A card shark shows his hand and dreams of beating cheaters.
Jeff Wessmiller
likes to cheat and tell.
“I started out in magic, but it was cheesy pulling rabbits out of a
hat,” he says. “Now I’m called ‘The Mechanic’ or ‘The Card Guy’ or a
crooked-gaming expert.”
On a rainy afternoon, Wessmiller, 20, sits in a booth at the smoky
Village Café on Grace Street. A junior at VCU, he wears baggy jeans
and a baseball cap, his 6-foot-4, 160-pound stature obscured by a
table. He palms a deck of cards, resting his wrists upon a black
velvet mat that resembles a large mouse pad. He loses himself here for
hours. Coffee and cigarettes are partly to blame, but mostly it’s the
cards.
Wessmiller never
leaves home without them. In the three years he’s been at VCU, he’s
carried a deck to every class he’s attended. He tells his teachers
it’s a compulsion, and that he can’t concentrate without them.
Even a poker neophyte recognizes that Wessmiller’s more than your
typical card shark. His attachment to a deck is so strong, it’s hard
to say where the entertainment stops and the obsession begins. It
drives his girlfriend crazy, he says with a laugh.
Today, he starts off with a little bottom-dealing and second-dealing,
his long, slim fingers fluttering so fast they don’t appear to hold
anything at all. Then he cold-stacks, making all four aces appear for
an imaginary player’s hand.
To most people, he says, “It’s completely unfathomable that I could be
arranging cards as I shuffle them.” But his preternatural connection
to cards could be his big break.
At a time when poker’s popularity has swelled to the extent that it
has become a national pastime, Wessmiller has mastered a
sleight-of-hand few pros could detect. What’s most surprising about
his trickery may not be how he does it, but how he plans to use it.
Despite the glamour and prestige the game now enjoys, Wessmiller says
he has no interest in using his skills to win big bucks or to score a
dealer’s gig. Instead, he hopes to parlay his ruses into a career
spotting scams.
His timing is key.
“In recent years, the proliferation of gambling has expanded across
the United States and the globe,” says Ric Alford, enforcement agent
of the Nevada State Gaming Control Board. “This has attracted the
attention of film producers.”
Alford is a Richmond native who graduated from Midlothian High School
in 1993. Today he works in Las Vegas, helping catch cheaters in some
of the city’s most famous casinos. Such TV programs as “Las Vegas,”
“CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” and televised tournaments help
spread poker’s allure in popular culture, Alford says.
“Casinos can’t make new poker rooms fast enough,” he says. “Casinos
that didn’t have poker tables before are moving out slot machines to
make room. And, in most cases, a player will have to put his name on a
waiting list to get a seat.”
It’s a seat Wessmiller refuses. “It’s a lose-lose when I play,” he
says, explaining that his talents cause him to be regarded as a cheat
or a louse. Every night of the week some dorm room or apartment or
frat house is home to a game where VCU students ante up and bow out in
a hand of Texas HoldEm. He exclaims: “It’s absolutely insane how
popular it is!”
And not just with students. The popularity of poker crosses
generations, cultures and household incomes. So much so that it’s on
the radar of state officials. Section 18.2-325 of the Code of Virginia
defines illegal gambling. How it’s interpreted varies. (It can be
played in private homes provided no “house manager” takes a fee or
share of the money.)
In recent months, some nonprofit organizations with licenses to hold
bingo games and raffles have blurred the line between what gambling is
acceptable and what isn’t. Poker isn’t, according to the Virginia
Department of Charitable Gaming.
On Sept. 27, agency director Clyde Cristman sent a memo to all
organizations with charitable gaming permits or exemptions, stressing
that poker games would result in fines and penalties.
“We tried to be proactive,” Cristman says of the memo and discussions
he’s had with various commonwealth’s attorneys throughout the state.
Poker’s image had become so prevalent and so innocuous that the
Fraternal Order of Police in Virginia Beach had started holding Texas
HoldEm tournaments, Cristman says. Virginia may one day allow poker —
if not in casinos, then in Bingo halls and local lodges. He says there
has been interest in introducing legislation to allow it.
Regardless, Cristman is intrigued when told by a reporter of
Wessmiller’s talents, adding that he could prove a valuable intern.
Wessmiller has an affinity for fooling people, even if only on the up
and up.
“I love anything that’s underground knowledge,” Wessmiller says. He’s
drawn to eccentric interests. He’s spent time as “Ivan the Iranian
Butcher,” his professional-wrestler alter ego. He’s been a
ventriloquist, too, as well as a juggler and a magician.
He says he’ll stick with cards. It’s been more than five years since
he picked them up. They’re a natural fit, he says, and full of
possibility. He employs a card shark’s psychology: “The knowledge is
so hidden it’s almost impossible to find.”
Wessmiller flew to Colorado Oct. 21 — where poker for profit is legal
— to produce a DVD that shows players how they can be cheated. It’s
called “Weapons of the Card Shark: Underground Cheating Techniques
Exposed.”
Next week Wessmiller turns 21. In January, he’ll take his first trip
to Las Vegas to scout the casinos. “With more poker comes more cheats,
so I’m going to try to shut it down.” His confidence is palpable.
After all, he demonstrates the real sleight of hand and manipulation
that movies like “Ocean’s 11,” “Rounders” and “Shade” can manufacture.
Wessmiller sums it up: “With the image card sharks have today, it’s
kind of like comparing James Bond with real-life espionage.”
