A few winters ago I read the Raymond Chandler Philip Marlowe series. Then I'd find myself at the movies whenever there was an old noir classic. As a sort of offshoot I started looking in the uni library for books on grifters and confidence games. What I found was interesting but there's not a lot out there, unfortunately.

Confidence games fall into two categories; the "short con" and the "long con". What we see in these programs are mainly variations on short cons, (eg. the "pigeon drop" from the beginning of "The Sting") the practice of which often goes back more than a century.

can anyone translate this to USD? how can i pull this off with a 20 dollar bill?

heh. I was watching Paper Moon on TV the other day, and they did this all throughout the movie. I didn't quite understand it either until about the third time they did it.

Does anyone remember on "Cheers" when Harry Anderson would pull this on Sam every time he came in the bar?

*british *dead

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