Sorry for the experience which I'm sure you learnt a lot from. Experience the say is the best teacher. I also have learnt from the experience of card tricksters. Here I was thinking that it's only in nigeria that we have such card scammers but your story just proved me wrong. The thing is, the dealer is always surrounded by various people most of which, I later learnt, are his accomplices. They would make bets, winning most of the time, and goad innocent naive bystanders who are attracted by the promise of easy money. My experience also cost me all the money I had on me and would have cost me my phone too, but for the reason that the dealer refused to allow me use it as a stake because he was so Bush that he wasn't familiar with touch screen phones at the time lol. It was an experience that would forever remind me to steer clear from such fraudulent gatherings, as I'm sure yours too is.