Albert Stroller
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| Albert Stroller | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | The Con is On |
| Portrayed by | Robert Vaughn |
| Episode count | 24 |
| Information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Grifter |
Albert Stroller (affectionately known as Albie) is a character in the BBC TV series Hustle. He is played by Robert Vaughn.
Albert is a member of a crew of grifters. He is the group roper; his role is to identify people as targets ("marks") and lead them to the inside-man. He is a member of numerous gentlemen's clubs and (under numerous aliases) is friends with many wealthy people. He is a master of cold reading - a technique often used by mentalists, fortune tellers, psychics, and mediums to determine details about a another person in order to convince them that the reader knows much more about a subject than he or she actually does. Even without prior knowledge of a person, a practiced cold reader can still quickly obtain a great deal of information about the subject by carefully analyzing the person's body language, clothing or fashion, hairstyle, gender, sexual orientation, religion, race or ethnicity, level of education, manner of speech, place of origin, etc. This ability of his helps him to get close to the mark.
Albert is the mentor of his crew and is regarded almost as a father figure. He fled from the United States in the 1970s. Originally he was a shoe salesman in the midwest until the work-force was laid off. To secure a decent redundancy package, Albert conned the company out of $60,000 and shared it amongst his former co-workers. Reputedly he enjoyed the experience so much that he became a grifter and moved to Las Vegas to work the marks there. He went there because as he puts it "There are more marks per square mile in Las Vegas than anywhere else in the world". He would work the marks during the day and then he would work the casinos at night. However, soon all the casinos became wise to the grifters in town and banned them from even entering the casino. Everytime he tried entering a casino, the security chucked him out so he left for the UK shortly afterwards. One of his partners-in-crime in Las Vegas was Joey Pepper, and together they would work the Shoe-switch scam. However, Joey was once caught doing the switch and was almost killed by the Casino security.
He was "out-grifted" once by Victor Maher, before joining with Mickey Bricks and the rest of the crew, although he had spoken about Maher to Mickey before Maher turns up in Season 1 Episode 4 trying to out-grift Mickey.
Stroller is an habitual gambler; he is also an habitual card cheat. These two habits combined have proven to be a weakness, and during the first season he was hospitalized after receiving a severe beating after being caught cheating by a casino owner. During the second season, he briefly dealt with a bout of depression after the death of a close friend caused him to question his own lifestyle.
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