John Scarne

John Scarne (* 4. March 1903 in Steubenville , Ohio as Orlando Carmelo Scarnecchia ; † 7. July 1985 in North Bergen , New Jersey ) was an American expert on gambling and cheating and a known card artist .

Life

From an early age, John Scarne was enthusiastic about card tricks. Through tireless practice, he acquired a skill that caused a stir. He performed as a magician , briefly ran a nightclub, tried his hand at a game company and published books on gambling, magic tricks and the American mafia . He made his name above all for putting cardsharps publicly at hand. During the Second World War, he traveled extensively to army bases, where card-cheating was widespread at the time, and gave appropriate demonstrations. However, experts consider the extent of gambling fraud in the army as claimed by Scarne to be greatly exaggerated. Scarne later became the most sought-after security professional for the casino industry.

Specialist author for gambling

In the 1940s magazine articles appeared about him and his fight against manipulation in gambling, among others. a. in life . In 1945 he published his first book, Scarne on Cards . The book also contained a chapter on card-cheating and was quoted in Ian Fleming's James Bond novel Moonraker (1955). He also describes a safe method for taking off, the scarne cut . John Scarne soon rose to be an advisor to casinos and government agencies. For decades he was regarded as the highest authority on questions of gambling. His almost 1000-page book, Scarne's Complete Guide To Gambling , first published in 1961, was considered a standard work for many years.

Scarne not only dealt with the rules, but above all with the mathematical principles of gambling. His books contain extensive tables with profit and loss probabilities. The reader can use it to determine the quality of a poker hand , for example . Errors in Scarne's probability calculations could only be proven by scientists with computers, which Scarne, who is prone to impertinence , then accused them of being wrong. In his autobiographies in the 1960s, Scarne described the world of American gambling and his (often fictitious) encounter with notorious cardsharps and underworld greats with plenty of anecdotes. Scarne was the most widely read gambling author of his time, and his books are still published today.

Specialist author for magic

Scarne's first magic trick publication was a manuscript intended for wizarding circles about the "Three Card Monte" (" caraway leaves "), that gambling trick in which the player has to pursue one of three cards that have been swapped quickly. The trick is supposed to go back to Scarne, apparently inadvertently leaving a treacherous dog-ear on the winner card, which in the end "turns" into the loser card. After Scarne had an established name through his specialist books on gambling, he also used it for books on magic tricks for the general public, which, like his gambling books, were published in the USA, Great Britain and India. The tricks were aimed at beginners and had a low level of difficulty. Scarne's book specifically about card tricks became a classic. As with his other books, Scarne resorted to ghostwriters and published mostly foreign material.

Player finder

Scarne also developed board and card games , which he sold with his own company. The best known was the game " Teeko " based on tic-tac-toe , which Scarne considered to be more demanding than chess because of the multitude of mathematical scenarios. He proudly named his son John Teeko, born in 1955 . Most of the games he invented have the made-up word Scarney as part of the name ("Scarney" is the English pronunciation of "Scarne"). Scarne's games, however, failed to prevail. His games company, which was funded with boxer Jim Braddock's money, went bankrupt.

La Cosa Nostra

Scarne was on good terms with the greats of the underworld, whom he bluntly flaunted and praised in his three autobiographies. After prohibition was lifted in the United States , the gangs involved, in addition to drug trafficking, mainly switched to gambling. When in the USA after the Apalachin meeting the existence of organized crime became publicly aware, Scarne acted as an expert before a committee of inquiry of the Congress, which was co-chaired by Robert F. Kennedy , which earned him additional popularity. Scarne worked for Frank Costello as a security advisor in his casino Habana Hilton in Cuba , where he experienced the Cuban Revolution . Fidel Castro , who eventually banned the gambling mafia , also stayed at his hotel . His chief of police suspected trick expert Scarne of smuggling mafia money on a prepared television.

As a spirited Italian-American , Scarne and Frank Sinatra loudly condemned the equation of organized crime with Italians in the US public. Scarne particularly rejected the use of the terms Mafia and La Cosa Nostra , which he referred to as Robert Kennedy's propaganda word creation, as these were not used by the “Mafiosi” themselves. Scarne pointed out that the Italian-American gangsters were only part of the organized crime in the United States. For his investigative book The Mafia Conspiracy , in which he denied the existence of a nationwide gangster syndicate ( National Crime Syndicate ), Scarne could not find a publisher, which is why he sensed conspiracy and self-published the book. He also intervened for the union leader Jimmy Hoffa and railed against the US government, which is profiling itself to the detriment of the Italian-Americans and which he saw as the real cardsharps.

Movies and television

Scarne worked as a card game expert in several army documentaries and played a magic shop owner in the feature film Dark Magic . Scarne became well known through commercials for a beer brewery in which he showed decorative handles with cards. Scarne often appeared on television as a gambling expert and doubled the hands of Paul Newman , who played a cardsharp , in the movie The Clou . The handles shown correspond to authentic cheat tricks.

Scarne's Aces

Scarne remains in the memory of the American magician community as a remarkably boastful contemporary who always considered himself the greatest in matters of magic, gambling and gambling tricks, especially in his autobiographies, and who allegedly made private appearances in front of mobsters like Arnold Rothstein , Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel boasted. Scarne's feat of being able to withdraw to the aces from a borrowed and mixed card game became a myth. The map expert performed Scarne's Aces in 1981 on a TV show with the young David Copperfield .

Works

• Scarne's Three Card Monte Book
• Scarne On Cards
• Scarne On Dice
• Scarne On Card Tricks
• Scarney - 25 New Games Of Scill
• Scarne On Magic Tricks
• Scarne On Teeko
• Scarney - 30 New Card Games
• The Amazing World Of John Scarne
• Scarne's Modern Poker
• The Odds Against Me
• The Woman's Guide To Gambling
• Scarne's Encyclopedia Of Games
• Scarne's New Complete Guide To Gambling
• The Mafia Conspiracy

Web links

• Excerpts from The Amazing World of John Scarne
• Mocking short opera about Scarne's preface to Teeko (PDF file; 308 kB)
• John Scarne in the board game database BoardGameGeek (English)