THREE-CARD TRICK

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18968, 20 March 1924, Page 5

THREE-CARD TRICK

NO DOUBT ABOUT SKILL There was no panic at police headquarters in Sydney one day last week. The news that a three-card trickster in Melbourne had had his conviction quashed because the trick was a game of skill, and not a game ot chance, (as cabled) left them cold. Inspector Fowler jabbed his pen in the ink, and went on writing memos. Inspector Leary yawned. Nobody knew anything. Nobody was injured Nothing happened. The plain fact is that ,the Victorian Act does not include the three-card trick in its list of unlawful games, and tbe N.B.W. Act does. There Is no doubt about the skill in it. It takes hard practice to learn, and often years of hard labour to forget. There is no chance in it. When the gentle spieler puts three cards down, shows you which is the ace ot spades, and bets that you can’t pick the ace of spades, he knows that fthe ace of spades is no longer there —it is safely palmed in his hand. It was by seizing this technical point that the Melbourne man got free. j “The charge was laid purely on the supposition that th e three-card trick was a game of chance,” said the judge. "The fact that the hand so often beats the quickness of the eye shows merely the skill of the manipulator.” But the New South Wales Act says definitely that the three-card trick is an unlawful game. Anyway, there are a dozen other ways of getting the three-card trickster —he can be charged with vagrancy or conspiracy to defraud. To quote Detective Robson: "Our Act’s like a cross-cut saw; if it doesn’t catch him going, it’ll catch him coming back.” The autumn season of the threecard trick opens in the second week in April (Sydney Cup week). And the police have full confidence in the cross-cut saw.