Born in New York in 1933, Joe Classon was a professional casino cheat who, alongside his older brother Henry, and others, perfected several techniques for winning money by illegitimate means. Not least of those techniques was ‘past posting’ or, in other words, placing, or increasing, winning bets after the outcome of an event is known. The technique is applicable to table games, such as blackjack, craps and roulette, but requires skill, teamwork and timing to place illegal late bets at a time when the croupier is distracted, deliberately or routinely.
Classon Jnr. honed his skills, with no little success, in the casinos of Puerto Rico, Cuba and Las Vegas from 1954 onwards, but in the mid-sixties met Ruthie Berin, a showgirl at the
Stardust Resort and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip, with whom he began a professional and romantic relationship. A beautiful and charismatic woman, Berin had no qualms about charming casino employees into paying out on illegal, past post bets. Berin eventually left Classon for a Hollywood film producer, but by that stage, he had already become acquainted with Duke Swenson and would later recruit Jerry Palmer, who had known Swenson since school, to form what would become the most successful past posting team in history.
Between 1969 and 1989, when Classon retired, the team continued to ply its trade and, in 1977, was joined by the now-legendary ‘poacher-turned-gamekeeper’ Richard Marcus. At the time, Marcus was a baccarat dealer at the Four Queens in downtown Las Vegas and, following a direct approach from Classon, created a ‘false shuffle’ to protect the cards at the top of the shoe and produce winning hands for the team. Thus, when dealt by a relief dealer, the cards produced a profit of $30,000 without arousing any suspicion at at all.