And did you get ripped off? Everything I’ve ever read says the only way to win is not to play. No WOPR.
I’ve never played and have only seen it in movies.
No, never played, but I learned how to do the basic cheat to trick (morons) by tossing the wrong card when picking up two with one hand. Not that impressive, but, hey, my Uncle taught me some flourishes when I was six or seven and impressionable. I still can’t cut one handed into three separate stacks, but even the easy one-handed cut and that flourish where you spill the cards at a distance into the other hand seems (?? why??) impressive to some people.
I’ve never played, but surely it’s possible to learn the trick and pick the right card, regardless of what your eyes tell you. I guess the question then would be, would you get paid or not?
The right card can’t be picked if the trick is done correctly.
I’ve seen the set up and watched others get snookered a bunch of times.
Perhaps that is best answered thusly:
No, the whole basis of taking your money is convincing you it’s possible to beat the dealer by figuring out his system. It’ll never happen. If you figure out one way he’s cheating, it just means you’ll lose to the next level of cheating. And as you noted, the final level is they just won’t pay you.
Exactly. I learned how to “throw” cards for a Monte game years ago (there are a few ways to do it, each with a different outcome), and if you figure out how I did it, I’ll just switch to another way to throw them. Whichever way I use, I’ll make sure you lose.
Note that I’ve never used the skill for real money from adults, but it sure has amused some children of my acquaintance. (“Wow! How did you do that, Uncle Spoons?”) They got the candy I wagered anyway, for being good sports. 
Right, and they might have compatriots playing and aparrently “winning” to help sucker you in as well.
The fake winners are also used to take money from the main people running the game. That way if they get busted, there is less cash available to be confiscated.
I used to live near Rue Saint-Denis in Paris and, at least at that time, there was always a 3-card Monte game on the sidewalk operated by young North African men. I usually wandered that sidewalk in the evenings, and usually stopped to watch the 3-card monte game. It was fun to try to understand some of the tricks. Obviously the operators grew to recognize me.
Sometimes I would place a bet on the (red) card and the dealer just ignored my bet, neither taking it nor paying it off. One of his confederates jabbed me lightly with an elbow walking past, muttered something; I stopped betting though continued to watch a little, silently, during my evening walks. Another specific memory I have of the game is that, during a discussion of police or foreign travel, the dealer held up the 3 cards and joked “Ceci est mon passeport international.”
I also remember a 3-card monte game on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue during the 1960’s.
I don’t understand this. You have a 1-in-3 chance getting the card if you ignore all else and bet randomly. Moreover, when the dealer is expecting no one to bet, he’ll place the red card where you expect to find it.
You’re assuming he didn’t palm the red card. You’re assuming he’ll take your bet if you guess the right card. You’re assuming he won’t change the rules of how the game works.
You’re assuming the dealer has to book bets. He doesn’t. He can make up the rules as he goes along, and often does. If you put $10 on a card randomly and happen to hit the right card, a confederate will quickly bet $20 on that card; and the dealer will make up a rule that he only takes the highest bet placed. You don’t lose, but you don’t win, and the dealer is ultimately out nothing.
Want to play again? 
If you’d read my whole post you’d know I didn’t assume this. Perhaps my interpretation of “The right card can’t be picked” was overly literal.
In the French Quarter, I saw a new spin on it that even had me thrown for a loop. A “spectator” approach with a fresh deck of cards and made the dealer pull up his sleeves apparently to do it as a straight up contest of hand speed versus eye. They did a good job of mixing it up with winning versus losing such that everyone got the impression that the “spectator” was winning overall. They were changing to a new set of 3 cards from the fresh deck every couple of hands and as soon as other people started joining in, the “spectator” kept winning at about the same rate ~2/3 but no one else could match his success. It was brilliant in that the trick was in having a skilled accomplice who wouldn’t have been logically connected to the dealer as they really started the bit as opponents out to test each others’ skills.
You will never win. Never. They will not let you win the first one to suck you in. Anybody you see winning is working with the game operator.
A couple of methods have already been discussed, like simply ignoring you and giving you an elbow in the ribs (perhaps from a very large person) or having another confederate place a bigger bet.
If you do pick the right card, he may do a move known as a Mexican Turnover; the card you picked is switched with another one by sleight of hand.
If you bet once and lose and seem hesitant to try again, the operator may turn his back for a moment and the guy standing next to you may reach out and bend the corner of the card so it is easily visible and give you a conspiratorial wink wink. When the game is over, the bent corner is on a different card and you have lost again.
The operator might even be willing to let you try to win your money back by putting a paper clip on the card … but at the end, the paper clip is on a different card and your money is in his pocket.
There are lots of tricks, lots of methods, but in the end … you will never win. Never. Not even once.
Why not? Wouldn’t people who win occasionally keep playing longer?
I haven’t seen three card monte. But, I have seen the same trick done with cups and a nerf ball. This included confederates making the game seem straight. As a tiny nerf ball is even easier to hide then a card, I did not bet.
Three Card Monte is a scam, devised to insure that the operator never loses. They are not running a “fair” game, one in which the operator has a long-run mathematical advantage over the players and the fact that there are some winners is good advertising to lure in more players.
A player who is allowed to win might decide to walk away with the money. It would be a very foolish scammer who permitted that to happen when he could, with absolute certainty, take the player’s money.
There is no shortage of suckers – no need to take any chance at all that a player will walk away with money.
Three Card Monte is a scam, not a game.
There’s also the dealer’s “move of last resort” - if somebody does win and walks away with the money, don’t be so sure there isn’t one of the dealer’s accomplices waiting around the corner so you can go double-or-nothing on “can you remain conscious after a number of blows to the head with a lead pipe?”; nobody ever seems to be able to win that one.
Why would the dealer want them to play longer? The idea is to get their money, and move on to the next mark. If a dealer can take $100 from a mark in five minutes, why would he let the occasional win happen so he can get the same $100 from the same mark in ten minutes?
Besides, any time you’re running a scam, it is important to stay ahead of the law, so you want to get what you can from the mark and get out. A Monte game is extremely portable–all a dealer needs is a deck of cards and some cash to flash. While visiting New York City in the late 1970s, I saw many Monte games that used upended trash cans as tables. None of these games appeared to last longer than five minutes in one place. If the police had been alerted, perhaps by a disgruntled mark who had been fleeced, they would arrive to find no trace of the game, the dealer, or his gang–except, perhaps, for an upended trash can.