BRIDGETOWN, Barbados — There was a period during the 1980s when neatly-dressed three-card practitioners operated openly on the streets of this seaside capital of Barbados and reaped high monetary returns from gullible members of the public, much as Guyanese shysters were known to do over the years on the streets of their capital, Georgetown.

To onlookers, the whole operation in Bridgetown had seemed simple enough. The dealer appeared to be a nice and decent fellow, almost always in dark glasses (‘shades’, in Bajan parlance), and usually stood behind a small wooden table.

With impressive dexterity and speed, he would shuffle three rounded black cards, on the underside of one of which would be a white mark. When finally he deftly set them down on the table, the challenge to the public was to detect which one was the target card with the white mark, and then back their selection with money. Several people could have placed bets at the same time on any or all of the three cards, but seemingly mesmerised by the flashing hands, they almost always stacked their notes on the same (wrong) card.

Also, enticement was part of the scam, for unknown to the casual observer, a sidekick lurked nearby, so that when bets from the public were not coming in a constant stream, the silent partner would engage the operator, winning handsomely by apparently correctly identifying the marked card, though frequently payment on a $10 or $20 bet would be made and shuffling of the cards recommenced without the selected card being upturned to display that it was indeed the one with the mark. Tricks of the trade.

In making the payout and scooping back up the cards, the operator could at times be heard to grumble, “you’re a lucky fella… you win again.”

On occasion, also, the operator himself ‘managed’ the public’s participation by baiting them on small bets of $1 or $2; and here, too, payment would be made without the selected card being exposed.

This confidence-building technique led to some people foolishly believing they had finally worked out how to spot the right card, like cracking a mathematical formula or deciphering a secret code. They would then begin placing large bets, only to lose when the selected card was upturned to show there was no mark on its underside.

The operator’s forte was his remarkable sleight of hand, and the team made an easy living by skillfully exploiting the public’s mistaken perception that they were being given an even chance of winning.

In time, the Barbadian authorities decided it was necessary to strengthen protection measures, and three-card gaming in public places was outlawed.

Immediately subsequent to the new regulations, some operators played hide-and-seek with the lawmen by using the ally as a lookout, who would signal if he espied an approaching policeman, upon which the x-legged small table would be quickly folded, under-armed and taken out of sight down any of the many very narrow side streets in this city.

While the law became more vigilant, it yet avoided being too severe on those three-card men caught in the act, and more often prosecuted them under laws regarding vagrancy, gambling on the highway and suchlike non-indictable offences, resulting in lower court fines, or sometimes even convictions with a reprimand and immediate discharge.

Presumably, through increased police vigilance and heightening public suspicion and intolerance, the three-card men seemed to have been chased from the public roads of Barbados, though the more adventurous are still known to be operating under cover, away from the business hub of Bridgetown.

However, it would seem that as the gullible cadre of Barbadians of the 1980s now move with acquired maturity and wisdom towards middle age, there is a successor, and much younger group that can easily fall prey to games of chance and likely exploitation, facilitated by new technology.

Some of the current efforts aimed at the gullible have gone digital, and could well have the effect of transferring resources, mainly from the already impoverished segment of the population.

Again, as with the three-card men, with these new games, the public could be deluded into believing that because the challenges or questions posed are so very simple, winning will likewise be easy… a breeze.

One radio advertisement carried daily promises: “You could be in with a chance of winning $2,000. Get your phones out of your pockets and play… You just have to answer five simple randomly-chosen questions, each with points valued between 1 and 10. Get the question and you win the points. The persons with the highest points at the end of the game wins the cash. Example: Cricket is the most popular game in Barbados. Easy, right? You must reply ‘yes’ or ‘no’.

Another game, styled as “the great Barbados quiz” for a $500 prize, promotes itself as being ‘fun, fast and so easy’, with the following among its questions: What is the capital of Barbados? Is it New York, Paris or Bridgetown? And yet again, “Which is the famous cricket stadium in Bridgetown? Is it Wembley, Kensington Oval or Madison Square Garden?

With large numbers of people in this country now giddy under the narcotic of an international cell phone craze, it is easy to imagine thousands of Barbadians — from the prepubescent to the adolescent and above — rushing excitedly to text or call in their correct answers… at $2.30 per call or text message.

They are invited to play to win by texting or calling as many times as they desired — trapped in the stupor of a belief that that is all they need to do to win the $2,000 and $500 cash prizes for each round in the separate games.

Telephoned responses are to be directed to a 1-900 number, but there has been considerable difficulty in ascertaining to which country does the 900 code apply; and if this indeed is not a foreign initiative targeting Barbados, wherein within Barbados did they originate and are being operated?

Would such activities be considered games of chance? Gamble? Are they merely an electronically-facilitated mechanism to relieve the gullible of already meager resources? Is it three-cardism digitalised?

It is both puzzling and worrisome that the advertisements for these activities seem to be earning revenue for the television station and a radio station owned wholly by the Government of Barbados.

However, the more worrying question is why does it appear that gambling is becoming so popular a pastime in Barbados? Its widening spread has been evident for some time, and some people, in seeking to proffer an explanation, might recall a quite remarkable statement many years ago which a Nation newspaper correspondent had attributed to a prominent Barbadian then visiting New York, that it was only a moral minority in the country who were opposed to the introduction of casino gambling.

Such a statement at the time had appeared to lend itself to easy extrapolation, which could have given an unfair impression of the morality of the majority of Barbadians; but the Nation did not express itself as being offended, and my own prediction of a consequential political freefall was proven to have been completely off-base.

Indeed, the personage continued towards greater achievements, eventuating in elevation to the national aristocracy. He was obviously correct in his assessment that there was no groundswell of opposition here against gaming. And at this time, if Barbados had to poll on the issue, the country could be expected to take casino gambling in its stride.

There is now almost a national preoccupation with gambling, in its manifold ways — horse-racing, football pools, lotteries, bingo, corn-house, etc.; and the Internet boldly advertises to intended visitors to the island that Barbados has functioning casinos, especially in the south-eastern parish of Christ Church, but does not explain that there are only small units with mostly slot machines (one-armed bandits) to which it is referring.

Nevertheless, casino gambling of some sort for Barbados seems to be just a matter of time, for even Guyana, off the beaten track for most of the major airlines and still a tourism backwater, is examining the visitor and financial advantages of taking that route, believing that it can cope with the social challenges which large-scale organised gambling will present.

It is this widening embrace of gambling, and the belief that something is really lodged at the rainbow’s end, which is feeding the new digitalized mechanisms of thinly-veiled exploitation in Barbados over the airwaves.

Whereas, one would have thought that the three-card men had been chased underground in Barbados for all time, the old art-form seems to be reappearing openly in regal robes on the electronic media.