98 Sentences With "three card monte" | Random Sentence Generator

She was playing three card monte with the billing records.

"I practiced everywhere I could," he said of three-card monte.

The police said his record showed 17 arrests involving three-card monte.

Problem-Solving Test It's like Three-card Monte for dogs, without the scam.

"The First Amendment is not designed to protect three-card monte dealers," he said.

"I felt like someone was playing three-card monte with me," Mr. Allenson said.

"Three-card monte," a street card trick, is banned on public streets, sidewalks and plazas.

" He added, "Three-card monte operators can't say, 'Hey, I'm just exercising my First Amendment rights!

Developers have also played Three-card Monte with us, and often times they don't come through.

Players each have a button that will let them play games like trivia or three-card Monte.

My God, you looked like the Three-card Monte mark who lost his shirt on the Red Queen.

Getting swindled by playing three-card monte was once a common occurrence for tourists in New York City.

Ms. Cho tries to finesse this structural problem by introducing a meta-theatrical game of three-card monte.

One day you might even find a dextrous robot running a three-card Monte scam in a back alley.

Mostly, though, he has been arrested on charges of running three-card monte games — at least 17 times since Nov.

From three-card monte to insurance fraud to more sophisticated financial scams, the goal is always the same—to make a quick buck.

The price — barely $100 per night — inspired suspicion, and I approached the lobby as I would approach a game of three-card monte.

The two-character comedy "Topdog/Underdog," developed at the Public Theater, caught his fancy in part because the plot involved three-card monte.

The three-card-monte curator waved me in and smiled so sweetly and set to moving his cards a little faster and a little better.

Waiters performed card tricks (a nod to the three-card monte scams once a fixture on city streets) and delivered detailed lectures about ingredients and folklore.

To keep its operations running, Platinum allegedly played its own version of three-card Monte and transferred funds from one vehicle under its control to another.

Then everyone watched last week as North Carolina played the legislative equivalent of three-card monte and made it impossible to pass laws that banned discrimination.

" The earliest mentions of three-card monte in The New York Times date to the 1850s in articles about farmers losing fortunes to "an unfair game.

Now they are making a mockery of what is meant to be a careful and deliberative process by playing three-card monte with the American people.

The special featured a series of magic performances showcasing some classic tricks: a woman being speared by swords, a series of riffs on three-card monte, levitation.

Decades back, my wife and I were newly married, and we wandered in a fine mood through Manhattan and came upon a game of three-card monte.

Trump justified his risky and indefensible action with an effort at misdirection worthy of the three-card monte dealers who still fleece yokels on the sidewalks of Manhattan.

Video images and simulcasts, as deft as the hands of a three-card monte artist, keep your eyes moving so you often know where sounds and images originate.

There were stolen sneakers and cement shoes, second-story men and three-card Monte, a fellow shot twice in a year, an iPhone stolen twice in a day.

We got the comedian leaving Mastro's in Bev Hills Wednesday night, and he says Trump commuting Johnson's sentence is essentially a Three-card Monte game ... all trick, no real results.

"You are not allowed to protect the trade secrets of a three card Monte game," said Schneiderman, who has brought his own lawsuit against Trump and his now-defunct real estate seminar operation.

He won with the tools that have cast spells on Alabama voters for two centuries: race, religion, hysterical oratory, intimidation of critics and economic three-card monte dealt by big-business hand jivers.

Confidence artists are the "aristocrats of crime", writes Maria Konnikova in "The Confidence Game", a fascinating look at the psychology behind every hustle, from Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme to a three-card-monte game.

When you've run before, when you served in the administration and the game is rigged tighter than Three-card Monte, you either land a fatal blow or look like the rube who got fleeced for her diamonds.

"Trying to target North Korean mobile nuclear missiles in a crisis is like trying to win three-card monte on a New York street corner," Klingner said, "there's a high risk you'll lose more than your shirt."

Historically, the rube in sandals with a camera around his neck was a mark, someone gullible enough to buy a watch from a thief's open trench coat or get suckered into a game of three-card monte.

There was a time in New York when three-card monte dealers, like their distant and forlorn cousins, squeegee men, were a familiar sight on the streets, an annoyance to residents and a powerful lure to tourists and newcomers.

But to come back to the main point: It's a very dubious claim that the Fed could have prevented the crisis with more aggressive policy in 2008; it's three-card monte to transmute that into the claim that the Fed caused the crisis.

China has been able to keep the debt flowing longer than many people expected because in many cases the state owns both lender and borrower, and can keep shifting the debt from one hand to the other, like a three-card-monte player.

By now, Mr. Hartman had perfected the nuances — the pursed lips, narrow gaze and unplaceable New York accent — of a Trump character depicted as a shrewd casino huckster, who goads Ivana into losing her prenuptial agreement on a game of three-card monte.

He said: 'My envisagement of the work would be like one of those people on the street with a cardboard box and three walnut shells and the public is supposed to find which shell the pea is under, very much like three-card monte.

Certainly a great many people lived on the street even if they weren't sleeping there — the prostitutes who lined Broadway in Midtown, the three-card-monte operators on the edge of the sidewalk, the vague knots of guys who hung around outside bars or bodegas or freight entrances.

" — Dr. Kanani Titchen, 26, Manhattan Commuters Need to Stand Up "We transit rider suckers and New York taxpayers have been the unwitting out-of-town marks skinned by Times Square three-card monte hustlers — sharks who have been suppressing their laughter while playing us over and over, never letting slip how this racket has worked.

Konnikova sticks to her genre's familiar formula, juxtaposing academic research with brief narratives of a wide range of cons, from the two-bit three-card monte games that were once ubiquitous on New York City street corners to more outlandish scams, like the 19th-century Scot Gregor MacGregor who made a fortune persuading the public to invest in the bonds of a fictional government.

If you ever feel like the old-fashioned grift has gone the way of fast-talking men in hats and three-card Monte on street corners — the way of Harold Hill in "The Music Man," commencing his 1912 grift with a rousing patter song about moral decay — all you have to do is Google terms along the lines of "elaborate Walmart returns scheme" to witness the American ingenuity still on offer.

Cold beer, cold soda, cold water may all do their parts to keep you hydrated but do next to nothing for your compromised faculties, leaving you wide open and vulnerable to, say, surrendering upward of 40 bucks, in $5 increments, to the three-card-monte guys who used to run their scams off flattened cardboard boxes topping milk crates on 14th Street, before broken-windows policing was even a thing.

A more common example of blindness despite fixation is illustrated in the game of Three-card Monte.

The 1995 film Restoration has a brief Three-card Monte sequence that utilizes a double turnover and flushtration (or "back") count. These magician's sleights fail to fool Meg Ryan's character Katherine. The film Now You See Me 2 features a life-sized version of the Three-card Monte performed by Jack Wilder (Dave Franco). The music video for Run DMC's 1987 song "It's Tricky" features illusionists Penn & Teller trying to scam people by performing the Three-card Monte in front of the Rialto Theater in Los Angeles.

After losing his job at the arcade, Lincoln returns to Three-card Monte the next day and comes home exuberant. Meanwhile, Booth boasts that Grace has proposed marriage to him. Lincoln suggests that Booth find employment in order to keep Grace, calling his card shark abilities "double left-handed." Insulted, Booth challenges him to a game of Three-card Monte.

People, 1907, 228, Ill. 216 or three card monte, sleight of hand, fortune-telling, &c.;, is punishable by imprisonment for from one to ten years.

The Three-card Monte is performed in card magic tricks with minor or major variations that manipulate the use of gimmick cards, and other sleight-of-hand techniques.

The producer of wheat is compelled to see the stocks in his barn dealt with like the peas of a thimblerigger, or the cards of a three-card-monte man.

While the work is honest, both brothers find it humiliating. Booth repeatedly attempts to persuade Lincoln to return to running games of Three-card Monte. Lincoln had sworn off the hustle after one of his crew had been shot dead, believing he would be next. Idolizing his brother's former glory, Booth aspires to become a Three-card Monte card shark, frequently practicing the routine in his apartment, although his act is awkward; his own talent lies in shoplifting.

Gerald Pratley, A Century of Canadian Cinema. Lynx Images, 2003. . p. 219. The film premiered at the 1979 Festival of Festivals. The film was more poorly received by critics than Three Card Monte.

Canada Bill Jones (1820–1877) was considered a master of Three-card Monte, in the middle of the 19th century in America.William Norman Thompson Gambling in America: an encyclopedia of history, issues, and society, p. 205, In 1898, infamous con man Soapy Smith stole a sack of gold from returning Klondike miner John Douglas Stewart after several rounds of Three-card Monte. After Stewart had wagered and lost his cash, he was induced to bring his gold out of safekeeping.

While customers were waiting in line, Smith ran shell and three-card monte games to swindle even more money. Smith provided an order of sorts, protecting his friends and associates from the town’s council and expelling violent troublemakers.

Charlie gets by through fleecing suckers with a three-card Monte. He passes himself off as a rich businessman. Miko is a street kid who spends his time with Charlie instead of going to school. His sister tries to raise him on her own, unsuccessfully.

Rose began his career making documentary films for the National Film Board of Canada. Three Card Monte was his first commercial film. He subsequently directed the films Title Shot,Jay Scott, "Title Shot missest both of its targets". The Globe and Mail, September 11, 1979.

Gambling at the Orient Saloon in Bisbee, Arizona, 1900. Photograph by C.S. Fly. By way of entertainment saloons offered dancing girls, some (or most) of whom occasionally or routinely doubled as prostitutes. Many saloons offered games of chance like Faro, poker, brag, three-card monte, and dice games.

Richard Gabourie (April 30, 1939 – October 11, 2004) was a Canadian actor, screenwriter and film producer,"Richard Gabourie: Electric confidence". Cinema Canada, January/February 1979. most noted for winning the Canadian Film Award for Best Actor in 1978 for Three Card Monte."Unseen Silent Partner sweeps film awards".

Les Rose was a Canadian film and television director. He was most noted for the film Three Card Monte, for which he received a Canadian Film Award nomination for Best Director at the 29th Canadian Film Awards in 1978.Jay Scott, "Four films nominated for Etrogs". The Globe and Mail, August 24, 1978.

On their way home from an orchestra performance, Homer and Marge pass through a seedy part of town. Snake entices Homer to play his Three-card Monte game and cheats him of $20. When Marge exposes the con, Snake flees. Marge chases after him and knocks him unconscious with a garbage can lid, giving her a sense of exhilaration.

Three Card Monte is a 1978 Canadian crime drama film directed by Les Rose and starring Richard Gabourie as Busher, a small-time con man who meets and becomes a father figure to a runaway kid named Toby (Chris Langevin)."Richard Gabourie: Electric confidence". Cinema Canada, January/February 1979.Jay Scott, "$1.95 Monte is a game bluff".

Lincoln leads him to believe that he can win, inducing Booth to wager his $500 inheritance on the game before beating him. Laughing, Lincoln explains that the conceit behind Three- card Monte is that the dealer always decides when he wins. Over Booth's protests, he tries to open the stocking containing the inheritance. An agitated Booth reveals that he had shot Grace.

The Three-card Monte game is simple. To play, a dealer places three cards face down on a table, usually on a cardboard box which provides the ability to set up and disappear quickly.Richard John Neuhaus The best of The Public Square, p. 203, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (2001) The dealer shows that one of the cards is the target card, e.g.

His repertory of card manipulations, sponge-ball magic, cups and balls, and sleight-of-hand was highly regarded by his peers. Frank was a frequent guest on TV talk shows including The Dick Cavett Show, and David Suskind, sometimes performing magic and sometimes revealing the scams of crooked gamblers such as three card monte players on the streets of New York.

Most towns had at least one or two salas, or, gambling houses.David Schwartz, Roll the Bones: The History of Gambling, (New York: Gotham Books, 2006), 263. One of the most popular games, Monte, originated in Mexico and was adopted and later modified into three card monte. The Chinese were avid gamblers who brought a variety of games with them to North America, including Fan Tan and several different lottery variants.

Singer, Mark (5 April 1993) Ricky Jay: Secrets of the Magus The New Yorker (5 April 1993) "Ricky Jay ... is perhaps the most gifted sleight-of-hand artist alive" Before becoming world-famous for his escapes, Houdini billed himself as "The King of Cards". Among the more well-known card tricks relying on card manipulation are Ambitious Card, and Three-card Monte, a common street hustle also known as Find the Lady.

Lindsay and Miles enter the World's Fair through an alternative gate and are immediately confronted by the spectacle of unsavory acts and exhibits on the fringe of the Fair. Miles, in an act of divination, wins ten dollars at a game of three-card monte. Meanwhile, Randolph St. Cosmo agrees to contract the services of the Chums of Chance and the Inconvenience to the White City Detectives for the purposes of surveillance.

William "Canada Bill" Jones (c. 1837–1877) was an English-born confidence artist, riverboat gambler and card sharp in Canada and the United States. He has been described by historians, news reporters and others who have written about his life since the late 19th century with such superlatives as "the greatest of confidence men""The Greatest of Confidence Men: Canada Bill Was the Old West's Three-card Monte King". Cave Creek, Arizona: True West Magazine, May 26, 2015.

Accessed January 16, 2008. When he left school after the eighth grade, he learned from a local card sharp how to perform such swindles as The Three Card Monte, and how to cheat in gambling card games by manipulating the cards. Scarne began practicing sleight of hand with the goal of becoming a card sharp, but his Roman Catholic mother dissuaded her son from gambling in general, and cheating others in particular. She persuaded him to practice magic instead.

Title Shot is a Canadian crime drama film, directed by Les Rose and released in 1978.Jay Scott, "Title Shot misses both of its targets". The Globe and Mail, September 11, 1979. Rose's second collaboration with writer and actor Richard Gabourie following 1978's Three Card Monte, the film stars Gabourie as Blake, a police detective in Toronto who is investigating an attempt by crime boss Frank Renzetti (Tony Curtis) to rig the outcome of boxing matches.

Monte Bank, Mountebank, Spanish Monte and Mexican Monte, sometimes just Monte, is a Spanish gambling card game and was known in the 19th century as the national card game of Mexico. It ultimately derives from basset, where the banker (dealer) pays on matching cards. The term "monte" has also been used for a variety of other gambling games, especially varieties of three-card poker,Oxford Dictionary of Card Games, pg. 162, David Parlett – Oxford University Press (1996) and for the swindle three-card monte.

Both the illegal and legal gambling industries often use shills to make winning at games appear more likely than it actually is. For example, illegal three-card monte and shell- game peddlers are notorious employers of shills. These shills also often aid in cheating, disrupting the game if the mark is likely to win. In a legal casino, however, a shill is sometimes a gambler who plays using the casino's money in order to keep games (especially poker) going when there are not enough players.

When the Klondike Gold Rush began in 1897, Smith moved his operations to Dyea and Skagway. His first attempt at occupying Skagway ended in failure when miners' committees encouraged him to leave the area after operating his three-card monte and pea-and-shell games on the White Pass Trail for less than a month. He traveled to St. Louis and Washington, D.C., and did not return to Skagway until late January 1898. Smith set up his third empire much the same way as he had in Denver and Creede.

While there, Lewis showed Ramsden his valise and showed him the various tools of his trade, mainly muslin and paint goods, before discovering a pack of cards at the bottom of the bag. He then demonstrated a card trick which he claimed had cost him $400 in a Bowery saloon the day before. Showing him how to play three-card monte, the man who had sold Lewis the ticket encouraged Ramsden to play a hand. When Ramsden refused to bet however, the man attempted to provoke him claiming he had no money to bet with.

In August 2007, Money-Coutts travelled to Kenya with Tom Lyon to film Kenyan Conjurations: the School Built By Magic, a DVD documentary released in early 2008. It was produced to raise funds to build a primary school on the Kenyan coast. In June 2013, his first mainstream television special was aired worldwide on the National Geographic Channel. Card Shark follows the story of the Three-Card Monte in which he travels from London to Paris and Bangkok to both perform and to meet with international card masters.

Climate Hustle challenges the scientific consensus on climate change, arguing that the consensus is overstated and part of an "environmental con job being used to push for increased government regulations and a new 'Green' energy agenda". It offers a series of segments which present arguments that function to cast doubt on aspects of the consensus, pointing to perceived inconsistencies, errors, and political hypotheses. Sections include interviews and commentary by Morano. It begins with an explanation of three-card Monte, a confidence game scam offered as a metaphor for climate change arguments.

The man gives him the address to a strip club, where Edmond is kicked out by a bouncer for not paying for a stripper's drink. Now even more sexually frustrated, Edmond goes to a peep show; having never been to such a place before, he is disappointed when he realizes that he is not allowed to have actual sex with the performer. Next he goes to a white- collar bordello, but cannot afford a hooker. Edmond needs money, so he plays a three-card Monte game with a street dealer.

"RICHARD GABOURIE, PRODUCER 1939-2004: In 1978, the former stockbroker set the domestic movie industry on its ear with his first film. Skilled in the art of raising funds, he rode the first wave of Canadian filmmaking". The Globe and Mail, October 26, 2004. Initially cast in bit parts and commercials, he eventually decided that with the Canadian film industry still relatively limited in its output, his best chance at getting a bigger and better part was to create one for himself, and worked for three years to write and make Three Card Monte.

Wagner identified each batter by name and position as they walked up to the plate, and then played their preferred walk-up music for each one. Musical interludes also accompanied players' warmups between and in the middle of innings. However, there were none of the videos on the scoreboard, such as hot-dog races, crabs playing three-card monte or the kiss cam, used to keep fans engaged during breaks in play such as television timeouts, since there were no fans to distract. Those breaks were instead marked with the team logo, Big Oriole, on the scoreboard.

John Lenahan (born 1961 in Philadelphia, US) is an American illusionist and entertainer resident in the UK since 1984. A successful corporate entertainer, he came to greater fame as a result of a 1994 appearance on the BBC One show How Do They Do That? explaining the sleight of hand trick known as Three-card Monte, as a result of which he became the first person in 85 years to be expelled from The Magic Circle. His subsequent television appearances have included his own 1997 series for BBC Two, Stuff the White Rabbit; and the Secrets of Magic specials for BBC One.

Horton described the men's covert removal as an instance of "Three-Card Monte at Gitmo". In continuing challenges to the secrecy imposed by the Bush administration, in January 2006, US District Court Judge Jed S. Rakoff ruled that the United States Department of Defense had to publish a list of all the detainees who had been held in Guantanamo by March 3, 2006. On May 15, 2006, the DOD published a list of 759 names, which included persons held at the camp from January 2002 to May 15, 2006. By 2006, hundreds had already been released without charges.

The plot, which has a certain fable-like quality, revolves around the titular character, Edmond Burke, a white-collar worker in New York City. After a visit to a fortune teller, he decides to leave his wife and embarks on an odyssey through New York's seedy underbelly, which takes him to two bars, a bordello, and a peep show. When he accuses a three-card monte dealer of running a crooked game, the dealer and his shills beat Edmond to the ground. Increasingly convinced of the ugliness and difficulty of human existence, Edmond buys a knife from a pawnshop.

Post-war, Jones moved to Kansas City, where he partnered with "Dutch Charlie". After winning $200,000 there, they began working the Omaha, Nebraska to Kansas City trains until the Union Pacific Railroad management started clamping down on three-card monte players. In response, Jones wrote to the general superintendent of the railroad, offering $10,000 a year to secure an exclusive franchisePinkerton, Criminal Reminiscences and Detective Sketches, pp. 200-201. while other accounts reported that he offered Union Pacific's officers $1000 a month or $30,000 a year if they would let him play monte on their trains, but those offers were rebuffed.

Three-card Monte, "find the queen", the "three-card trick", or "follow the lady" is essentially the same as the centuries-older shell game or thimblerig (except for the props).Tom Ogden The Complete Idiot's Guide to Magic Tricks, p. 123, Alpha Books (1998) The trickster shows three playing cards to the audience, one of which is a queen (the "lady"), then places the cards face-down, shuffles them around, and invites the audience to bet on which one is the queen. At first the audience is skeptical, so the shill places a bet, and the scammer allows him to win.

The book was "translated into virtually all modern languages and has never been out of print in most of them. There have been at least twenty-nine motion pictures based on it ... as well as several television series, and many movies [have] worked the name 'Monte Cristo' into their titles." The title Monte Cristo lives on in a "famous gold mine, a line of luxury Cuban cigars, a sandwich, and any number of bars and casinos—it even lurks in the name of the street- corner hustle three-card monte." Modern Russian writer and philologist Vadim Nikolayev determined The Count of Monte-Cristo as a megapolyphonic novel.

Smith moved to Fort Worth, Texas, where he formed a close-knit, disciplined gang of shills and thieves to work for him. He quickly became a well-known crime boss and, eventually, the “king of the frontier con men”. His gang of swindlers, known as the Soap Gang, including men such as Texas Jack Vermillion and “Big Ed” Burns, moved from town to town plying their trade on unwary victims. Their principal method was short cons, in which swindles were quick and needed little setup and assistance. The short cons included the shell game, three-card monte, and rigged poker games, which they called “big mitt”.

The music video features Penn and Teller, who are hustling a group of people with a game of three-card Monte in front of the Rialto Theater in downtown Los Angeles. Run-DMC are called and shut their business down by winning every hand they play. Penn then asks the group if they can teach them to dance, which they do after insisting that Penn and Teller change their clothes. The video ends with Run-DMC showing up to a gig in Japan six months later, where they find the duo impersonating them; unable to tell the difference, the concert promoters deny Run-DMC the chance to perform.

When he refused to obey Hardin's demand to stop, Hardin hit him over the head with his pistol. That same month, Hardin may have wounded three Mexicans in an argument over a Three-card Monte card game, pistol-whipping one man over the head, shooting one man in the arm, and shooting the third man in the lung. While driving cattle on the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, Kansas, in the summer of 1871, Hardin is reputed to have fought Mexican vaqueros and cattle rustlers. Towards the end of the drive, a Mexican herd crowded in behind Hardin's and there was some trouble keeping the two herds apart.

The "bent corner ploy" is one of the classic scams in Three-card Monte, and is used if the mob thinks a mark can be had for more money, or needs more convincing to put some money down. During the course of tossing the cards, the dealer "accidentally" drops the cards, resulting in a corner of the money card having a slight bend in it. Another variation is for the dealer to look away, and while occupied, one of the shills will quickly put the crimp in the money card. Either way, the dealer pretends not to notice, this perhaps being made more plausible by having the dealer wear thick glasses.

Over a game of Three-card Monte ("Step Right Up"), Jojo and the pimps discuss their "silent partner", Mr. Greed ("Mr. Greed"). In Memphis' spacious apartment, Queen thanks him for getting her out of jail and for the beautiful dress he gave her to wear to the Hookers' Ball; but Memphis makes it very clear that the dress was a $6,000 loan that she must repay with her earnings ("My Way or the Highway"). He warns Queen that she better not leave town "cause you'll be coming back real soon for a funeral - Fleetwood's; followed shortly by your own". Queen tells Sonja that she must find Fleetwood and warn him about Memphis' threat.

In issue #31, when she spends a day with her sister Cassie, Carin also demonstrates that her eyes can move at an incredible pace as well, allowing her to follow the path of a card while playing a game of three-card monte. The Brain Box also enhances her reaction time and ability to process sensory input, so she will be able to control herself and understand what she sees and hears when moving at high speed. Lately she has gained Ultra-Sapiens abilities. When activated, these allow her to sprout sharp ridges along the outer length of her arms and legs, as well as the ability to quickly heal from injuries.

The card trick known as "Find the Lady" or "Three-card Monte" is an old favourite of street hustlers, who lure the victim into betting on what seems like a simple proposition: to identify, after a seemingly easy-to-track mixing sequence, which one of three face-down cards is the Queen. Another example is the shell game, in which a pea is hidden under one of three walnut shells, then shuffled around the table (or sidewalk) so slowly as to make the pea's position seemingly obvious. Although these are well known as frauds, people still lose money on them; a shell-game ring was broken up in Los Angeles as recently as December 2009.Andrew Blankenstein.

He arrested five men who were wanted for various confidence schemes around the country, and this case gave Nygaard a taste for "out-conning the con". He became knowledgeable in the intricacies of sweetheart swindles, insurance fraud, and psychic fraud while "bouncing between investigative squads and federal assignments with the DEA and FBI". In 2007, Nygaard joined the National Association of Bunco Investigators, a trade organization for members of law enforcement and other related fields who specialize in the identification, apprehension, and prosecution of non-traditional organized crime suspects. Through their periodic reports, Nygaard expanded his knowledge of the world of confidence schemes, which include home-improvement scams, three card monte games, pigeon drops, and an ever-expanding array of cons.

He begins to form a friendship with Amanda, one of McCreadie's personal assistants, who is also struggling with the ethical dilemmas of working for McCreadie. After breaking down when McCreadie reveals that he wants his employees to wear Roman slave outfits to his party, Amanda reveals to Nick that her mother was an employee in one of McCreadie's sweatshops in Southeast Asia, but was fired by the manager when she was no longer physically able to work to McCreadie's requirements. She was subsequently killed after being forced to work in another sweatshop which eventually caught fire due to a lack of safety precautions. On the night of the party, McCreadie cons the Syrian refugees into working for him with a three card monte trick after his local employees down tools.

During a portion of her initial tenure with the Justice League, her powers were more limited, consisting in the manipulation of fire, air, water, and earth. Furthermore, her powers seems tied to her self-confidence, as the long series of blunders described in Seven Soldiers left her both emotionally and psychologically shattered, powerless, until she was able to restore her lost confidence. Zatanna is a skilled illusionist, showgirl and stage magician even without resorting to her innate magical powers. She considers part of her "training" exercising sleight of hand tricks, and she claims to have invented a variation of the three-card monte called the "Zatara shuffle", in which she is so fast and precise that, even without resorting to cheating, only skilled gamblers like Selina Kyle are able to follow the movements of her hands.

Marco Malvaldi is an Italian chemist and novelist, who began his writing career in 2007 with his first mystery story La briscola in cinque (Game for Five, 2014), published by the Italian Sellerio Editore and featuring Massimo, the barista and owner of the cleverly named BarLume ("Bar Light", also a wordplay for "flicker, glimmer of light") who is forced into the role of investigator in the fictional seaside resort town of Pineta, along the Tuscan coast. He followed up by other episodes in the series: Il gioco delle tre carte (2008, transl. Three-card Monte, 2014), Il re dei giochi (The King of Games) (2010), La carta più alta (The Highest Card) (2012).Cf. Author's Biography on Italicissima.com. URL accessed on 3 December 2012 Another novel of his, Odore di chiuso (The Scent of Must) (Sellerio, October 2011), a historical mystery with the renowned Romagna gastronomist Pellegrino Artusi as the amateur detective in 19th century Italy, was awarded the Isola d’Elba Award and the Castiglioncello Prize.