Derek DelGaudio the Magician Card Mechanic
A magician called Derek DelGaudio just came out to tell how he was employed as a card mechanic to ensure that the right man won. DelGaudio is a three-time magician of the year from the Academy of Magical Arts with incredible slight of hand skills, so it’s no surprise he was chosen for this task.
The story of how Derek DelGaudio came to be employed as a crooked poker dealer resonates throughout the poker community. It is a live player’s worst nightmare—especially those that play private high stakes games.
After drifting between various low paid jobs while performing magic on the side, DelGaudio was contacted by an old friend who used to be a card sharp in Las Vegas.
This friend was about to serve a short prison sentence and wanted him to fill in for him for a poker dealing job.
This was no ordinary poker game though, this was high stakes in a Beverly Hills mansion, and the pressure was on to perform.
Dodgy Dealing Can Get You Killed
There’s been more than enough tales from the Wild West where men who cheated at cards lost their lives to understand the danger involved here.
When Derek DelGaudio took on this job, he must have been confident in his sleight of hand ability but probably didn’t really understand what he was getting into. This was dangerous work. Conning the wrong person could lead to serious consequences.
We hear how the mansion was set up like a movie set and, according to The New Yorker, the players were mostly “middle-aged men: athletes, businessmen, C-list celebrities.” All DelGaudio had to do was make sure the right man won.
This turned out to be easier said than done because for all his manual dexterity Derek DelGaudio was a terrible poker dealer. In fact, he struggled to even deal the game properly, often giving cards to the wrong person.
But the bosses decided that incompetence was actually a near perfect cover, and so DelGaudio continued to deal in the $10,000 buy-in game.
We hear how a cold deck technique was used, where another deck of cards has the order preselected and is then switched without the players seeing.
This was actually more difficult than planned, because all the dealers had their pockets sewn up to prevent them from stealing chips. DelGaudio had to get the hidden deck all the way from his left sock onto the table without anybody noticing.
Feeling Guilty
In the end, Derek DelGaudio came to realise just how guilty he felt at what he was doing. He was a magician who was originally taught these skills only after he promised not to use them for profit.
He tells how once a guy tipped him his last $5, which was all he had left. It was customary to tip in chips, but they had all gone too.
“At that moment, I realised the absence of humanity in what I was doing,”
Derek DelGaudio says this experience gave him a lot of insight into people and what they are doing in this world. He now sounds like a man who is much more morally aware.
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