The Last Hustler - Fast Jack
My interest in dice games and in particular, crooked dice, goes back some time and aligns with my interest in sleight of hand with cards. For about as long as I can remember I have known a simple dice move I later discovered is called the "thumb switch". I don't remember reading about it anywhere but am pretty sure it's just something I played around with once and it stuck. I'd practice it when I was younger and remember buying four identical dice and "fixing" two of them so I had a pair of regular dice and a pair that looked identical but were specially prepared to provide an "edge". I'd practice switching between the regular and prepared pair, and because it was something easy to carry around I'd practice the move often and I became pretty good at the move. The particular "gaff" I employed was not especially sophisticated, and involved adding three extra spots to the twos on one pair so that it showed two fives on opposite sides, and increased the chances of rolling some numbers, reduced others, and made rolling a 3 (2-1) impossible. I didn't really know what to do with this information, it just seemed the easiest way to gaff a die, and I knew I enjoyed executing the switch.
But cheating at dice was never something I knew anything about until stumbling across a guy name Jack Farrell. After reading his book Fast Jack, The Last Hustler I quickly became interested in everything dice and began searching for everything I could find on the subject only to learn that there was precious little information out there, or at least it wasn't easy to find. So my search for the 'real" secrets of dice cheating was relatively short lived, and before long I became discouraged that it seemed the good stuff was very closely guarded, and couldn't seem to access the information as easily as I'd hoped. I was amazed when I ultimately discovered that many of the real secrets of cheating at dice had been under my nose the entire time in Fast Jack, The Last Hustler by Jack Farrell.
If you've read the book you'll know that it gives account after account of Jack's life as a dice mechanic, but like me you might have missed the fact that the book could be used as an encyclopedia on the topic, if you were to sift through all of that information and arrange it as a guidebook. Which is what I did after I realized what it contained.
John "Fast Jack" Farrell is the real deal. If you have not heard of him or read his book, and you have any interest in dice or the real world of cheating and advantage play, then do yourself a favor, and stop reading this, head straight along to somewhere you can get the book. It's available with just a quick search. While you're at it, you can also find a filmed lecture of Jack's online in which you'll not only see some of the things from the book in action, you'll also gain extra insights that the book doesn't contain, such a how to play some of the dice shots, tips on switches, assembling dice tables, different types of equipment and set-ups for games. For $30 you will spend 3 hours in John's company learning about what it takes to be a real card and dice cheat. You will NOT find this level of information anywhere else. Over the years I’ve seen plenty of debate about what works and what doesn’t, what’s important and what isn’t, but often opinions are too heavily influenced or too quickly dismissed by personal experience of very specific conditions. Farrell is a living example of what it takes to be a successful ...er...operator! For those seeking an insight into how all of the separate parts come together you’ll need to study this lecture and Jack's book over and over to piece everything together in the right order. For those dedicated, with the combination of the this lecture and his book, the work is all there for anyone to extract. Thank you John "Fast Jack" Farrell.
