Some great poker trivia,
poker stories, poker myths and poker
quotes.
Canada
Bill - con artist extraordinaire
Canada Bill, history's greatest
con man
Canada Bill Jones was born in a
gypsy tent in Yorkshire, England. He moved to
Canada where he learned his trade from Dick Cady,
a veteran three-card monte player. By the time he
left Canada for the rich pickings in the pre-war
South, Bill was an expert at the game. Two decades
of experience on the southern rivers, and Canada
Bill became the greatest monte sharp to ever
"pitch the broads."
One of the most famous and most
often quoted of all gambling stories, is about the
time that Canada Bill had to spend the night in
Baton Rouge, and searched all over town until he
finally found a Faro game in the back room of a
barbershop. George Devol found him there and saw
immediately that the dealer was cheating using a
"two-card" (rigged) box. He begged Bill to quit
the game. "Can't you see this game is crooked?"
Devol asked. "Sure I know it, George," sighed Bill
with resignation, "but it's the only game in
town." The punch line of this story has become a
familiar part of our popular culture.
Canada Bill
once wrote to the general superintendent of the
Union Pacific Railroad. In his letter he offered
$25,000 a year for the exclusive rights to run a
three-card monte game on the trains. He promised
to limit his victims to commercial travelers from
Chicago and Methodist preachers. The railroad
official politely declined the offer.
In the
mid-seventies, as the railroads went the way of
steamboats for the sharpers, Bill began a grand
tour of racetracks around the country. He made so
much money at monte and other swindles that he
could have retired a dozen times. Unfortunately,
Canada Bill couldn't stay away from Faro and short
cards. This ironically confirms Bill's often
quoted claim that "Suckers have no business with
money, anyway."
Canada Bill
Jones died in 1880 in Reading, Pennsylvania. He
was destitute, and buried at public expense. One
of the gamblers who stood by as they lowered
Canada Bill into the ground offered to bet $1000
at two to one odds that Bill wasn't in the casket.
There were no takers. One gambler within earshot
said, "I've seen Bill get out of tighter holes
than that before.
When the
western gambling fraternity learned of his death,
a group of them from Chicago raised money among
themselves to recompense the city of
Reading for the funeral expenses, and had a
gravestone erected for Canada Bill. But Canada
Bill's real monument is his "rube act"
creation-which proved so devastating a tool in the
hands of the many sharpers who followed him.
"Canada
Bill was a character one might travel the length
and breadth of the land and never see his match,
or run across his equal. Imagine a medium-sized,
chicken-headed, tow-haired sort of a man with mild
blue eyes, and a mouth nearly from ear to ear, who
walked with a shuffling, half-apologetic sort of a
gait, and who, when his countenance was in repose,
resembled an idiot. For hours he would sit in his
chair, twisting his hair in little ringlets. His
clothes were always several sizes too large, and
his face was as smooth as a woman's and never had
a particle of hair on it. Canada was a slick one.
He had a squeaking, boyish voice, and awkward,
gawky manners, and a way of asking fool questions
and putting on a good natured sort of a grin, that
led everybody to believe that he was the rankest
kind of a sucker-the greenest sort of a country
jake. Woe to the man who picked him up, though. "
-George Devol, Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi
