Today is another one of my arbitrary survival of travelling around the sun in a count of base 12 while following a count of base 10 at the same time.
Or you’d call it, “Birthday”

To celebrate my birthday, I’d like to discuss one of the oldest, and yet still operational cons.

It’s known as The Wire and has been performed in a multitude of ways over the last one hundred years.

The confidence game works on horse or dog races.

Here is the ideal situation for this Confidence Trick.

A group of grifters (conmen) make a fake bookie store. Where the results of the horse races are received in a delayed manner, but “performed” live.
The lead conman, who plays the part of the hook, is given secret information about the race results minutes before the race is brought to air, and is therefore always able to place a winning bet. (This is made possible by the fact that all the races are delayed by 10 minutes or so inside this fake bookie front.)
The mark is usually someone with high monetary value. I roped in a made to watch the con succeed a few times, before being suckered in to put down a large sum of money on a horse to win the race
At this point, the inside man, comes to see how the bet is going (usually during that all important race), and upon hearing the mark has made the bet on the horse winning, he must react poorly. Explaining that he said the horse should “place” (which means come in second). Both leave the establishment extremely annoyed, of course only the mark has lost a great sum of money.

While this is the best way to perform the con, and allows for the highest return, I’ve heard of this game being played with only 3 con men and a small fake bookie store.
Modern times, forces the game to be a little harder to do, but it is still possible, with cell phones, video cassettes etc.

Each conman adds their on personal flare.