We welcome star of BBC’s The Real Hustle, Alexis Conran, to WPT Poker this month with his first exclusive column.
I must admit I never realized how popular our Hendon Mob scam would become amongst the poker community. It was the first ever poker scam we’d shot for The Real Hustle, pretty early on in the first series, and, to say the least, it was nerve-wrecking!
I had gotten to know Mobster Ross Boatman the year before when we worked together on a one-off drama for ITV called Planespotting. I remember how excited I was to meet a real poker pro. It wasn’t long before Ross and I struck a sweet deal. I showed him card tricks and in return he gave me poker tips. We were shooting on location in Portugal, so in the evenings, with nothing to do, we had little poker tournaments in our rooms with the other actors - nothing too fancy, just low stakes but a chance to take on the pro! I will never forget my joy when my ace-ten suited came through on the turn to beat Ross’ pair of 2s. We were heads-up and it won me the tournament but it wasn’t about the tournament, it was about beating Ross; beating the pro.
When we decided to do a poker scam on The Real Hustle we were adamant that we didn’t want to take on any old poker players. We wanted to take on the best poker players we could find, so that’s when I thought of Ross. I called and asked him if he would be interested in coming down with the rest of the Hendon Mob to play a little poker game in front of the cameras. The story we gave them was that Paul [co-Hustler Paul Wilson] and I were starting a year as poker professionals and we wanted to see how well we would do against the real pros in a warm up game. Now, Ross knew what I could do with a pack of cards and he suspected that we were going to try and cheat but he was adamant that if he saw something he was going to say it. Basically, he wanted to bust us.
So, with the Hendon Mob (minus Ram Vaswani, who couldn’t make it) confirmed we sat down and tried to work out how we were going to cheat them and take all their money. The answer was simple: we were going to use a ‘cooler’.
A ‘cooler’ or a ‘cold deck’ is a loaded deck of cards that has been switched into a game. The reason it’s so called is because when cards are in a game, they pick up heat from the players’ hands, and when a new deck is secretly switched in it will feel ‘cooler’ because it hasn’t been in use.
Now before you even think about how you switch a deck in a live game you have to decide the pre-arranged order (stack) of the deck you’re going to bring into play. This may sound simple, but trust me, it is a complete nightmare. You have to know the exact number of people playing, who you want to knock out and what hands will be dealt out in order to get the most money in the pot. “So what?” I hear you say. Well, just picture this: you are ready to switch in your stacked deck of cards and just before you are about to do the switch one of the players gets knocked out. You are now holding a deck of cards that is set up for five players but you’ve only got four players to deal to. This means your stack is useless and you might as well not risk it. So we had to have multiple decks ready for every eventuality and this meant stacking about five decks. After we decided who was going to be dealt what, we had to sit down and put the cards in the right order. I remember the atmosphere in the room being extremely tense. Stacking a deck is like putting a bomb together. You know that if a single card gets misplaced the whole stack is ruined. Once the decks were done they had to be kept in their box where nobody was allowed to even go near them.
MOB RULES
The day of the game arrived and we were all slightly nervous. The deal we’d had with the Hendon Mob was that they would provide their own branded cards and chips for the game and we would sort out the venue. We, unknown to them of course, had been on their website the day before and bought a few decks of their cards for our stacking.
As we all sat down and got ready to play we noticed that Joe Beevers was opening a fresh deck of cards. Only there was one small problem - they were plastic and our decks were paper! Suddenly, panic struck. I looked at Paul, he looked at me; we hadn’t even played a hand and we were already in trouble. After a pause and several pretend trips to the bathroom where we could talk to the producer in a cubicle (oh, the glamour), we decided to get our director to insist we used the paper cards due to the fact that the plastic ones were “too shiny” under our lights and the cameras were having trouble picking them up. Thankfully this complete lie passed undetected and a brand new deck of paper cards was cracked open and dealt. The scamming had started early.
So, the game was well on its way. Paul and I had agreed to play a full round before we would do the first deck switch. Of course that meant surviving one full round with Ross, Barny and Joe; not as easy as it sounds. I had never experienced such aggressive play at a poker table. In every hand I remember being forced to really make a decision about my stack of chips. There was no room for limping in with a medium-strength hand and seeing a flop. At one point, I looked down and saw a pair of tens; my eyes lit up. I really wanted to play them but of course if I got knocked out I wouldn’t have enough chips to take them on when we switched the deck. I looked over at Paul. He knew I had something. He just stared at me, and I could sense him screaming from within, “DON’T DO IT!” Needless to say I mucked the tens in disappointment.
SWITCH IN TIME
It was time for the first deck switch. Jess came in on cue to serve the drinks and act as eye candy distraction, I started to tell a story to keep everyone talking, keeping the heat off Paul when he did the switch. Our deck was now in the game – Phase One complete. For the second phase Paul had to false-shuffle the deck whilst I continued telling my story to keep the heat off him. The final phase was the ‘cut’ and that was a tricky one. I had to cut the deck at precisely the right spot - one card lower or higher would mean the stack was ruined and we’d all get random cards. Paul left a small ‘step’ at the rear of the deck, giving me the exact location of the cut. All I had to do was hit that ‘step’ without looking, so as not to arouse suspicion, just by feel alone.
This was when all those hours of practice came to fruition. The whole deck switch went undetected and I won the hand with a higher flush than Barney, knocking out Joe with his trip aces. Once Joe had gone we managed to survive another round without getting into trouble from the Boatman brothers.
The second deck switch targeted Barney. However, what you don’t see in the final piece is Ross’ reaction to his cards. We had stacked a pair of aces for him hoping to knock both of them out in one go. I remember looking over at Ross, as he took one look at his cards, stared right back at me and just mucked them. I chuckled to myself. When I asked him about it afterwards he said he wanted to be the last of the Hendon Mob standing so he refused to take the bait.
When the game was over the whole team was on such a high. We had managed to pull it off without getting caught or even arousing suspicion. When we revealed what had taken place to the Mob, Ross wasn’t in the least bit surprised, Barney was pretty impressed and Joe was not at all amused [funny that – Ed]. But after a little explanation and a few card tricks they all saw the funny side and the usefulness of trying to make people aware about how they can get cheated in games that seem fair and square.
What I realized was that the only way we could have beaten the Mob that day was by a miracle or by cheating. These guys are so experienced that even when they were ‘cold decked’ and had a straight flush beat a four of a kind, they took it in their stride and carried on - no bad beat stories, no complaints; it just happens sometimes. That’s the attitude. It goes to show that if you play poker long enough you’ll see it all. |
