Shell game

In practice, the game is almost always run as a confidence trick that uses sleight of hand to transfer the marker between covers.

[1] The shell game is related to the cups and balls conjuring trick, which is performed purely for entertainment purposes without any purported gambling element.

A thimblerig team (comprising operator and confederates) was depicted in William Powell Frith's 1858 painting, The Derby Day.

In Frith's 1888 My Autobiography and Reminiscences,[6] the painter-turned-memoirist leaves an account of his encounter with a thimble-rig team (operator and accomplices): My first visit to Epsom was in the May of 1856 – Blink Bonnie's year.

So convinced was I that I could find the pea under the thimble that I was on the point of backing my guess rather heavily, when I was stopped by Augustus Egg, whose interference was resented by a clerical-looking personage, in language much opposed to what would have been anticipated from one of his cloth.

Fear of jail and the need to find new "flats" (victims) kept these "sharps" (shell men or "operators") traveling from one town to the next, never staying in one place very long.

Today, the game is still being played for money in many major cities around the world, usually at locations with a high tourist concentration (for example: La Rambla[7] in Barcelona, Gran Via in Madrid, Westminster Bridge in London, Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, Bahnhofsviertel in Frankfurt am Main and public spaces in Paris, Buenos Aires, Benidorm, New York City, Chicago,[8] and Los Angeles).