Three Card Monte…

The Ultimate Gaffed Deck

One of the things that I do every now and then is get a deck of gaffed cards and try to figure out tricks to do with the different trick cards. I don’t read/watch the instructions, that makes this a fun creativity exercise. Right now in my office I have a deck of the Ultimate Gaff Deck that I bought because I was playing around with a four ace trick and needed some double backers.

This pack is sitting on my desk and I opened it this morning and the first thing that I noticed is that there is a set of cards for a three card monte using double ended cards. I took the cards out, set them on the table, then immediately thought, “why do all the monte routines that use these cards have them flat?”

Three card monte

When you see this trick done in movies or for real on the street, the cards are always bent.

Three Card Monte

The only reason that I can think of is that having them bent changes the handling a little bit. If you think about the time that these gimmicked three card monte routines started getting popular with Unconquered Card by Mike Rogers and Micheal Skinner’s Ulitmate 3 Card Monte, I bet writing up a routine with them bent would have been rough and made the routines harder to sell.

You can hide the gimmicks just fine with the cards bent.

Gimmicked Three Card Monte

I’m planning on playing with them today and see if I can come up with a short routine with them.