GAMBLING: Card Trick

It was a tense moment at the American Legion’s $1,000 bingo game in East Chicago, Ind. As the 25th and final number was called off one night last week, there was a stir of excitement at a corner table. One of the five women there gasped and screamed “Bingo!” On her orange card was the winning combination of numbers, all right. Then an attendant noticed something strange: one of the numbers on the winning card was printed slantwise. Suspicious, he asked the winner to come back next day to collect her check. Then he took the card to the printer, who quickly pronounced it a fake.

Reconstructing the card trick was simple. The five women had come in early in the evening, bought cards for the big $1,000 game, and appropriated the corner table. Some time during the evening, the woman with the “winning” card substituted a matching orange card with unnumbered squares from a supply in her automobile. Then, as the game proceeded, she took dies from her pocketbook and stamped winning numbers in the blanks, while her friends huddled around her.

Next day, when the winner returned with two of her companions, she demurely denied everything. The legion was unwilling to call in the police, for bingo games are illegal in Indiana. Finally the woman made a magnanimous gesture. “Well,” she said, “I guess the legion needs the $1,000, so I will forget the prize.” Then she and her companions got into a shiny new Cadillac sedan and drove off.