Three-card Monte and its variants use the same process as the older Shell Game to give the appearance of randomness while the scammer controls outcomes, often in collusion with a shill pretending to be a player.
From Wikipedia:
The trickster shows three playing cards to the audience, one of which is a queen (the "lady"), then places the cards face-down, shuffles them around, and invites the audience to bet on which one is the queen. At first the audience is skeptical, so the shill places a bet, and the scammer allows him to win. In one variation of the game, the shill will (apparently surreptitiously) peek at the lady, ensuring that the mark also sees the card. This is sometimes enough to entice the audience to place bets, but the trickster uses sleight of hand to ensure that he always loses, unless the con man decides to let him win, hoping to lure him into betting much more. The mark loses whenever the dealer chooses to make him lose.
A variation on this scam exists in Barcelona, Spain, but with the addition of a pickpocket. The dealer and shill behave in an overtly obvious manner, attracting a larger audience. When the pickpocket succeeds in stealing from a member of the audience, he signals the dealer. The dealer then shouts the word "aguas" – colloquial for "Watch Out!" – and the three split up. The audience is left believing that the police are coming, and that the performance was a failed scam.
A variant of this scam exists in Mumbai, India. The shill says loudly to the dealer that his cards are fake and that he wants to see them. He takes the card and folds a corner and says in a hushed voice to the audience that he has marked the card. He places a bet and wins. Then he asks the others to place bets as well. When one of the audience bets a large sum of money, the cards are switched.
Three-card Monte works by creating the appearance of one type of system while in fact operating as another and then exploiting the difference to extract money from targets. The Barcelona example is interesting in that instead of looking like a fair game it pretends to be one scam and then exploits this with a different scam.
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