****************
Three Card Monte
****************


.. tags:: large, cardgame, game


Three-card monte is a common scam played on gullible tourists and other easy
marks. Three playing cards, one of which is the “red lady” Queen of Hearts, are
put facedown on a cardboard box. The dealer quickly rearranges the cards and
then asks the mark to pick the Queen of Hearts. But the dealer can use all
sorts of tricks to hide the card or otherwise cheat, guaranteeing that the
victim never wins. It’s also common for the dealer to have shills in the crowd
who secretly work with the dealer but pretend to win the game (to make the
victim think they too could win) or purposefully lose badly (to make the victim
think they could do much better).

This program shows the three cards and then quickly describes a series of
swaps. At the end, it clears the screen, and the player must pick a card. Can
you keep up with the “red lady”? For the authentic three-card monte experience,
you can enable the cheat feature, which causes the player to always lose, even
if they select the correct card.


.. collapse:: three-card_monte.py

   .. literalinclude:: three-card_monte.py
      :language: python
      :linenos:


https://inventwithpython.com/bigbookpython/project75.html