackjack, or overpay a winning bet. Richard was having none of that. But, one night in June 1977, a man who was going to change his life forever sat down at his mini-baccarat table.
It was late in the shift, and Richard’s table was dead. A very handsome man in his mid-forties, casually but stylishly dressed, sat down at the table and changed up a hundred dollars. He seemed more interested in small talk than the cards. They exchanged stories about places they both knew in Manhattan, and Richard confided in him his story about how he had ended up being a dealer at the Four Queens. Richard immediately liked the man, and felt comfortable and impressed with him. At the end of the shift, the man suggested that Richard meet him for a drink at the Horseshoe Casino bar. Richard, never having socialised with a customer before, sensed something important was about to happen, and agreed. And that was how Richard Marcus met Joe Classon, Las Vegas’s smartest cheat.
Binion’s Horseshoe was considered one of Vegas’s smartest joints. It was a no-limit casino, and people could – and did – make bets of a million dollars on the throw of a dice or the turn of a card. It was also home to the newly started World Series of Poker. Over cocktails, Joe sussed Richard out. ‘I’ve been watching you deal baccarat for the past week, but you wouldn’t have seen me. None of the floormen at the Four Queens has the slightest idea what goes on at the baccarat tables, yet you didn’t nick a dime. Why’s that?’
‘No reason, nothing much worth stealing, really. I only got chosen to deal the baccarat because I was the only one in there who understood the rules.’
Joe was quite right, baccarat had only recently been installed at the Four Queens, and the bulk of the personnel and punters didn’t even know the basic rules. And some of the crew were stealing small-value chips and getting away with it. Richard had not been tempted, though – memories of those ten nights under the freeway were still fresh in his mind. Richard was impressed with Joe’s knowledge of the casino, although, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t picture seeing him in there before that night. He felt sure, though, that Joe was going to make a move on him at any minute, an illegal move to rob the casino, and somehow Richard felt that the more he heard from his new friend, the more he was going to go for it.
‘So, where do you see yourself a year or two from now? Not still dealing in that shit hole across the road, surely?’
‘Nah, I’m just waiting for the right move to come along, I suppose,’ Richard replied.
‘Suppose I was to give you a push in the right direction, so to speak?’ Joe now fixed Richard’s gaze with his own, firmly and confidently.
Richard downed his drink in one, shook Joe’s hand, and agreed there and then to be part of his team. All he had to do now was come up with a worthwhile scam at the Four Queens, and turn his back on his career as a croupier. He was in; there was now no turning back.
When Richard next met Joe ten days later, it was in his suite at the Tropicana Hotel, and he had the scheme completely worked out. In Joe’s suite were his two associates, Duke and Jerry. Duke was in his mid-thirties, and had baby-blue eyes, while Jerry had the look of an American football player. They were passing round a joint, but Richard didn’t smoke, so he got straight down to business, and divulged his plan.
‘About ten minutes before the end of my shift at two in the morning, I want Joe to come and sit on my baccarat table and play in $100 black chips. That will set him up as a big player for the few hands that are left before I hand over to the next dealer on the graveyard shift. Now, here’s the key: it is my job to shuffle the cards and place them in the baccarat shoe before the new dealer gets to the table. I am going to set up the deck during the shuffle with as many winning player hands as I can, and let Joe know before I leave the table how many there are going to be. Joe will have to keep an eye on the floorman while I am doing the shuffling and lacing the cards, to make sure he is not taking too much notice, but, from experience, at that time in the morning, on a quiet table he rarely does. As soon as I am gone, and the new dealer comes on, you guys, who have already been in the casino for a while getting noticed as big hitters on the dice and roulette, come and sit down at the table and bet the maximum on the player until the run is over. After that, in order to avoid suspicion, play a mixture of bank and player to almost equal sums of money, so the worst you can lose is the bit of tax, and stay there until the shoe is over. If I can get five or six player hands in the shoe, it will be a good night’s work. And the beauty of it is, if the Four Queens think they have been burned, they will assume it must have been the fault of the graveyard dealer, not me, as I will already be gone.’
The room had gone quiet, and Joe’s three new accomplices in crime sat with their mouths wide open.
‘What about the burn card?’ Joe asked.
‘Quite right, I forgot. I will try and make the top card a deuce, so that the dealer has to burn two cards. Be careful to make sure that she burns two, not one or three; many dealers make a basic mistake on the burn. So, when I give Joe the signal after the shuffle I will say two, six. This means that the top card is a deuce, two cards will be burned, and there will be six winning player hands. Of course, if I can’t force a deuce to the top, I may say five, five, but, whatever I say, if the top card that comes out isn’t the one I mentioned, something’s gone wrong and the whole thing is off.’
They spent the next few hours going through it all, and decided to get four more players involved so that they could cover all seven boxes, at $500 a box, netting themselves $3,500 a hand. Duke and Jerry had their girlfriends coming over, and Joe had a couple of other trustees in mind. It was decided that all seven would enter the casino at different times and from separate entrances, and change up sufficient money at blackjack, roulette and craps to ensure that the casino saw them as big players before they even hit the baccarat table.
Part two – the winning series of bets – was easy, but part three – getting out – was more difficult. Joe elaborated on Richard’s theory: ‘If us seven continue to play after the coup until the shoe is over, betting roughly equal sums on the player and the bank, we will probably lose a little back, but we will keep the bulk of the thousands we have stung them for. That will be worth it, and the casino will see us as big players, even though they can’t win back what we have had them over for. In other words, they won’t even realise they’ve been robbed.’ The scene was set for the following Saturday evening. The Four Queens was about to get fleeced.
Upon shuffling the baccarat cards for possibly the last time in his career, Richard decided to try and put as many hands together as he could for his team. Joe was signalling – by gently rubbing his chin with his thumb and forefinger – that Harold, the floorman, had his back to him, and Richard quickly got a deuce and two dead cards, followed by four natural hands