nscrupulous Card Sharks

ome time ago Baron Von Lodge was the head of a small country near Switzerland known as Lilliland.

Vacationers were always welcome in Lilliland. The typical vacationers enjoyed water sports in the summer and skiing in the winter. Some people just liked to look at the scenery. The snow capped mountains and the glistening Lake Lilliland were always very attractive for sightseers.

Sometimes people who resembled tourists were really not tourists. They came to Lilliland and looked for people that they can gyp out of their vacation savings. Sometimes they were card sharks that liked to rob the people of their money by cheating them at a so-called innocent game of cards.

The Lilliland police received word that an elderly couple was coming to Lilliland. They were card sharks wanted by many countries.

Their method of operation was that they would find a couple and act friendly toward them. They would get them into a conversation and invite them for social drinks. Then the subject would get around to a friendly game of cards. They would say that they would only play for the sport of it, but as the card game proceeded they would say, “Let’s make it more interesting by playing for toothpicks.”

Finally, one of the players would suggest that they play for pennies or small change. The game might stop at that time and everyone would agree to resume the next day.

The next day the two card sharks would let the other couple win as they had the day before. The innocent couple was taking the bait by winning most of the time.

The elderly couple had the innocent couple, known as marks, set up. The man would wear a special pair of glasses through which he read the code on the front of the card and therefore he knew exactly who had what cards. As the game proceeded the couple that were the marks kept winning and they offered to raise the money in the pot. Finally, when the pot was large enough, the card shark would say that he wanted to end the game and have one final pot of winner take all. The older couple would always win since it was fixed.

Fortunately, a pair of undercover police acted as the next marks and since the undercover policeman had a similar pair of special glasses, he was able to trap the card sharks at their own game. They were taken to jail and sent to the countries that wanted them for their illegal activities. The first couple got all their money back and they said they learned an important lesson about not gambling.