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What makes a Con Game Good? My argument about what it takes to run an effective con game. Con Game Dos & Don’ts. An examination of common con game pitfalls and triumphs! Getting people to show up. How to design and schedule a con-game that people will want to play! Con Costs. Why do conventions cost so much anyway?
- What makes a Con Game Good?
What makes a Con Game Good? My argument about what it takes...
- What makes a Con Game Good?
- The Embarrassing Check
- The Fiddle Game
- The Pig in A Poke
- The Thai Gem Scam
- The Wire Game
- The Badger Game
- Three-Card Monte
- The False Good Samaritan
- The Spanish Prisoner
- The Ponzi Scheme
The embarrassing check con is a well-known means of legally getting money from victims by playing off of their innate feelings of shame. The con men open a fake business with an overtly explicit title that supposedly sells sex toys or other pornographic material, but buyers are told that any purchases they make will be routed through a separate com...
Many of the best cons work because of the inherent greed of the person being tricked, and the fiddle game is one of the best examples. It requires two con men to work, and is designed to take place in a restaurant. One of the con men poses as an old man eating dinner. When he gets his bill, the man approaches the owner and explains that he forgot h...
One of the oldest cons in the book is the so-called “pig in a poke,” which dates back to the Middle Ages. At the time, quality meat was scarce, and pigs and cows were often worth large sums of money. In this particular con, the trickster would offer to sell another person a baby pig, and after receiving the money they would hand over a “poke,” or b...
A wildly elaborate con, the Thai Gem Scam has become infamous in Bangkok, where it is often performed on unsuspecting tourists. It starts with a lookout, who strikes up friendly conversations with tourists about their vacations. The lookout will say that there is a service that gives tourists free rides to local temples for sightseeing tours, and w...
Made famous by the movie The Sting, the wire game was a complex fraud that required a large group of con men to work in concert in order to pull it off. The group of grifters would open up a fake “wire store,’ which is a kind of bookie where bets could be placed on horse races. A victim, usually a man of considerable wealth, would then be brought i...
The badger game dates back to the 19th century, and is arguably one of the most reproduced cons of all time. A form of blackmail, in its most famous form the trick would see a con woman seek out a lonely married man at a bar and lure him back to her hotel room. After getting the man into some kind of compromising position, the grifters would produc...
One of the classic short cons, three-card monte is a card game that uses sleight of hand and trickery to swindle victims out of small amounts of cash. It’s one of the oldest cons around, and dates back to “the shell game,” a similar scheme that was popular during the Middle Ages. The game itself is deceivingly simple. Three cards are placed faced d...
There might not be any simpler or more ancient con than the so-called “false Good Samaritan”. It usually involves a team of two con men working in tandem, and the victim is usually a lone person walking a city street at night. The first con man approaches the person and mugs them, stealing their wallet or purse and taking off down the street. The s...
Ever gotten one of those junk e-mails from a person claiming to be a Nigerian Princess in need of quick cash? If so, then you’re familiar with the Spanish Prisoner, which is a classic form of “advance fee fraud” that attempts to trick unsuspecting marks by promising them a big payday down the road. The scam dates all the way back to the early 1900s...
If current events have proven anything, it’s that there is no more potentially profitable con game than the Ponzi scheme. The trick dates back hundreds of years, but it was popularized by Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant to the U.S. who swindled investors out of millions in the early 1900s before being arrested. The modern Ponzi scheme is a form...
What makes a Con Game Good? My argument about what it takes to run an effective con game. Con Game Dos & Don’ts. An examination of common con game pitfalls and triumphs! Getting people to show up. How to design and schedule a con-game that people will want to play! Con Costs. Why do conventions cost so much anyway?
Jan 5, 2016 · In The Confidence Game, Maria Konnikova shows how con artists exploit our tendency to overestimate our intelligence and judgment, and examines the psychology of her victims.
Sep 26, 2019 · The confidence game, as scam artistry is called, is one of the oldest tricks in the trade. It exploits people’s trust. Human nature is on the side of these masters of fraud when it comes to...
- Cathy Scott
Konnikova argues that con artists combine excellent judgment of character with a honed ability to show the mark exactly what he wants to see. An experienced con artist has been drowned in positive and negative feedback on what works and does not. Through practice evolution, he’s learned what works.
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Jan 26, 2016 · Confidence Game. Author Maria Konnikova. Konnikova studies the art of the con—and what it reveals about every one of us. By Jordana Cepelewicz.
