Posted by Jay Livingston
Jay Smooth, posted a rap (here) with an outstanding analogy. The media, he says, in its reaction to Occupy Wall Street, is like the shill in the three-card monte game. (Mr. Smooth did not name names, but you get the sense he watches a lot of Fox.)
The ringer’s* job is to pretend they’re an objective outside observer commenting on the game when they’re actually part of the hustle who’s there to help bamboozle the public into thinking this game is legitimate.Like this other Jay, I too used to watch the 3-card-monte teams in Times Square back in the 80s.
I liked listening to the dealers’ rhythmic, rhyming rap, and I admired the sleight-of-hand. (The basic move is very simple, but sometimes you’d see a truly skillful dealer who could work the bent-corner variation.) Mostly, I took a Goffman-esque delight in watching the game, seeing how each person played his role, creating the illusion that the game was honest and winnable, trying to manipulate potential marks using no weapon except self-presentation. Even when a knowing mark did pick the right card, the team had a ruse to avoid the loss while still keeping the appearance of an honest game. The shill would jump in with a $40 bet on a different card, and the dealer would turn that card up, collect the shill’s money and push the mark’s $20 back. “Sorry, only one bet per shuffle.”
It always seemed obvious to me who the shills were. They looked like the dealer (both were usually black in the sea of mostly white tourists) and dressed like the dealer, and they seemed utterly unfazed when they lost a twenty or two on what to the onlookers was obviously the wrong card. Even the occasional white shill (a “salt and pepper” team), with scruffy appearance and clothing, looked less like the passers-by and more like the dealer.
One afternoon as I was walking in Times Square, I saw a young man standing at a 3-card-monte table.** He looked like a preppy college kid from central casting – blonde hair, white polo shirt, green cotton cable-knit sweater knotted loosely over his shoulders. He had reached in his pocket and was fingering a $20, about to make a bet. I don’t know why I suddenly felt protective – maybe I didn’t want our tourists to dislike the city – but I moved up just behind him and said quietly, “If it was as easy as it looks, do you think he’d be here?”
The kid said nothing. He watched as the dealer tossed the cards (“the red, you’re ahead, the black’ll set you back”) and when the dealer stopped (“who saw it – just like that”), the kid put his $20 down. Hadn’t he heard me?
The dealer turned over the queen of hearts and put his $20 on top of it. (“I don’t get mad when I lose, I just grin when I win”), and the kid stayed to play again. And again.
Now that, I thought, is a shill.
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* Jay Smooth calls this role the “ringer.” I was brought up to call it the shill. Academic journal write-ups of psych experiments back in the day, the pre-IRB day, referred to them as “confederates of the experimenter.” Makes it sound more legitimate, don’t you think? But the deceptions of those psych profs would have left the 3-card monte guys drooling with envy and eager to learn.
** The “table” was a flattened cardboard box resting on another cardboard box – easily kicked down and left behind if the cops came by.
(The photo is borrowed from Ephemeral New York)
6 comments:
In 1988, on my first visit to New York, I lost $20 to 3-card monte in Times Square. I wasn't a rube. I had seen plenty of 3-card monte in Chicago (particularly, and somewhat strangely, on the L -- thought the shell game seems to be more popular in Chicago). I too liked the dealers' style, speech, and skill. I too was amazed how easy it was to pick out the shill (a "ringer," to me, is a guy who pretends to be bad at something and then suddenly gets good when you put a little money on it).
I knew you couldn't win. And yet in Times Square somehow I was convinced that maybe I could win, just once.
I didn't. I felt horrible. $20 was a lot of money to me.
Nobody forced me to play. In hindsight, I think I got my money's worth. $20 seems like a small price to pay for a lifelong memory so rooted in one particular time and place.
Twenty dollars was indeed a lot of money in 1988, though I guess that depends on your income. What you call a "ringer" -- the guy who plays under his true ability -- is what I'd call a "hustler," (though that word has broader meanings)-- as in a pool hustler. I'm thinking of Paul Newman of course, but also a scene in a good but ignored film "Racing With the Moon."
I think of a "ringer" as someone appearing under false pretenses -- like when an intra-mural football team brings in a guy from the varsity and tries to pass him off as just another guy in the dorm. But unlike a shill, the ringer is not misrepresenting whose side he's playing for.
My income in 1988, I think I was still working at the Evanston Movie Theaters, was about $4/hour. Hence the pain.
I'd call a hustler anybody who plays for money but couldn't be called a "professional." A hustler does not have to use deceit or force, but is charging money for a service (loosely defined) that probably violates some law or regulation.
A guy playing chess for money is a hustler, not a ringer.
In the old days of Vaudeville, there was also a stooge, which was a plant in the audience. (Hence the name the Three Stooges.) Not quite a shill, but related.
A ringer misrepresents his ability. A shill misrepresents his side.
A hustler is just trying to make a buck.
Perhaps we could make a nice venn diagram.
I don't know if Ned Polsky's Hustlers, Beats, and Others is still available (besides on my shelf): "The hustler . . . deceive[s] his opponent as to his (the hustler's) true level of skill (true "speed")."
And again: "the hustler's cardinal rule is don't show your real speed.
Is there a difference between a hustler and somebody hustling?
I mean, a guy who hangs outside a grocery store to carry bags for a few bucks is hustling, right? I mean, he's got a hustle. But is he a hustler?
This is all kind of like the bygone tramp/hobo/bum distinction.
In the earlier comment, I said that "hustle" had a broader meaning. But it also has this more specific meaning of deliberately hiding your true "speed" in order to get someone to bet against you. But I never heard "ringer" used in that sense. To me, a ringer was someone who misrepresented his identity.
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