The Card Trick That Has No Explanation

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(

None of this material would have existed if I had not been blessed by meeting my

mentor Paul Chosse and subsequently Ron Bauer. Those two men have given me days

(maybe even weeks!) of their time and never tire of teaching.

Darwin Ortiz gives me constant inspiration with his material and advice and I am again

blessed to call him my friend. His ability to think critically and deeply has spurred me to

work even harder.

Andru Luvisi, who wrote the sleight descriptions for these notes, is not only a human

archive of my material he is also one of the most accomplished Card Handlers I’ve ever

met. His knowledge is encyclopedic and he can remember things that I came up with

years ago and have long since forgotten. The hours I spend with him discussing magic

are some of the most productive hours I’ve ever spent.

>>>>

First, to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who gave me anything that someone might

someday label as “talent”. Second to my wife Terri who still picks cards in the middle of

the night—only my Mom would do that in the past. (R.I.P. Mom…) I love my wife more

than any other human being in the world. Finally to people who gave constant feedback

and help: Rob Herion, Chris Aguilar, Joe Cavataio, Mark Ennis, Vinny Marini and

Charlie Chang.

>>>>

If you acquired these notes legitimately then you can perform this material anytime,

anywhere and in any situation you choose. Even if we’re doing a show together, you

have the priority in regards to this material.

However, you may not copy or distribute any of the material in these notes without

permission. I make a great friend; but a very bad enemy.

( '

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>>>>

The CardGuy explains that he is really tired of people trying to come up with

explanations for what he does and he has therefore developed a Card Trick in which

every possible explanation will be eliminated as he goes. A spectator selects a card in

the fairest possible manner and then shuffles the deck. The CardGuy even lets her

check to make sure that her card is still in the middle of the deck! The CardGuy then

tells the spectator that he will ask her three (and only three) questions and each time

her answer will be spelt out using one card for each letter in her answer. After the three

questions have been asked and the answers spelled out, regardless of how she

answers, her card will be on top of the pack! “And,” says the CardGuy, “You don’t even

have to tell the truth. You can lie to any of the questions and none of your answers have

to be consistent with the previous ones… oh, one more thing—I’ll let you do the

dealing!” True to form, the three questions are asked, the spectator spells out her

answers and when finished, her card is on top of the pack!

( 0

>>>>

This is one of the strongest presentations I’ve ever worked out. It requires only one

sleight, but it must be executed perfectly. In addition, the way the presentation builds is

essential to the strength of the effect.

The idea started when I was looking for a presentation for Bruce Cervon’s Perfect

Speller as it was printed in The Pallbearers Review (December 1968) and in The

Cervon Files (Magical Publications). The spelling procedure is reprinted with the

permission of Bruce Cervon.

There are two parts you have to learn: a) the choreography of getting the card 15

from

the top and how it interfaces with the presentation and b) the spelling procedure. They

will be taught separately to facilitate learning.

A>>>>

Start out by shuffling the deck while you give your opening lines: “You know, whenever

people watch these types of things, they always go home and tell their friend, wife or

husband what they saw. And believe it or not, their friend, wife or husband will always

offer an explanation, sure in the knowledge that it can’t be challenged. (‘Cause I’m not

there!) So, as a public service, I’ve decided to take steps to eliminate this source of

constant irritation to my audience members. I will now show you a Card Trick and

eliminate every possible explanation that your friend, wife of husband could possibly

offer, thus sparing each and every one of you from a potential I’m-smarter-than-you-are-

discourse! First, remember that the deck has been completely shuffled!”

You will now have the spectator select a card by a method that is close to the traditional

spectator-takes-a-peek method but with one difference—you will motivate and justify

this rather strange method of selecting a card. First, explain that you will “go through the

cards like this (begin riffling through the cards) and you tell me when to stop. Now if you

don’t like the first card we stop on, you just tell me that you want another card and we’ll

do it again, OK? That way no one can ever say that I influenced your selection!” If she

says the card is OK, then move on but if not, then allow her to select a different one.

Several times if needed—it will reinforce the fact that the spectator had a free choice.

When she decides on a card, show the index to one or two more people and then riffle

off the rest of the cards, keeping a break below the selection.

“Now do you know why I had you pick a card in that rather strange way? You see, if I

was using marked cards, I’d need to see that back of your card to tell what it is, right?

And since we didn’t even take it out of the deck, then there’s no way I could have seen

the back, right? And that also means that I couldn’t have seen the face of the card

either! And yes, the cards are all different so there’s no way I could be using trick

cards!”

As you’re remarking that the cards are all different, do the Dribble Peek: The cards are

in the left hand with the left little finger holding a break below the selected card. The

right thumb and second finger grasp the pack at the left inner and outer corners

respectively and lift the left edge of the deck up and to the right, rotating the deck face-

up. The left little finger remains in contact with the break at all times. The action will

step the deck at the inner right corner (when the pack is face-up) enough for you to see

the index of the selection—but don’t look at the deck yet! The left fingers and thumb

hold onto the deck just long enough for the right hand to adjust its grip and then the

deck is lifted and dribbled into the left hand, bringing emphasis to the fact that the cards

are all different. The time to glimpse the card is while you are saying “…the cards are all

different!” It’s important that you don’t look at the cards until they start dribbling into the

left hand. In most glimpses you have to look directly at the deck and it’s difficult to do

that without suspicion. But with this cover you have a reason to look at the deck

because it’s natural to look at the deck while you’re dropping cards into your left hand.

After you have dribbled the cards, square the deck as you say:

“Can you think of another thing I might know about your card? I might know exactly

where it is in the deck, right? So go ahead and shuffle the cards until you’re happy!”

Allow the spectator to shuffle and when she’s through take the deck back.

“Now some people think I’m actually sneaky enough to somehow spirit your card out of

the deck, so I’m going to run through all the cards and let you see that your card is

somewhere in the middle of the deck. Here’s a tip: when you see your card don’t say

“Oooo! There it is!’ As a matter of fact, let me get through all the cards just so no one

can accuse me of using the process of elimination. And I won’t even look at your eyes,

so no one can say “He saw you blink’!”

Run through the deck face-up and when you see the spectator’s card, start counting

with the selection counting as number one. Mark the 15

card by keeping your right

middle finger on it (from underneath the spread) and jamming the other cards against

the tip of your right forefinger. Once the cards start jamming against my right forefinger,

I usually don’t need my right middle finger to keep my place. When you’ve gone through

the entire deck, ask the spectator: “Did you see your card? Is it in there?” and as you

say that, gesture with your hands, breaking the deck into halves at the 15

card and

then replace the halves in the opposite order. You’ve effectively cut the deck with a

gesture and placed the selected card 15

from the top.

“Now most magicians won’t tell you what they’re going to do before they do it—but I’m

not as smart as most magicians so I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. I’m going to ask

you three and only three questions about your card to which you can lie or tell the truth.

And to make it even more difficult, none of your answers has to be consistent with any

of your previous ones. Each of your answers will be spelled out by taking one card from

the top of the deck for each letter in your answer and when we’re done, regardless of

whether you lie or tell the truth, your card will be on top of the pack! Oh, one more

thing—you’re dealing!” Hand the deck to her and tell her not to deal any cards until you

ask her to do so. Ask the first question and then tell her: “We’re going to deal one face-

down card from the top of the deck for each letter in you answers, okay? All the cards

will go in a single pile.”

Have her deal out the first answer using one card for each letter and watch to make

sure there are no misdeals. Follow the rest of the procedure explained in the next

section and then when you get to the point where you’re holding a single face-down

card say: “My three questions are up! No lies this time—what was the name of your

card?”

When she names the card, slowly turn it face-up, collect your fee and go home!

0 "

>>>>

The key to the whole procedure is to remember that the idea is to get the spectator to

deal off 8-12 cards by the time you get to the third question.

1) The first question is always “Was your card RED or BLACK?”

2) The second question is always “What was the SUIT of your card?”

Whatever their answer, give them the option of using the “s” or not; i.e. if they say

“spades”, ask them “Do you want to spell ‘spade’ or ‘spades’ with an ‘s’?” There are

only two exceptions to this rule and that’s if giving them this option would cause the

dealer to deal out a total of less than eight cards or more than twelve cards. There are

only two cases when this happens:

a) If the spectator says “Red” to the first questions and “Clubs” to the second

question, then you need every letter in that combination because they add

to eight, the minimum number you need to have dealt before the third

question. Therefore you need to have the dealer spell out “Clubs”: “Okay,

the suit was clubs….”

b) If the spectator says “Black” to the first question and “Diamonds” to the

second question then you have one more letter than you need. Therefore

you have the dealer spell out “Diamond”: “Okay, it was a Diamond…”

The third question is dependent on how many cards have been dealt off the pack

already and is described in the following chart:

Number of Cards Dealt

The Third Question Is

Was it a number card or a picture card?

(Spell out “number” or “picture”)

Was it a number card or a court card?

(Spell out “number” or “court”)

Was it a court card or a spot card?

(Spell out “court” or “spot”)

Was it high or low?

(Spell out “high” or “low”)

Yes or No?

(Spell out “yes” or “no”

The “yes or no” question can be anything pertaining to the card or the spectators

answers such as “Yes or no—have you lied yet?” or “Yes or no—is your card higher

than a seven?” I always preface the question with the “yes or no” choice because some

people will try and be cute by saying something like “maybe”.

Notice that the words in each question vary by only one letter. This means that the card

will fall on either the last letter or end up on top of the pack. If the card is going to fall on

the last letter, stop the spectator before she deals that card: “Place that card face-down

on my left palm.” After she does so, say “This is the last letter of the last question. No

lies this time—what was the name of your card?”

Turn the card over, collect your fee in goods or services and go home. Since the card

never hits the table, technically it was still on top of the pack.

If the card ends up on top of the pack after all the answers have been spelled out, use a

similar closing line: “Place that card face-down on my left palm.” After she does so, say

“You answered any way you wanted to and all of you answers were spelled out. This is

the card that ended up on top of the pack. No lies this time—what was the name of your

card?” Turn the card over, collect the same fee and go home!

5 # >

There is not as much memory work as you would think in this effect but it is imperative

that you do not let your thinking show. Since your questions depend on the responses

of a spectator you need to simulate random responses while you are practicing this

effect. Here’s the way I do it: First I get an old deck that has a different back than the

one you’re using and shuffle it. Set it down on the table and work through the effect up

until the point where you would ask the spectator a question. Ask the questions and

then turn over the top card of the tabled deck. That card will simulate the spectator’s

response. At each question, turn over a card from your tabled deck and let the card

represent the spectator’s answer. In this way you’ll be able to generate totally random

responses so you can learn to ask the appropriate third question with no hesitation.

Remember that the key here is to get the audience to believe that you are taking great

pains to eliminate every possible explanation. You’re not, of course, but what counts is

not what you actually do, but what the audience believes you do! Everything in this

presentation (including the move sequence) is designed to strengthen the audience’s

belief that you have eliminated every possible explanation.

;

22 B

>>>>

The CardGuy demonstrates the Ultimate Weapon of Card Cheats—a photographic

memory for playing cards. Two decks are shuffled and two spectators select one card

each from one of the decks. The CardGuy memorizes the other shuffled deck in less

than 10 seconds and when the spectators show them their cards, he tells them exactly

where the cards are in the deck he just memorized. The cards are replaced, the deck is

shuffled again and the CardGuy has one spectator select and retain a card. Spreading

the deck face-up he studies the cards for a few seconds and then announces which

card is missing from the deck.

If you perform this for an audience, they will have no doubt whatsoever that you could

cheat in any Casino you walk into. It’s that strong.

( >

This effect uses a memorized stack and although I will later describe a methodology for

using any memorized stack, I think it plays stronger with “The Hacker Stack” that is

described elsewhere in these notes.

When I do this effect, I usually like to have at least 6 sealed Bicycle Decks on the table

and tell the spectator on my left to pick out any two decks he likes. I then put the rest of

the decks away and ask him “Which one do you want to use?” Which ever deck he

points to, pick up the other one and open it up. As you’re drawing the cards out of the

case, tell him to open his deck, remove the jokers and advertising cards and then

shuffle the deck thoroughly. As you’re telling him this, go through the first shuffling

sequence of “The Si Stebbins Secret”. (Everything except the faros.) You should have

plenty of time since most spectators will fumble with getting the deck open. As he’s

shuffling, do the faros you need and show them to the spectator on your left, asking her

to confirm that the deck has been shuffled. Once you’re done, table your deck and have

the spectator place his next to yours.

Ask the spectator on your left “Which deck should we use?” Regardless of which deck

he indicates, say “OK, that’s the one we’ll use…” and then spread his deck face down in

a wide ribbon spread. Have both spectators select a card from the face down spread

and then case the remainder of the deck. You now have a stacked deck in memorized

order in front of you and each spectator has a randomly selected card from the cased

deck. Put the cased deck away so only the stacked deck and the two face down

selections are on the table. Start the pitch:

“Although Card Cheats have devised innumerable methods of cheating at Black Jack,

almost all of the methods have one thing in common—they can, with modern equipment

and highly trained dealers be detected. There is one method however, that cannot be

detected. It uses the ultimate weapon in Card Cheating—a photographic memory for

playing cards. There are possibly six people in the world who have developed a talent

for such a memory and only one of those six is honest. You will never know if you’ve

seen any of the other five.

What I propose to do to demonstrate the ultimate cheating method is to memorize the

order of this shuffled deck in less than ten seconds. During those ten seconds, please

remain silent as I’ll need every ounce of concentration I have.”

Pick up the deck and riffle the back end of the deck slowly making sure it’s plausible

that you’ve seen the index of every card. This should take about 7 seconds and while

you’re doing it, your expression must communicate to the audience that you’re doing

some heavy duty calculations. Pause and then look a little sheepish and say “I need

one more run through…” and then do the same thing again. Table the deck and

announce that you now know the position of every card in the deck. Have both

spectators turn their cards face up on the table and whichever one comes first in the

stack; tell them the location from the top of the deck. In other words if it’s the Jack of

Diamonds, you’d say “The Jack of Diamonds is twelve cards from the top of this deck.”

Then announce the position of the other card in the same fashion.

This is where the handling will diverge slightly depending on the relative positions of the

cards because you will need a block of about 20 cards that are still in your memorized

order. Here are the three possibilities and the different ways to handle them:

1) If the cards are relatively close (within 20 cards or so) and in the top half of the

deck (or even dead center), pick up the deck in your left hand and say “Now in

order to demonstrate my accuracy, I’m going to deal the cards with one hand.”

Deal cards with one hand, letting them drop face down on the table and counting

them aloud as you do so. When you reach the first card, take it in your right hand

and dramatically turn it face up next to the appropriate selection. Continue

dealing cards as before and when you reach the other card, turn it over with the

same dramatic flair. (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase!) Drop the talon of the

deck on top of the pile of cards you’ve dealt and square the deck. You’re now

ready for the next phase.

2) If the cards are relatively close, but near the bottom of the deck, tell the audience

that in order to save some tedious counting, you’ll count down from the bottom

card. Turn the deck face up and deal cards with one hand but this time count

backwards from 52. Since the cards will be face up you can necktie the deck a

bit so the audience won’t see the face of a card until it hits the table. Once you’ve

shown the cards were where you said they’d be, table the face up talon and then

gather up the cards just dealt and place them face up on the face up talon.

3) If the cards are widely separated, then count from the top of the deck for the first

card and from the bottom of the deck for the second card. You will be left with a

block of cards still in a memorized order and you just need to make sure that

block is on the top of the deck when you gather up the cards.

The whole point of these three options is to minimize the counting and end up with a

block of approximately 20 cards on top of the deck in a known order. Once you’ve

arrived at that point, you’re ready to start the next phase:

“Now knowing where cards are that quickly is usually deadly enough, but almost every

serious player knows that the most important memory skill of all is to look at a deck and

immediately know which cards have been played.” Give the deck a cut while

maintaining a break and spread the cards face down between your hands so the

spectator will choose one of the cards in the memorized block. When he does, ask him

to hide the card and as he is doing so, cull the card above his selection to the bottom of

the deck. Fairly riffle shuffle the deck, but keep the bottom card in place. Hand the deck

to someone to shuffle and as you do, note the identity of the bottom card. You can

immediately determine what the selection is from knowing what this bottom card is since

the bottom card comes right before the selection in your memorized stack. In the

Hacker Stack, for example, if the bottom card was the 7H, then the spectator selected

the 10S.

Once the spectator has shuffled the deck have them table the deck face down and start

the build: “Now one card has been selected from a shuffled deck and after the card was

selected, the deck was shuffled again. Once I spread this deck face up I will have ten

seconds to memorize every card that is present and then check that memorized list

against all cards in a regular deck in order to determine which card is missing. I’m sure

you’ll all agree that if I can do this then you will have no doubt that I can walk into any

Casino in the world and win consistently in Black Jack.”

Take a deep breath and rapidly spread the deck face up on the table in a wide ribbon

spread. Stare at the spread and silently count to ten. It’s OK in this case to move your

lips a little because you want to convey the idea that you are doing some heavy duty

calculations. Look up at the spectator who chose the card and tell him “There’s only one

card missing from this deck and it’s the Ten of Spades—show them the card!” As the

audience acts, say this: “Any Casino. Any Game. The Ultimate Weapon.”

5 # >

Remember that in this effect you want to create the illusion that you are performing

calculations in your head that would only be achievable by a super-computer. In order to

sell that illusion, you must master being able to look like your doing those calculations at

very high speed.

Also, do not overlook the application of the “Magician’s Choice” in this effect. Even

spectators who have read an occasional magic book will be fooled by this application.

The first time you ask the spectator which deck he wants to use and it’s a free choice—

that sets the pattern. The second time you ask him “which deck should we use” but this

question allows you to give the illusion of a free choice since it sounds similar and the

question is designed to be ambiguous so you can use whatever answer results to your

own advantage.

Finally, if you already have a memorized stack you use and don’t want to learn The

Hacker Stack then simply forego the idea of sealed decks and stack six decks in your

memorized order. Which ever deck you’re left with to shuffle, use false riffle shuffles.

Although I’ve done faux “memorize the deck in ten seconds” type of effects for years, I

never really though about doing it with a real memorized deck until Darwin Ortiz

published Remote Control in his excellent book “Scams & Fantasies with Cards.” This is

my expanded version of that effect and is published with Darwin’s permission.

(

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+ #

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0 1

>>>>

The CardGuy tells a spectator that although he isn’t really a professional hypnotist, he is

a “registered dabbler” and has actually used the power of suggestion in his act before.

He has a spectator select and replace a card and then places an indifferent card face-

down on her palm, asking her to place her thumb on it. He then proceeds to hypnotize

her into believing that the card in her hand looks like the card she selected. When the

CardGuy turns the card over, the spectator is shocked to see that it is the card she

selected! Or is it? When the CardGuy turns the card face-up again, the image of the

spectator’s card has faded and all that is left is the indifferent card.

( 0

>>>>

I have always felt that one of the strongest effects you can do for a lay person is one in

which they perceive that a card has transformed in their own hands. But there was

always a problem that nagged me consistently: once you change one card into another,

the spectator will always be forced to the correct logical conclusion—you switched

cards. For about a year I looked for a way to avoid this but it just didn’t seem possible.

If a spectator is holding a Four of Hearts and then it’s a Nine of Spades there are few

plausible conclusions other than you switched the cards! Now think about this: what if

you could convince the spectator that you only made them THINK the card had

changed? Essentially, the objective of this effect is to convince the spectator that you

made them see something that wasn’t there.

(

( >>>>

Start out by saying “Have you ever been hypnotized? Oh, don’t worry I can’t make you

run around the room like a chicken with its head cut off or anything. Matter of fact, I’m

not really a hypnotist—but I am a registered dabbler which allows me to fiddle around

with the power of suggestion. Unfortunately I’m not that good. My powers of

suggestion only last a few seconds. Let me show you what I mean. First, we need an

object you can concentrate on, so just pick out one of these cards and show it around.

Make sure you remember it!”

Have the spectator select a card and control it to the top using a shift or a side-steal.

The type of control you use here is important because you want the audience to believe

that none of the cards have changed position, so her card must be somewhere in the

middle of the deck. A shuffle or cutting control could lead them to conclude that the card

could be anywhere—including the top of the deck. Do the best double-turnover you

know as you say:

“Now I’m going to show you a card different from yours…” turn the card(s) face-down on

the deck and hold your right hand out palm-up. “…and I’d like you to hold out your hand

like this.” As you hold out your right hand, push the top card to the right (with your left

thumb) so it’s side-jogged to the right. When the spectator holds out her hand take the

jogged top card by the back right corner and place it face-down in the spectator’s hand

but don’t let go of the card! Ask the spectator to place her thumb on the card and then

tell her: “Now there’s no way I can move that card without you knowing about it, right?

Then it’s safe for you to look me in the eye and tell me the name of your card.” Make

eye contact, locking eyes with the spectator. When she names her card (e.g. The Four

of Spades) say “Okay at the count of three you will believe that this card is the Four of

Spades! Three… Two… One!” (Remember to keep your eyes locked on the spectators

as you count down) “Now look down at the card and lift your thumb up…” When she

lifts her thumb say “Now if I did this right, this card could look just like…” Tilt the card up

so she can see the face— “…the Four of Spades!”

At this point the spectator will react strongly and probably look up and drop her hand. At

the very least, she will react and look away from the card. You are now in the perfect

position and situation for a top change. Execute the standard top change undercover of

reaching for her right hand with your left hand as you say “Wait! I still need your hand!

You see, you lost your concentration for a moment there and when you do that… the

image fades!”

On the words “…the image fades!” turn the card face-up and place it on the spectator’s

hand, letting go of the card. Nine times out of ten when the spectator catches her

breath, she’ll turn the card face-down and rub it on her hand just to see if it changes

again! That’s the best indication that they’re not thinking in terms of switching the cards!

5 # >

Although there are many different covers for the top change—some elaborate and some

not— you don’t need much in this effect. Don’t flick the card; don’t make any large arm

movements. You’re already in position, the card to be switched out is about as close to

the deck as it’s going to get. Just go into the change and reach for the spectator’s hand

with your left hand. If you perform this effect properly, I guarantee that her reaction will

be the strongest misdirection you could have.

2222

(

2222

(

A long time ago, Ron Bauer told me that “the only humor guaranteed to work every

single time is ‘inside humor’”. I never forgot this and when I came across an effect

called “The Infamous Non-Working, Self-Working Card Trick” by Sid Fleischman I knew

that the idea was ripe for inside magic humor. I contacted Sid (not an easy task) and

asked for permission to use and publish his patter with the changes I made. He

graciously gave permission.

There is a small setup required, but it’s trivial and since you should be doing this for a

group of magicians, you can get ready well ahead of time and don’t have to worry about

resets. Start out by placing the Four of Clubs in your left hand pocket and the Two of

Hearts in your right hand pocket. Then place the Two of Clubs and the Four of Hearts

on top of the deck, case the deck and you’re ready to go!

Face your audience, assume the posture of a pitch-man and jump right in:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m going to take my life into my own hands this evening and

demonstrate for you the Infamous, Non-Working, Self-Working Card Trick! Now, don’t

confuse this with any of those cheap imitations in some of those fly-by-night magazines

because this is the genuine, original article. Unlike those Non-Working, Self-Working

wannabes that sometimes actually embarrass you by working, this one never will…

work, that is. It has failure built in! First, we’ll need a totally random yet slightly

confusing selection procedure… would you please stick this joker face-up somewhere in

the deck?”

As you’re speaking take the deck out of the case and run through the deck face-up

dropping the joker face-up on the table when you come to it. Work the cards so that

after the joker’s on the table, you have a break between the Two of Clubs and the Four

of Hearts slightly above the middle of the face-down deck. Have the spectator place the

joker face-up in the deck as you riffle the outer end and time the riffle so they place the

joker somewhere below the break. You’re now in position for a force credited to Stanley

Collins in The Amateur Magician’s Handbook by Henry Hay.

You should be holding a face-down deck in your left hand with the face-up joker sticking

halfway out of the deck. You should also be holding a break slightly above the middle of

the deck between the Two of Clubs and the Four of Hearts. With your right hand, clip

the joker between your right forefinger and your right middle finger while at the same

time grasping all the cards above the break between the right forefinger (which is

already in position) and the right thumb, which is at the rear of the deck. By moving your

right hand forward, you carry the joker and all the cards above the break forward. This is

all done as you say “Right there? Do you want to change your mind…?” As soon as the

joker clears the deck, move your right hand up six inches and then back down as you

say “…you can move it up, down…?” On the word down, place the cards in your right

hand (with the joker still out jogged) on the cards in your left hand. You have now

secretly (and cleverly!) re-positioned the joker so that it is between your two force cards.

The spectator will almost never change his mind but if he does, it’s a simple matter to

retake the break as you remove the joker and start over again. This entire procedure

takes only about six seconds from the point where the spectator sticks the joker in the

deck. One of the strong points of this force is that once the spectator confirms that he

does not want to change his mind, the dirty work is already done!

Ribbon spread the deck face down with the joker still out jogged as you continue:

“Okay, you’ve stuck this joker between these two cards. Once of these cards will

determine the suit of the card and the other will determine the value—you get to decide

which is which!” Turn the cards on either side of the joker face up and look at the

spectator. “So which one will determine the suit? The Four of Hearts? So we’re looking

for the Two of Hearts, right?” Say the name of the selection clearly so that everyone

knows the spectator’s choices have resulted into a search for the Two of Hearts. (or

Four of Clubs). Then turn all the cards face down and start mixing the cards in a pile on

the table. Dramatically select a random face down card and announce:

“And now folks, the moment you’ve been waiting for… the Two of Hearts!”

Look very disappointed at the lack of reaction and say “Did I mention that this is the

NON-Working, Self-Working Card Trick? This trick has an amazing history… why even

Dai Vernon couldn’t get this trick to work and he had at least a dozen people working on

it! Ed Marlo had 32 different versions of this trick… none of which worked! Why

ANYONE can make this trick not work… Sir, would you point to a card? Look! The Two

of Hearts!” Hold up the card and as soon as you do say “C’mon, you didn’t think I’d fail

to fail did you? It’s a sure thing! This Non-Working Self-Working Card Trick was

pioneered by the Infamous Yellow Kid Weil and his side-kick, the high-ass kid…” look at

whoever snickers… “I’m not kidding, that was his real nickname. What else would you

call a long legged card cheat? As a matter of fact, it was Yellow Kid Weil that

discovered the REAL NON-WORK to the Infamous Non-Working, Self-Working Card

Trick. You see, the only way this trick can be guaranteed to fail every single time is to

make sure that the selected card… is not in the deck.” As you say the last few words,

place your hand in the appropriate pocket and pull out the selected card. DO NOT show

your hand empty first. You’re doing this for magicians and you want to leave doubt as to

if you palmed the card or not. Just put your hand in your pocket and pull out the card.

That’s enough. Go home happy!

>>>>

A spectator mentally selects a card from a random group of cards and that group is

spread throughout the deck. The CardGuy shuffles the deck further, then announces he

will “set” the mentally chosen card on the very next shuffle. In the middle of the

CardGuy’s riffle shuffle, the spectator names her card. The riffle is finished and the deck

is handed to the spectator who is instructed to “Spell out the name of your card!” The

spectator spells out the name of her card by dealing one card for each letter and the

mentally selected card falls on the last letter.

( >

This is a re-vamped version of “Thought Stealer” from “The Royal Road To Card

Magic”, but there isn’t a single CardGuy out there that has recognized it when I’ve

performed it. The methodology is rather simple, but it does require some preliminary

work.

First, you’ll have to know how every card is spelled out without hesitation. This means

that if I wake you up in the middle of the night with a phone call and shout “Nine of

Diamonds!” into the phone you will shout back “Fourteen!” without even thinking. Don’t

worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds and as Dai Vernon said “All magicians should know

how cards spell out.” I’ll give you a little system at the end of the effect.

Start out by having the spectator shuffle the deck and as he’s shuffling say “In the world

of ‘advantage players’ (translate: card cheats), there is a concept known as ‘Dead Solid

Perfect’. This refers to an almost mythical ability to perform some sort of cheating

maneuver perfectly with no warning whatsoever. In other words, the move is performed

at virtually the same exact time the opportunity presents itself.”

By this time the spectator will be finished shuffling, so take the deck from him and

spread the cards face up between your hands and start up jogging the cards you need.

Look for a high value speller near the bottom of the deck (Like the Queen of Diamonds

or the Five of Diamonds) and then look for a card that spells with one less letter to upjog

next—like the Eight of Spades or Four of Diamonds. Continue spreading the cards until

you see one that spells with one less letter. Keep up-jogging cards in this fashion until

you have five or six cards up-jogged. Fan out the deck with the faces of the cards

towards the spectator (and the cards still up-jogged) and tell the spectator to remember

one of the up-jogged cards. Just in case you haven’t realized it yet, the up-jogged cards

spell out in sequence. The up-jogged card nearest the top of the deck spells out with

one less letter than the up-jogged card below it, etc. Once the spectator has confirmed

she’s made a selection, close up the fan with the cards still out-jogged and perform the

Cardini Multiple Shift as described in the “Hybrid Sleights” section of these notes. You

can, of course, use any multiple shift that will leave the up-jogged cards on top of the

deck in their original order.

You now should have five or six cards on top of the deck in the order in which they spell

out—for example 6S, 9H, QS, 5D & 8D from the top down.

I cannot emphasize this enough: you must show no hesitation or thinking when

you up-jog these cards and you cannot change the position of any cards!! It

must look like you’re just up-jogging cards at random!! The entire sequence

should take less than 30 seconds!!

Now all you have to do is add the appropriate number of cards to the top of the deck

and you’re ready to go! Using our example (6S, 9H, QS, 5D & 8D), you’d have to add

ten cards to the top of the deck and then any card in the group that the spectator names

will spell out on the last letter! Usually, I just run five cards, injog and throw on top and

then shuffle off to the break. Then I’ll add the remaining five during the next riffle shuffle.

Table the deck and tell the spectator “I am now going to demonstrate this mythological

skill by setting your card during a shuffle. I guarantee you it will be ‘dead solid perfect’.

All I need you to do is wait until I start the next shuffle and then say the name of your

card in a loud clear voice—but not until just after I’ve started the shuffle! Once I start,

you’ll only have a few seconds…so get ready.”

You will now Zarrow in under five cards, but you’ll want to start the shuffle slowly so the

spectator will have time to say the name of her mentally selected card. When she has

said it, change speed in the shuffle or hesitate for just one second (no more!) so it looks

as if you were reacting to what she said. Finish the shuffle and then say “Now, if I did

this correctly then I’ve set your card at a precise location during the shuffle. In other

words, I made the move at virtually the same exact time you named your card.” Hand

her the deck and tell her to “spell out your card taking one card from the top of the deck

for each letter in your card…” Just before she gets to the last card, tell her to place the

last card face down in your hand. As you turn the card up it’s always a nice touch to

say: “Yep. Dead. Solid. Perfect.”

5 # >

Here is a methodology that will make learning how cards spell out much easier. First,

learn these three pieces of information:

• Clubs = 7

• Hearts or Spades = 8

• Diamonds = 10

This numbers here represent how many letters are in the suit and the word “of”. For

example “of hearts” spells out with 8 letters. Notice how the suits in those three lines

are in CHaSeD order? Makes it even easier to learn, right? Now look at the following

three charts:

Value 3

Value 4

Value 5

So to know how to spell out any card, all you have to do is add two numbers—one for

the suit and one for the value. However, even that is too much thinking so I suggest you

make up a set of flash cards with an old deck by writing how many letters spell out each

card on the back of the card. Then use the above chart to learn your flash deck. You

should be able to look at the face of any card and instantly know how many letters will

spell it out. This is similar to Marlo’s “Flash Speller” however the goal here is to train

yourself to know how cards spell out instantly with no calculation at all.

Finally, remember that learning how cards are spelled out has many, many more

advantages than just being able to do this effect. See Paul Chosse’s “Triple Header” in

these lecture notes for another killer application.

Ace

Two

Six

Ten

Four

Five

Nine

Jack

King

Three

Seven

Eight

Queen

+ #

>>>>

After performing a few miracles with a blue-backed deck of cards, the CardGuy decides

he will demonstrate his awesome power of mind-control. Taking out a single blue-

backed card, he places it on the table and puts the blue-backed deck in its case. He

then pulls a red-backed deck of cards from his pocket and places the single blue-

backed card on top of the red-backed deck and then cuts and ruffle shuffles the deck

thoroughly. Flipping through the faces of the cards, the CardGuy asks the spectator to

think of any card she sees and then he ribbon spreads the deck face-up on the table.

“What card are you thinking of?” asks the CardGuy and when the spectator answers,

the thought of card is slid out of the spread and turned over to reveal it’s the blue-

backed card!

(

>>>>

This effect requires a totally gaffed deck but it’s one piece of killer mentalism. It also

has a built in way to ring in and out the gaff.

The gaffed deck consists of 26 short red-backed cards alternating with 26 normal blue-

backed cards that comprise a Svengali Deck, but with the backs rather than the faces.

To make the deck, take out a shiny brand new deck of red-backed playing cards and

remove the Jokers and advertising cards. Shuffle the deck well and deal out 26 random

cards. These will be your short cards. Cut the cards and round the corners in the

traditional fashion and then take out a shiny new blue-backed deck and remove the

duplicates of the gaffed red-backed cards, the Jokers and advertising cards. Combine

what’s left with the short red-backed cards and you should have a complete deck of 52

cards—but 26 of them will be short red-backed cards and 26 will be regular blue-backed

cards. Alternate the red and blue backs, ending with a blue-backed card on top of the

deck and then put the deck in a red-backed card case.

>>>>

The only secret preparation for the effect is to remove the blue-backed card from the top

of the gaffed deck and leave it at home, out of the way—but remember the identity of

this card!! Your gaffed deck should not appear as a red-backed deck in a red-backed

case. The only sleights used are those that are normally involved in using a Svengali

Deck: The Dribble, The Riffle Shuffle and the ability to riffle the deck so the spectator

can mentally select a card.

A>>>>

1) Perform a few tricks with a normal blue-backed deck of cards. (This is important!!)

2) Make a prediction by spreading the blue-backed cards towards you and picking out

the duplicate of the blue-backed card you removed from your gaff earlier. (I told you to

remember the card!!) Place the prediction card on the table without letting anyone see

it and then case the blue-backed deck.

3) Remove the gaffed deck and dribble it into your left hand. Only red-backed cards

should show. Talk while you do this; don’t do it more than once or twice and don’t say

anything like: “I have here an ordinary deck of red-backed playing cards which is not

prepared in any way…”

4) Place the blue-backed card on top of the gaffed deck and cut in into the deck. If you

lift up from the back of the deck with your right thumb, you will not cut a blue-backed

card to the top. This is important, of course, because if you cut to a blue-backed card

the audience will either think that you’re cutting the deck at the same exact place and

that you are not to be trusted or they will correctly conclude that you have more than

one blue-backed card in the deck. Cut the deck a few times in this manner.

5) Riffle shuffle the deck a few times by the ends in the traditional Svengali Deck

fashion.

6) Explain to the spectator that she can pick any card she sees as you flip through the

deck. Emphasize that she must select a card that she actually sees, because you want

her to have a clear picture of the card in her mind. Clamp the lower end of the deck

between your left thumb and your left middle and index finger, riffle through the cards

from the face-card on up to the top card of the deck. This will only let the spectator see

the faces of the blue-backed cards.

7) Ribbon spread the gaffed deck face-up (a very wide spread will eliminate any hint of

that rough/smooth stuff) on the table and ask the spectator what card she is thinking of

and when she names the card, slide it out of the spread and turn it face-down to reveal

that it has a blue back.

>>>>

After you’ve had your moment of glory, replace the card the spectator named and as

you’re picking up the spread, cut the deck so the card you originally removed from the

blue-backed deck is on top. Place the deck in the red-backed card case and then as

you start to put them away, suddenly realize that the blue-backed card is still on top of

the deck and then remove it and place it in the blue-backed deck without letting the

audience see the face. This should appear as if you forgot to remove the prediction

card and went back, removed it and replaced it in the blue-backed deck. It should not

appear as anything important—treat it like an afterthought!

5 # >

When you first start working with this gaffed deck some blue-backed cards will show.

After a suitable “breaking-in” period, you should have no such problems.

Please note that the sleights used in this routine are not usually recognized by lay

people who are in the know about the Svengali Deck. Most lay people who are familiar

with the Svengali Deck do not know that you can riffle shuffle it, use the dribble or use

any selection procedure besides having a spectator stick his finger in the deck.

Permission to manufacture these decks for personal use, but not for commercial sale is

granted by Steven Youell.

>>>>

The deck is fairly shuffled and cut. The spectator deals cards face-down until he wants

to stop. The CardGuy instantly knows the selected card’s identity. Hold on to your

Breather Crimp and think about these points:

• No memory work

• The deck is really shuffled and cut

• No gaffs or stooges or difficult sleights

• The entire selection procedure and replacement takes place in the spectator’s

hands

Used as an “Impossible Location” effect, this method has fooled some of the world’s top

CardGuys—including Paul Chosse, Mike Skinner, and Larry Jennings.

(

( >>>>

You need to start out with a thirteen card setup. From the top down: AH, 2S, 3H, 4S,

5H, 6S, 7H, 8S, 9H, 10S, JH, QS, KH. When you’re ready, tell the spectator that you’re

going to take particular pains to let him know the deck is shuffled. Take the top twenty

cards and straddle-faro them into the center of the deck. Make sure that there are more

cards below the weave than above (or vice-versa) so you can point out that not only are

the cards mixed in the center but it’s obvious to see that it’s a random shuffle. Give the

deck a few cuts and ribbon spread it on the table face-up on the table to show the cards

are mixed well and as you close up the spread, cut the deck so that the AH is second

from the top. That leaves you with a 26 card stack.

Hand the deck to the spectator and tell him to deal cards one at a time face-down to the

table and to stop anytime he feels compelled to stop. As he is dealing, silently count the

cards he deals. If he deals an odd number of cards to the table have him look at the top

card of the deck but if he deals an even number of cards to the table, then tell him to

look at the last card dealt. Remember—you want him to look at a card in an even

position.

To determine the value of the card, divide its position by two. If you get an odd value

you know it’s a Heart; if you get an even value, you know it’s a spade. Example: he

looks at the 16

card. That card is the Eight of Spades.

Okay, not that you understand the principle let’s have some real fun and look at a few

different ways to use this!

>>>>

If you use this on magicians as an “impossible location” effect, start out by asking him if

he’s ever read any John Scarne. Regardless of what he says, ask him “You know, John

Scarne said that the only sure way to be positive the deck isn’t stacked is to ‘take out

the center’. So that’s what I’m going to do…” Straddle faro the deck as I described

earlier and point out to him that the number of cards below are weave are different from

the number above the weave by saying something like “See—not even calculated. In

fact, take a look—there’s no stack!” Spread the cards out letting him get a good look,

cut the AH and an X card to the top and then run him through the selection procedure.

When he’s done, tell him to bury the card anywhere in the deck, assemble the deck and

give it a good shuffle. That’s the point where the look on his face will change every

single time. Name the card in the most satisfying way possible and then don’t tip for at

least a week….

The possibilities for this procedure are endless if you’re using it for a lay audience—I’ll

give you two and let your imagination do the rest. Run a spectator through the selection

procedure from across the room and then have her place her selection face down on

the table without looking at it. Then have her case the remainder of the deck and pull

out a Brainwave Deck or Invisible Deck. Show that you have made a prediction before

the show, run through the cards and pull out one single odd-backed card. Place it face

down on the table next to the spectators card and turn them both over. This will

confound even the laypeople that know about the “Invisible Deck” or “Brainwave”

presentation because the only way they can imagine the trick to work is if you know the

selection beforehand.

Of course, since the spectator is limited to a choice of only 13 cards, it would be fairly

easy to combine this procedure and load your prediction into a wallet.

With thought you will find this principle so useful you won’t go out of the house (or to a

magic convention) without a deck stacked for this procedure! As a matter of fact, I will

not walk into the Magic Castle unless I have at least three decks stacked for this effect!

>>>>

The CardGuy tells his audience that he can actually tell is someone is lying just by the

sound of their voice. To prove this, he has a deck thoroughly shuffled while someone

else blindfolds the CardGuy, who remains blindfolded through the remainder of the

effect. A card is selected and the deck (with the card in it) is shuffled. The CardGuy

has the spectator take out five cards, including the selection. One by one, the CardGuy

holds up each card and the spectator says each time “No, that’s not my card!”.

Nevertheless, the CardGuy picks one card out of the five and it is the selected card!

( >

Properly performed, this effect is devastating! It uses one utility sleight and the fact that

a normal blindfold still allows you to see things if you look straight down the ridge of

your nose. This is such a well known dodge in magic that I thought it was common

public knowledge until I once saw a so-called “psychic” fool a room full of scientists with

it! The sleight that I use is the standard peek, which I will describe, but if you want

pictures, look it up on page 24 of The Amateur Magician’s Handbook by Henry Hay.

Start out by having the deck shuffled while you launch into your pitch:

“You know, sometimes I can tell someone’s lying just by the sound of their voice. No

kidding—I’ll show you!”

Take a large dinner napkin (or a scarf), roll it up and have yourself blindfolded, making

sure that you can see down the ridge of your nose. Ask for the deck to be placed in

your left hand and then ask if it’s face-up or face-down—just as you would if you really

couldn’t see. If it’s face-down then proceed, if it’s face-up then turn it face-down and

have the spectator peek at a card in the traditional manner by riffling the index corner of

the deck and having the spectator say stop. Catch a little-finger break under the

selected card and execute the glimpse by making these two motions together: move

your left thumb underneath the front left corner of the deck and turn your left hand palm-

down. This will automatically step the deck at the break and if you look right at the bend

in your left wrist you will see the index of the selected card. Without hesitation, grasp

the small end of the deck with your right forefinger and thumb and withdraw it from your

left hand, squaring the deck with your left forefinger and thumb as it is drawn from the

left hand. Hold the deck out and ask the spectator to take the deck and shuffle it.

Remember, the hard thing about most glimpses is that you have to identify the card in a

split-second glance at your hands. But while you’re blindfolded you can stare right

down the ridge of your nose and keep your eyes on your hands! As long as you don’t

move your head, the audience will believe that you can’t see a thing!

Once you have glimpsed the card in the process of handing the deck out to be shuffled,

extend your left hand palm-up (keeping it within your range of sight) and tell the

spectator to hand you any five cards, but one of the five cards has to be the card he

selected. Turn the cards over in your hands a few times, ending with the cards face-up

as you say “Now I can’t tell whether these cards are face-up or face-down… which is

it?” As you end this sentence, spread the face-up cards slightly between your hands

and locate the position of the selection. Important: these actions are to emphasize your

words—it shouldn’t look like your words justify your actions! When the spectator tells

you they’re face-up turn the cards face-down and say “I’m going to show you each of

the five cards and each time I show you one, I want you to say ‘No, that’s not my card!’

Hopefully, I’ll be able to tell just by the sound of your voice which one is yours!”

Hold up each of the five cards one at a time and the spectator will say each time “No,

that’s not my card!” Pause dramatically as if you were thinking and then say something

like: “I think it was this one…” Remove the selection and hold it face-down and then say

“For the first time, would you please name your card?” When he names the card, show

the face to the audience and end the effect by saying “Did I get it…?”

5 # >

Unless you’re a highly trained actor, keep your eyes closed after you’re blindfolded with

the exception of the moment when you need to glimpse the card and the moment when

you need to sight the card’s position in the packet. Also, remember to move your eyes

but never your head! To help with this, keep your hands close to your body, within your

line of sight. This will look natural because if you really were blindfolded and handling

small objects, it’s natural to keep them close to your body.

)

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Hacker: a technician, (usually a computer programmer), who combines known

principles into new tools with the sole motivation of saving himself work.

For over 10 years, I’ve toyed with the idea of a memorized stack. There are many great

ones out there, including Aronson’s and the venerable Nikola. However there were two

mental blocks I could just not get around. First, I could not see myself setting the order

of the deck one card at a time and secondly, I could not stand the idea of using sleights

to maintain the order of the deck during a routine. This is a dead tip-off to any magician

and many laypeople that the deck is stacked. Magicians do this because of the time and

effort required to arrange all 52 cards into a full-deck stack. Instead, I wanted a

memorized full-deck stack that I could set up in less than 30 seconds. This meant that I

could use the stack, destroy the evidence and leave no trail whatsoever. And it’s

always better to leave no trail than to try and cover your trail. The answer came in a

1988 book by Darwin Ortiz called “Darwin Ortiz At The Card Table”. On page 137

Darwin describes a methodology of getting a new deck into Si Stebbins order by using a

simple shuffle sequence that takes less than 30 seconds. For those of you not familiar

with the Si Stebbins Stack, it is a cyclical full-deck stack. The suites rotate in the order

of Clubs, Hearts, Spades & Diamonds (Known as CHaSeD order) and the value of the

cards increased by three each time. For example if the top card is the 3 of Clubs, the

next card would be the 6 of Hearts, the next card would be the 9 of Spades and the card

after that would be the Queen of Diamonds. For those of you who need more

information on the Si Stebbins Stack, you’ll find a more complete article at the back of

the book. Since Darwin’s book is still available, you will have to purchase it in order to

learn “The Si Stebbins Secret”—however I guarantee you it will be one of the most

valuable books in your library. Mr. Ortiz could have sold me this shuffle sequence for

the price of the book and I would not have complained. (Too late now, Darwin…!)

Hold on to your card cases, friends—I’ve memorized the Si Stebbins stack. I don’t

mean I’m just using the Si Stebbins stack—I’ve memorized it. You tell me a number and

I’ll tell you what card is in that position. You tell me a card and I’ll tell you where it is.

Darwin’s shuffle sequence means that I can open a brand new deck, shuffle it and

have a memorized, cyclical stack in less than 30 seconds! Did you get that?

Memorized and Cyclical! IN 30 SECONDS!!! It also means that I can do any effect

that uses a memorized stack and any effect that uses the Si Stebbins Stack. Now that’s

what I call hacking! As a matter of fact, I find this stack so useful; I almost never go out

of the house with a deck unless it’s stacked or sealed (so I can stack it while shuffling)!

While some of the effects in this section can be done with either a memorized stack or

the Si Stebbins Stack, combining the two has enormous advantages which no other

stack has!

# #

A few Cardmen have told me that this stack is impractical for use with other magicians,

since they would immediately recognize it due to the cyclical nature of the stack. Those

are the Cardmen that I will usually flummox with the following sequence.

To be sure, if you ribbon spread a Si Stebbins stack face-up and let a fellow magician

gaze at if for a few seconds, then the stack will be recognized. But most Cardmen

recognize a full-deck stack or a set-up for only two reasons:

1) They see a sequence of cards that allows them to identify the stack or set-up.

2) They recognize sleights that the performer is using to maintain the order of the

stack.

Guess what? You can eliminate both of those tip-offs with this stack. First, you don’t

need to let them see a sequence of cards that will tip them off. Instead, let them see a

sequence of cards that will make them think you couldn’t be using a stack. For example,

openly overhand shuffle the top half of the deck into your left hand and then throw the

bottom half on top. Turn the deck face-up and then spread the cards out a little

pretending to study them. Muttering “Yeah, that looks ok…” is a great idea because any

CardGuy worth his side-steal would then look at those face-up cards trying to figure out

exactly what you’re looking at—but you’re just planting the idea in his head that there

isn’t a stack in play. Then turn the deck face-down and undercut the bottom half of the

deck, shuffling it openly onto the top half. Have him select a card from the bottom half

of the deck and as he’s looking at it, cull the card above it to the bottom of the deck.

Now riffle shuffle, maintaining the bottom card. You can easily determine what the

selection is by glimpsing the bottom card. Cut the deck and let him replace the card

himself and then have him shuffle the deck. Have him ribbon spread the deck face-up

on the table and stare at if for 30 to 60 seconds. Make sure you move your eyes all

through the spread as if you were gaining information from the faces of the cards. Then

name the card. I have used this exact sequence time and time again to fool some of the

most highly knowledgeable Cardmen in the world—especially the ones who told me I

couldn’t fool them with this stack! By the way when you do this, be prepared to wait for

several minutes before you get your deck back. I’ve had guys look for marks, bumps,

crimps, and even daub! My advice is to let them exhaust themselves! One final note: if

you’re going to use this, my advice is to set the stack before you go out of the house.

That way, even those familiar with “The Si Stebbins Secret” won’t have a clue.

(

In “Darwin Ortiz At The Card Table”, Darwin published what is, in my opinion, the

strongest gambling demonstration that has ever seen print—The Ultimate Cardshark.

When I met Darwin and got a chance to ask him about the routine, he told me that to his

knowledge (and surprise), there were only three other Cardmen besides himself who

actually used the routine: Me, David Malek and Andrew Wimhurst. The following routine

has a similar ending, is practically self-working and should have any audience

convinced you can have complete control over the cards. This routine takes advantage

of an underused facet of the Si Stebbins Stack.

On page 307 of Greater Magic, John Northern Hilliard writes:

If the arranged deck is cut to bring a deuce to the bottom and four poker

hands are then dealt, three will be straight flushes and the fourth, the

dealer’s hand, will be a royal flush.

So let’s take advantage of this, shall we…?

If you really want to convince an audience you can deal any hand you want, carry a

brand new sealed deck of Bicycle Playing cards and wait until you’re asked if you can

cheat at cards. Look around suspiciously and say “Well, yes but I seldom advertise that

ability—too many people ask me to take them to Vegas afterwards… and frankly I find

that place boring! But I will give you a little demonstration as long as you promise not to

ask me to go…” Pull out the new deck and show it to the spectator having them confirm

that it is just what it appears to be— “a brand new sealed deck of regulation playing

cards.” Make sure you use that phrase at least once, since it provides motivation for the

new deck. Have the spectator break open the seal and hand you the deck from the

case. Shuffle it into Si Stebbins Order and cut the deck so the two of spades is at the

bottom. Although there are a variety of ways you can do this, I will usually spread the

cards with the faces towards me and say something like “Oh yeah, brand new cards--

these feel great…” as I cut the two of spades to the bottom. As soon as you have the

two of spades to the bottom do a few false riffle shuffles and then a few tabled false cuts

and then deal out four hands of poker. Turn over the dealer’s hand to display a Royal

Flush in spades. Then say something like “Now, everyone knows that the customary

number of hands in a game is five, but I dealt four just so I could show you that I have

the ability to switch games in mid-deal.” Leaving the dealers hand face up and the other

hands face down, deal out the rest of the deck face-down in the same rotation as you

dealt the poker hands as you say “Does anybody know anything about bridge? Well, a

pat hand in bridge is all 13 cards of one suit!” Start turning over the players hands to

reveal that they all have a perfect bridge hand but just before you turn your hand over

say “But since statistically this could only occur once in over 3 Billion years, the powers

that be ranked Spades the highest!” Turn over your hand and smile.

0 '

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In 1967 Gene Finnell published his manuscript entitled “Gene Finnell’s Free Cut

Principle”. Around 1975 Cardmen such as Martin Nash and Darwin Ortiz started

coming up with routines that would combine the plot of Vernon’s Aces from Harry

Lorayne’s Close-up Card Magic with the Free Cut Principle. Several routines have since

been published but in my mind they were all problematic because you had to have four

piles of exactly 12 cards each and I wanted a way this could be done casually and

seemingly carelessly. Here’s a version that uses the Hacker Stack to get around that

awkwardness. Assuming you have a deck in Si Stebbins order, ask a spectator to

name any four of a kind they like. Let’s say they name the fives. Cut the deck a few

times and then spread it between your hands with the faces towards you and away from

the audience. Find the five closest to the top of the deck and table all the cards above it

face-down. Place the five face-up in front of the tabled face-down cards. Then find the

five nearest the bottom of the deck and place all the cards below it face-down on the

tabled face-down cards. You now have a face-down pile of exactly 12 cards. Place the

five (now on the face of the deck) face-up next to the first five and then take all the

cards below the next five and table them face-down (again—12 cards! Cool, you’re

avoiding having to count...!) Place the five that is now on the face of the deck face-up

next to the others and then take the twelve cards below the next five and table them

face-down as you did the others. This leaves you with 13 cards in your hands.

Overhand shuffle them casually and then spread them out taking the five from

somewhere near the center of the packet, drop the remainder of the cards face-down

and place the last five face-up next to the other fives. You now have a row of face-up

fives with a packet of exactly 12 face-down cards in front of each five. The key here is

to make it look like your tabling the face-down cards because they’re in the way of

finding all the fives! That point bears repeating: Your attitude should reflect that you’re

finding the fives, not making four even piles!

To make things easier, we’ll number the piles and assume the fives are in CHaSeD

order, as shown by this illustration:

Pick up pile one and casually give them an overhand shuffle. Hand them to a spectator

on your left and request that she remove a small amount of cards from the pile, conceal

them from you and then put the rest back in front of the 5C. Turn your head while you

do this while saying “That’ll be the ‘X Factor’—the unknown that I’ll have to deal with

later.” Instruct another spectator to put the 5C on top of what remains of pile one and

then move some cards from pile two onto pile one, burying the 5C. Then have him place

the 5H on top of what’s left of pile two and bury it with some cards from pile three. Then

(you’ve probably guessed by now) have him place the 5S on what’s left of pile three and

bury it with some cards from pile four. Finally, have the spectator who initially cut a

small packet of cards from pile one place the pile in your left hand. Put the 5D on

what’s left of pile 4 and as you’re doing so, crimp the bottom card of the packet in your

left hand by pulling the index corner down slightly with your left pinky. Drop the cards in

your left hand on the 5D and then assemble the piles by stacking them on top of each

other and then carefully square the deck. Locate and cut the crimped card to the bottom

and then give the deck two out-faros as you recap the situation: “There’s no way I could

know where any of the fives are. You buried them and you mixed them in the deck—

and there’s no way I could know how many cards were cut off the first pile…but since I

want you to be certain that the cards are shuffled, I’ll shuffle them in slow motion.”

Square the cards and table the deck with the long edges towards you. Give the deck an

even, slow, deliberate riffle shuffle but retain the top four cards. They are the four fives.

Now execute any type of fancy false cut that will maintain the false stock as you say “On

a good day, I should be able to cut to a five….” With your right hand, reach over the

tabled deck as if you’re going to pick it up, but instead riffle up the side of the deck

closest to you with your right thumb until you have only four cards left. Flip them face up

on the table as you say “But this isn’t a good day, it’s a great day!”

5 # >

This is a good effect but to be truthful, many different versions of this effect have been

published. It’s the advantage of using The Hacker Stack to set up the effect that I think

is worth noting – the effect is included for the sake of completeness. Although I have

come up with a few worthwhile sequences that come close to this setup that can be

done from a shuffled deck, nothing is easier than using The Hacker Stack to set up

Finnell’s Free Cut Principle.

Since I know that magicians tend to tinker (myself included) I feel as though I should

warn against changing the final revelation. As Darwin Ortiz correctly points out, the

impossibility lies in instantly finding the cards all together, not in finding each one of the

card from different parts of the deck.

Darwin Ortiz’s first version of this was Combination Aces, published in a book by Harry

Lorayne called Afterthoughts and more recently an updated version was published in

Darwin’s book Scams & Fantasies with Cards. Martin Nash also had a version called

Vernash Aces that was published in the book Ever So Sleightly.

)

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Once I saw Harry Lorayne do a phenomenal memory demonstration on The Tonight

Show and ever since I’ve read almost everything he’s written on mnemonics. I was

absolutely fascinated by Lorayne’s ability to have a deck shuffled, let one person

remove a card and then Harry would run through the deck and announce which card

was missing. He did this by actually memorizing the cards that were left and then

matching them against an ordered list. All of this was done in his head! Now I got that

to work a few times and I’m sure that if I applied myself I could probably do it every time,

because Harry’s systems work-- they really do! But a few years ago, I heard a very

funny story about Harry and it sparked an idea. Someone told me that Harry would

occasionally cheat when doing this stunt in his memory school. He didn’t need to cheat

because he could really do it. But once in a while he just didn’t feel like putting forth the

mental effort, so he would use sleight-of-hand. I thought that was hilarious and have

developed a pseudo-mnemonics demonstration that’s easy to do and can give you a

reputation that will far exceed your actual memory.

Start out with a sealed deck and shuffle it into Si Stebbins order. Spread through the

first third of the deck and have a spectator select one of the cards, look at it and put it in

his pocket. As you move away from the first spectator cull the card above the location of

the selection to the bottom of the deck and then close up the deck. Spread to the middle

of the deck and offer a spectator a choice, culling the card above her selection to the

bottom as she looks at and then pockets her card just as you did with the first spectator.

Finally, spread to the bottom third of the deck and offer a third spectator a selection

repeating the culling action. Give the deck a riffle shuffle, maintaining the bottom three

cards and then table the deck. You now have three spectators who each have a card in

their pocket and the three bottom cards will tell you the identity of the selections. Since

the deck has been shuffled, there should be no evidence of the stack left. Start your

pitch: “In almost any card game one of the most important skills you can develop is your

memory. If you know which cards have been played and which cards are waiting to be

played, you’ll have an enormous advantage over any other player. However, although

you may have heard legends or seen such players in the movies, I can assure you that

very few people have been able to train their memory this well, but I believe that I have

and would like to test myself tonight. Each of you has selected and pocketed a card

from a shuffled deck. What I intend to do is to glance at the deck and memorize the

cards that are left. I will then calculate which cards are missing from the ones I’ve

memorized. And I’ll do this all in less than 30 seconds.” Ribbon spread the deck face-

up on the table and make sure that every card can be seen clearly. Scan the spread up

and down several times and as you do, note the card third from the bottom. Pretend to

calculate for a few seconds and then (using the noted card) announce one of the

missing cards. Scan the spread again and using the same method announce the

identity of the card that was picked first. (Indicated by the bottom card.) Start to scan the

spread again but pretend to realize something then immediately close the spread,

noting the card second from the bottom as you do so. Hand the deck to someone and

say “Now let’s make it really impossible—shuffle the deck, would you?” When you get

the deck back, turn it face-up and riffle the cards so you can see the faces. It is

important that you riffle them slowly enough to see the index of every card! This makes

the idea that you’re memorizing them more plausible. After you’ve seen all the cards

table the deck face-down and then pretend to calculate for a few seconds while the

tension builds. Then announce the last card but draw it out like your still thinking as

you’re naming it: “The..four…of….hearts!”

5 # >

Acting like your making great mental calculations is much easier if you’re really doing

math problems in your head. I tend to add three digit numbers…. Also, moving your lips

just enough so that the audience gets the idea that you’re almost verbalizing the

calculations will also help sell this effect.

Do not call out the cards in the order in which they were selected and do not reveal

that you know who selected what. That would weaken the premise of the effect.

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The Hacker Stack consists of a deck in the following order:

Table One

1. 4C

14. 4H

27. 4S

40. 4D

2. 7H

15. 7S

28. 7D

41. 7C

3. 10S

16. 10D

29. 10C

42. 10H

4. KD

17. KC

30. KH

43. KS

5. 3C

18. 3H

31. 3S

44. 3D

6. 6H

19. 6S

32. 6D

45. 6C

7. 9S

20. 9D

33. 9C

46. 9H

8. QD

21. QC

34. QH

47. QS

9. 2C

22. 2H

35. 2S

48. 2D

10. 5H

23. 5S

36. 5D

49. 5C

11. 8S

24. 8D

37. 8C

50. 8H

12. JD

25. JC

38. JH

51. JS

13. AC

26. AH

39. AS

52. AD

This is the exact order the deck is in after using “The Si Stebbins Secret” from Darwin

Ortiz’s book Darwin Ortiz At The Card Table. By using this shuffle sequence and

memorizing this stack, you’ll have the following advantages over any other stack:

• Set it up in less than 30 seconds from new deck order.

• All the power of a Si Stebbins Stack and all the power of a memorized stack.

While some effects can be done with either a Si Stebbins Stack or a memorized stack,

no other stack will give you this much flexibility, power and ease of use. Although I’m

not presenting a complete treatise on card mnemonics here, I will give you the basics in

the hopes of inspiring you to use the Hacker Stack. At the end of this section there will

be a limited bibliography that I highly suggest you use. But for now, here are the “Cliff

Notes”:

F '

One of the core concepts behind most mnemonic systems is to translate intangible

things like numbers into pictures that you can then visualize. Table two contains the

only information you’ll have to memorize by rote. Don’t worry, it’s not that tough—if I can

do it, you can do it. Take it one step at a time.

Table Two

0 - s, z, c

1 - t, d

2 - n

3 - m

4 - r

5 - l

6 - Soft: j, sh, ch, g (as in job, shy, church and gentle)

7 - Hard: k, c, g, ck, (as in kick, coy and gun)

8 - v, f

9 - p, b

After you learned this, the rest is easy. It’s simply building on this chart. This should take

an average of an hour to learn.

F '

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Let’s translate the numbers one through 52 into things you can picture:

Table Three

14=

27=

40= RoSe

15=

28=

41= RoD

16=

29=

42= RaiN

17=

30=

43= RaM

18=

31=

44= RoweR

19=

32=

45= RoLL

20=

33=

46= RoaCH

21=

34=

47= RoCK

22=

35=

48= RooF

10=

23=

36=

49= RoPe

11=

24=

37=

50= LaCe

12=

25=

38=

51= LoT

13=

Tie

Noah

Rye

Law

Shoe

Cow

Ivy

Bee

ToeS

ToT

TiN

ToMb

26=

TiRe

ToweL

DiSH

TaCK

DoVe

TuB

NoSe

NeT

NuN

NaMe

NaiR

NaiL

NotCH

39=

NeCK

kNiFe

kNoB

MouSe

MaT

MooN

MuMMy

MoweR

MuLe

MatCH

MuG

MoVie

MoP

52= LioN

Note that by using the sounds (not necessarily the letters) each number translates into a

word that you can easily picture. Vowels and letters that are silent don’t count—just the

sounds. So 33 could easily translate into MuMMy or MoMMy, but you’d confuse it with

the word for the number 3 (Ma) so for now just use these words. You should know them

backwards, forwards and out of sequence. Flash cards can help you here, but it’s pretty

easy since the numbers translate directly from the phonetic alphabet in Table Two. The

average time to learn this chart should be one or two afternoons. Remember, you’re

only translating here, not using rote memory.

F '

0 "

Now it’s time to translate the cards into words you can picture. Study the following chart

and it will soon be apparent that, with few exceptions noted below, the suit of the card

determines the first letter in the word used to represent it and the value is represented

by the phonetic sound we learned earlier. So the AH could also be translated as HaTe,

HiDe or HooD. But as you can see, we’re using words that should be easily pictured in

your mind.

Table Four

AH- HaT

AC- CaT

AD- DaTe

AS- SuiT

2H- HeN

2C- CaN

2D- DuNe

2S- SuN

3H- HeM

3C- CoMb

3D- DiMe

3S- SuM

4H- HaRe

4C- CoRe

4D- DooR

4S- SeweR

5H- HaiL

5C- CoaL

5D- DoLL

5S- SaiL

6H- HaSH

6C- CaSH

6D- DaSH

6S- SaSH

7H- HoG

7C- CaKe

7D- DoCK

7S- SoCK

8H- HooF

8C- CuFF

8D- DiVe

8S- SaFe

9H- HooP

9C- CuP

9D- DeaD

9S- SoaP

10H- HoSe

10C- CaSe

10D- DiCe

10S- SauCe

JH- Heart

JC- Club

JD- diamond

JS- Spade

QH- Queen

QC- Cream

QD- dream

QS- steam

KH- Hinge

KC- King

KD- Drink

KS- Sing

Exceptions are the picture cards. All the jacks are represented by the particular suits:

Heart – The Organ

Spade – A shovel

Club – Like policemen carry

Diamond – Like a diamond ring.

The King of Clubs and Queen of Hearts are represented by picturing a King and a

Queen, respectively and the words for the remaining Queens and Kings each begin with

the letter of the suit and are approximate rhymes with Queen or King. Study the chart

and you’ll see what I mean. One of the best ways to learn this is to get out an old deck

of cards and write the word on the back of each individual card. Then get to work. When

you’re through you should be able to see a card and know the word as well as see the

word and know the card. This should take a few afternoons before you know all the

words.

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Okay, now you can represent each number from one to fifty-two with a picture and you

can represent every card in the deck with a picture. Put them together and you’ll have a

memorized stack. I’ve already explained that one of the core concepts in mnemonics is

translate intangible things into words you can visualize. The second core concept is

association. The way you know that the 6H is in the sixth position is that you associate

the 6H with the number six. And now that we have words for both the numbers and the

cards, it becomes fairly easy to combine association with visualization. Continuing with

our current example, the number six is represented by the word Shoe. The 6H is

represented by the word HaSH. If you can picture yourself (and I mean really see it in

your minds eye) wearing shoes made of hash, you created the necessary association.

This is based on the fact that it’s much easier to recall things that are bizarre, ridiculous

or even funny than it is to remember what you saw in your refrigerator the last time you

looked. So the more ridiculous or bizarre the better! And make sure you actually try and

visualize the picture that associates the two words. That’s really the key because it

forces you to concentrate. A few more examples of associations: a TiN Diamond would

tell you that the JD is number 12 in the stack; a HeN dressed as a NuN would tell you

that the 2H is in the 22

position and a RoLL that was made of CaSH would tell you

that the 6C is in the 45

position. Get it? Good, here’s the chart again:

Table Five

1. 4C

14. 4H

27. 4S

40. 4D

2. 7H

15. 7S

28. 7D

41. 7C

3. 10S

16. 10D

29. 10C

42. 10H

4. KD

17. KC

30. KH

43. KS

5. 3C

18. 3H

31. 3S

44. 3D

6. 6H

19. 6S

32. 6D

45. 6C

7. 9S

20. 9D

33. 9C

46. 9H

8. QD

21. QC

34. QH

47. QS

9. 2C

22. 2H

35. 2S

48. 2D

10. 5H

23. 5S

36. 5D

49. 5C

11. 8S

24. 8D

37. 8C

50. 8H

12. JD

25. JC

38. JH

51. JS

13. AC

26. AH

39. AS

52. AD

You’ll want to make up a deck of flash cards and after a while you should be able to go

through the faces and immediately know the numbers and vice-versa. When I was

learning this stack, I had my wife surprise me constantly by suddenly naming a card or

number and I would immediately (hopefully) name the corresponding value. Of course,

she didn’t really know if I was right or wrong but I could tell!

One final note: eventually you will not even see the pictures anymore. This entire

system is designed to put this information into long-term memory and once it’s there, it’ll

stay there. After a month or so you’ll see the JH and just know it’s the 38

card.

Well, that’s it in a nutshell—a very small nutshell, but I hope it inspires you to do the

work involved. If you do, you will have a very powerful tool that will allow you to do

things that other CardGuys only dream about!

5 # >

Here’s a list of books that you should own along with the reasons I suggest them!

Darwin Ortiz At The Card Table – by Darwin Ortiz

Without this book and the Si Stebbins Secret it contains, you’re just doing the same old

memorized stack stuff. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but why pass up on the

incredible tool of being able to set your stack up in a 30 second shuffle sequence?!?

The Memory Book – by Harry Lorayne and Jerry Lucas

The mother of all mnemonics books. It’s in paperback and will give you a full discourse

on mnemonics with playing cards.

Bound To Please – Simon Aronson

Simply Simon – Simon Aronson

Try The Impossible – Simon Aronson

The Aronson Approach – Simon Aronson

Mr. Aronson is The Godfather of Memorized Deck work and these three books will

contain enough memorized deck material to last you a lifetime.

) !

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Peeks and glimpses are by far the most underused category of Card Sleights in modern

Card Magic—yet properly used they are devastating. Why do so many CardGuys

ignore them? I can think of a few reasons:

1) The most widely known peeks are those that start with riffling the corner of the

deck or having a spectator lift the corner of the deck up to look at a card. This is

a highly unnatural selection procedure and is not easily justified or weaved into a

presentation. Although these can be powerful peeks, there are many more ways

to initiate a peek than that selection procedure.

2) The CardGuy populace tends to overlook peeks because once a card is peeked,

then we tend to think the card must still be controlled. Write this down: The

power in peeks lies in not having to control the card. Instead peek the card, lose

control and then regain control through strategy or subtlety.

3) We fail to recognize the powerful advantage of always knowing the identity of the

selection regardless of what we’re going to do with the selection. Think what

power you would have by always peeking the card before, during or after the

actual control. Even if the spectator asks to shuffle the deck—you still know the

card!

Now that you’re starting to recognize the power of peeks, here are a few that I use on a

regular basis!

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Let’s assume that you’re holding a break below the selection. The left thumb moves to

the outer left corner of the deck. As the left hand turns palm down, the left fingers

squeeze very slightly, forming a step at the break, and the left thumb lifts the left edge of

the deck away from the left palm. Once the left hand is palm down, you can see the

index of the card at the step near the heel of your left thumb. The right hand now

grasps the deck at the outer end; thumb above and fingers below, and takes the deck

from the left hand. As the right hand takes the deck, the cards are drawn between the

left thumb and forefinger, re-squaring the deck and closing the step. At this point you

can hand the deck to a spectator to shuffle with your right hand. It is important that all of

these motions flow smoothly into each other so that you create the illusion of simply

handing the deck out to be shuffled. To the best of my knowledge, this peek was first

published in “The Amateur Magician’s Handbook” by Henry Hay.

( >

Again, let’s assume that you’re holding a break below the selection. Grasp the deck with

the right thumb and second finger, the right thumb at the left side of the inner edge and

the right second finger at the left side of the outer edge. The right thumb and second

finger now carry the left edge of the deck up and to the right. As this happens, a step

naturally forms where the left little finger is holding a break. It is important to keep the

left pinky in contact with the break as the deck is being turned over. Once the deck is

face up, the left thumb and fingers grip it for a moment as the right hand grasps the

deck in position to dribble the cards. The left hand moves beneath the deck in readiness

to catch the falling cards. Start dribbling the cards into the left hand and once the cards

start falling, it is at this point that you look at the deck, apparently to make sure that you

catch the cards as you dribble them, but in reality to catch a glimpse of the index

exposed by the step as you’re dribbling the cards.

An alternate handling is to dribble the cards face up on the table and have a spectator

square and shuffle the deck. This looks impossible.

The Dribble peek is original with me and was published by Steve Beam in “Semi-

Automatic Card Tricks”.

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( >>>>

In this case the selection will be on top of the deck. This is a very useful peek to use

after you’ve controlled the card. Beginning with the cards in a left hand dealing grip, the

right hand grips the cards from above, the thumb at the inner end and the tips of all four

fingers at the outer end. The right forefinger should be pressing against the outer left

corner of the deck. The right hand tilts the cards to the right, so that the short edges of

the deck are vertical. The left hand now re-grips the deck with the thumb on the upper

long edge of the deck, and the fingers wrapping around the lower long edge of the deck.

The faces of the cards are now pointing to the left.

The left fingers now push up on the top card of the deck (the one closest to the right

palm). The card pivots on the right first finger at the outer upper corner of the deck,

while the left thumb ensures that only one card to slips by. The index of the top card is

visible near your right thumb. Once you have made your glimpse, the left fingers pull

the card back down, square with the rest of the cards. From here you can finish as you

like, lowering the deck back into a dealing position as if you had just squared them,

going into an overhand shuffle, or doing whatever other action is most appropriate to the

trick at hand.

Although I’m sure others have used similar peeks, I’ve not seen this in print and as far

as I know, this is original with me. I’ve used it for over 20 years.

5 #

Hold the deck in the same exact starting position as in the Flex Peek and when you

want to sight the top card, riffle the upper back corner of the deck with your right thumb.

Make sure your right thumb follows through and does not stop or slow down. If you look

at the corner of the deck at the last possible moment you will clearly see the index of the

top card. The effect is similar to the “retention of vision” principle and properly done it

seems impossible that you could sight the top card.

Again, I’m sure someone else must have thought of this but I can find no references to it

in print and I’ve been using it for several years.

(

5 #

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5 #

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5 #

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5 #

>>>>

Spread the cards face down between your hands and ask a spectator to touch one. Out

jog the selected card and close the spread leaving the selection out jogged. Tell the

spectator that you will allow them to change their mind if they like before you show them

the selection. Once they confirm they’re happy, grip the selection at the outer right

corner between the right thumb and first finger. Withdraw the card from the deck and

hold it at a 45

° slant with the upper end closer to you. Tell the spectator to remember

the card and as you say this do two things simultaneously: Turn your head away to the

left but at the last possible moment, flick the card outward with the right second finger,

sighting the lower left corner of the card out of the right corner of your right eye.

It should look like you just flicked the card with the right second finger to emphasize

your comment to the spectator.

Although this glimpse was published in Earnest Earick’s book “By Forces Unseen” and

also in Jerry Mentzer’s 1977 book “Card Cavalcade”, recently it’s come to my attention

that Paul Chosse originated the move.

5 #

>>>>

This is a great way to sight a card that is on the bottom of the deck under cover of an all

around square up. The all around square up is a common action used to turn the deck

end for end. The deck is held in a left hand dealing grip and the right hand takes the

deck by the ends from above. The deck is then rotated away from you, bringing the right

thumb up. It is at this point that you look at the deck and sight the card. The left hand

turns towards you, the thumb grasping the long edge closest to you and the fingers

grasping the long edge farther from you. The left hand takes the cards from the right

hand and turns palm up, finishing the rotation of the deck and bringing the cards back

into a dealing position.

The earliest mention I could find of a similar procedure is in Marlo’s “Revolutionary Card

Technique”.

This is possibly one of the finest multiple shifts in existence and has been overlooked by

almost everyone I meet. It is done in the context of an overhand shuffle, looks loose and

controls multiple selections to the top of the deck in the order in which they were

selected. Although it was published in “Greater Magic”, I’ve added a few touches. Since

one effect in these notes (Dead Solid Perfect) requires a multiple shift I thought it

important to describe the only one I use. For illustrative purposes we will assume that

you wish to apparently insert the four Aces into random places in the deck and fairly

shuffle the deck, while actually controlling the Aces to the top.

Begin with the Aces face up on the table and the rest of the deck in your hands. Fan

the deck face up in the left hand. Insert the Aces into different parts of the fan, leaving

them sticking out of the fan for half of their length. Close the fan from right to left. You

now are holding the deck face up in your left hand, with the four Aces out jogged for half

of their length. Tilt the deck up to the right, into an overhand shuffle position with the

faces to the right. The left hand holds the deck with the thumb above, and the four

fingertips underneath.

The right hand takes a position with the thumb at the inner end of the deck, near the

top, and all four fingers at the outer end. With all four right fingertips, apparently push

the Aces into the deck. In reality, when they are only protruding between a half inch

and a quarter inch, the right fingertips move upward in an arc, angling the Aces. The

forefinger pushes the upper outer corner of the Aces towards you, past the outer end of

the deck. As this is happening, the left second, third, and fourth fingers lower to allow

the Aces to move diagonally through the deck.

Once the right forefinger has pushed the upper outer corner of the Aces about a half

inch closer to you than the upper outer corner of the deck, the right forefinger stops

pushing and the left little finger pushes up and towards you on the lower inner corner of

the Aces, pivoting them on the left thumb and bringing them into a position parallel to

the rest of the cards, but injogged about half an inch.

The right thumb now lifts the inner upper corner of the Aces while pushing away from

you (in an arc) until it can grip both the top of the inner edge of the Aces and the inner

upper corner of the deck against the right second finger at the outer end of the deck.

Overhand shuffle, but as you do, slowly rotate the right thumb away from you, keeping

its grip on the Aces but releasing the other cards some at a time. At the end, you are

holding only the Aces with the right hand and you drop them on top. You can then finish

with a false overhand shuffle of your choosing.

(

The idea of ProActive Control came about because of a mistake I made while

performing at The Magic Castle. Something had gone wrong during the set and I

automatically covered it by switching to another effect without the transition being

apparent to the audience. Two well known magicians came up afterwards and

congratulated me on the performance. When I apologized that they had seen the

mistake they both raised their eyebrows. I explained what had happened and they

both were surprised because they did not realize or even suspect that something

had gone wrong. After some serious thought I realized that that I was consistently

applying principles, strategies and ideas that gave me several advantages over

many other performers. Now I know I’m no creative genius so it’s important for you

to understand that although some of these ideas are mine, most of them were taught

to me—either directly or by example. Although I have taught this system to my

students for over a decade, this is the first time I’ve tried to put the concept in print,

so I’m sure you’ll see the concept refined several times in the next few years.

ProActive Control is a systematic application of principles, strategies and ideas that

will give you the following advantages:

1) You will eliminate fear of failure which will allow you to perform with total

relaxation and no fear.

2) You will be able to cover almost any and all adverse situations without the

audience even suspecting that something has gone wrong.

3) You will avoid creating an adversarial relationship with spectators and be able to

diffuse even the most difficult spectators in an entertaining way.

4) You will develop an ability to handle cards that goes well beyond standard

Sleight-of-Hand.

Let’s look at some of the different components of ProActive Control and some specific

applications. In order to eliminate fear, we need to understand its roots.

“I don’t worry about fooling the audience, I just entertain them!”

“If you don’t fool the audience, then you’re not entertaining them!”

“The entertainment value of magic lies strictly in amazement!”

Which statement describes your personal approach? Bad news campers—all of these

statements are equally stupid. First, all of these statements (and others like them) seem

to classify Deception and Entertainment as being diametrically opposed. They are not.

Both Entertainment and Deception must be given equal attention in order for your work

to be classified as “performing magic”. And although you will never perfect them, the

only way you’ll consistently achieve excellence is by pursuing perfection in both

Entertainment and Deception. Once you get that goal clearly set in your mind, you’ll

soon realize that although it’s an excellent ideal and one that you should constantly

strive for, we don’t live in a perfect world. Mistakes happen; things go wrong; a

spectator may be a belligerent drunk or a 12 year old may think nothing of

demonstrating that he’s read “Scarne on Card Tricks”. These are the moments that we

dread, the moments which are responsible for stage fright and shaking hands. There

are two very important things you can do to eliminate these moments and the fear they

elicit:

1) Put your ego in check and properly order your priorities in regards to performing.

2) Learn to eliminate most of these moments by thinking and working strategically.

> /

Anyone who says they didn’t get into magic in order to bolster their ego is a liar.

Anyone who says they don’t perform magic in order to bolster their ego is a liar.

That’s the sad truth folks. We’re all egotistical on this bus. Inherently there’s nothing

wrong with that. I don’t think there’s a single performer out there whose primary goal

isn’t the high that comes from a standing ovation. It feels good! But problems arise

when an aberrant decision is made by the performer. And usually the decision is made

without conscious thought. Here’s a question that is so crucial to performing magic that

I cannot believe it hasn’t been put into print before:

Does your ego boost come from fooling your audience in order to demonstrate

your “intellectual superiority” or does it come from entertaining them—making

them feel wonder and getting them to laugh out loud?

If you believe that the entertainment value of magic comes solely from deception then

you will fail. Success with that belief demands that you are intellectually superior to

every one of your audience members and that you never make a mistake—and the

audience must be convinced that you’re intellectually superior. Can you see why this

attitude constantly generates an adversarial audience? It also demands that you have

total control over things that you cannot possibly control. In short, you are guaranteed to

fail much of the time. Wow! No wonder magicians are scared—failure is practically

guaranteed!

Contrast that with getting your ego boost from entertaining your audience. Since your

definition of success is now entertaining your audience then success can still be

achieved if you make a mistake or if someone points out that you’re holding two cards,

not one, you still have innumerable options—laughter or switching routines in a

seamless manner, for example.

It’s an either/or proposition friends, because as good as some of you are, there will be

times when you have to choose between the two. And that’s when setting your

priorities ahead of time will save you some blood, sweat and tears. I heard an audio

tape of Dai Vernon that demonstrated this perfectly. Vernon was demonstrating a card

trick to an audience of magicians at the Magic Castle and he was at the point where he

was going to turn the card face-up to reveal that he had found the selection. “What was

the card you selected?” asked the Professor. “The Queen of Clubs” came the reply and

when Vernon turned the card face-up the moment of stunned silence made it clear that

Dai Vernon had missed the card. Without missing a beat the Professor said “Now that’s

not the Queen of Clubs and I want to tell you that there is no one in the room more

disappointed than I am!” The audience erupted into laughter. Vernon made the right

choice at the right time: when faced with a “moment of terror”, he knew that his priority

was to entertain his audience and he used a very potent weapon: self-deprecating

humor. Now let’s take it a step further. Certainly Dai Vernon could have brought that

effect to a successful and mystifying conclusion even if he did have the wrong card on

the table. I can think of at least three different “Vernon Strategies” he could have used

and I’m sure he had many, many more. But at that moment—that moment of terror—

Vernon saw the opportunity of a huge laugh and somehow decided that getting the

laugh was more important than saving face.

This is the point in the essay where people will misunderstand me and think that I’m

advocating “Entertainment” over “Deception” in a performance. I am not. What I am

advocating, however, is that the moments of terror we spoke of earlier often demand

that we make a decision between entertaining and deceiving—and making the decision

to entertain at that point is the wiser and more mature choice. Simply put—if your

primary goal is to entertain your audience then even if you make a mistake or someone

points out that you have a card palmed in your hand, you can still achieve your primary

goal—that of entertaining your audience. However if you believe that the only way you

can entertain your audience is to deceive them then you are in a losing situation.

Finally, it’s important to make a distinction between what you do and who you are. If

your goal is to demonstrate intellectual superiority then you have inextricably linked your

self-esteem (I.Q.) to your performance. Therefore failure is therefore a threat to your

self-esteem. This fact creates most of the fear associated with stage fright. If you’re

worried about what people will think of you instead of if they had a great time then

you’re on the wrong track. Putting your self-esteem on the line with every performance

leads to fear and, even worse an adversarial audience, because once they sense you’re

trying to prove you’re smarter than they are then their self-esteem is being threatened.

Here’s the bottom line: if your ego boost comes from fooling your audience, then you’re

in a dangerous place. Your focus is strictly on yourself and the only reason you perform

magic is probably to show how superior you are to your audience. Failure with this

priority is certain because you are not the smartest person in the world; you will make

mistakes and you will absolutely create an adversarial audience—because they can

sense that you’re threatening their self-esteem. Success or failure is therefore

dependent on only one thing: fooling all the people all of the time.

However if your ego boost comes from entertaining your audience, then your success

will be based on whether the audience had a good time that they’ll remember for the

rest of their lives, not on convincing them that you’re a superior human being. Being

focused on the needs of your audience in this way allows you to use many, many more

ways to achieve success than the ego-centric attitude described above.

So let’s look at the algorithm:

a) Fear of failure, nervousness and antagonistic audiences result when we

unconsciously decide that our primary goal is to fool the audience.

b) When we decide that our primary goal is to entertain the audience fear is

eliminated because our focus is on creating joy in our audience, not

protecting our self-esteem or bolstering our ego.

c) Although both deception and entertainment are equally important in a magical

performance, there will be times when we will have to choose between the

two. Knowing your choice in those cases will always be entertaining your

audience is a large factor in eliminating fear and avoiding adversarial

situations.

This is the groundwork for the ProActive Control System. Although it is foundational,

it is just the beginning. For all intensive purposes, it handles the “worst case

scenario”—those rare moments when you have to make the choice between

deception and entertaining. The rest of the system is designed to reduce the times

those moments occur in a year to a single digit approaching Zero.

;

0 0

22 % %

% %

Once you’ve unchained your self-esteem from your performance, you have taken the

first step to freedom. The next step is to learn some techniques that will maximize your

freedom and allow you to take maximum advantage of opportunities as they present

themselves in live performance. You will, in effect, no longer be bringing a knife to a

gunfight.

Allow me to give you a rather common example. Let’s say a spectator asks to shuffle

the deck at the worst possible time. You have one selection on top and another one

second from the bottom. What would you do? Most magicians would look at this as an

annoyance and even if they tried to be pleasant you can easily see the strain on their

face. Every single audience member will sense that this wasn’t part of the plan; the

magician’s been interrupted and "Something has gone wrong. Now he needs to fix it.”

The majority of professionals in this situation might decline the request and say

something humorous, finish the effect and then perform an effect in which the spectator

is allowed to shuffle. Do you think this placates the spectator? I don’t. I think any

spectator would realize that their request was an interruption and shuffling the deck may

have been detrimental to the performance.

Contrast that with my approach. I hand them the deck and let them shuffle. No

hesitation. No strain. I have no problem with it and believe that the request and the lack

of any kind of flinch from me is only going to strengthen the effect I’m about to do. Now

I would like to be able to tell you exactly which effect that is, but the truth is that I have

no idea. It would be dependent on a myriad of factors including the performing

environment, demeanor of the audience, how well the spectator shuffles and if I’m

wearing my glasses or not. The point is this: I am mentally and emotionally prepared to

adapt without hesitation and I have developed skills and techniques that allow me to

handle such a situation in a seamless manner. The good news is that if I can do it, then

you can do it. It’s not an inborn talent, it’s a developed skill. There are three factors in

developing this type of skill: Emotional, Mental and Strategic Technique.

>>>>

Please re-read the previous section a few times over a week or so and make sure you

are at least in the process of divorcing your self-esteem from your performance. While

performing there is only one reason for your existence—to entertain the audience by

using deception as your primary tool. That’s worth emphasizing: Deception is your

primary tool, not your only tool.

Once we realize that requests such as “Can I shuffle?”, “Can I make sure the card’s still

in the deck?” and “Can I just think of a card?” are opportunities to create miracles and

not interruptions then we will have no hesitation to ditch whatever plans we had at that

moment and take advantage of opportunities as they present themselves.

One of the two primary reasons magicians hesitate when faced with such requests is

that they have a set performance locked in their minds. We are obsessed with

controlling every aspect of the performance and when a spectator does something we

did not expect we are faced with our old friend—the moment of terror. When a spectator

suddenly requests to shuffle we are faced with an overwhelming obsession to finish the

effect we started and most of us will make extraordinary efforts to do so. It’s a control

issue: we are afraid that if we give the audience any control over the performance (by

allowing them to shuffle, for example) then they will take total control. I believe that it’s

quite the opposite. By calmly allowing them to shuffle without hesitation you have

actually demonstrated to the audience that you are in total control of the situation. As a

matter of fact, once you have demonstrated once or twice that such requests in no way

bother you or dampen your ability to produce miracles then they will stop asking.

The second reason magicians hesitate is that they have not mentally prepared

themselves for such requests and therefore must think their way out of the situation.

Unfortunately the audience senses that the magician is thinking and once again they

correctly conclude "Something has gone wrong. Now he needs to fix it.” By proactively

preparing yourself mentally, you’ll increase your confidence exponentially and totally

eliminate fear and hesitation.

>>>>

Now magicians are known (generally) as a creative bunch. They’ll come up with 32

different ways to reverse a card in the deck; 22 methods of false shuffling and hundreds

of ways to demonstrate that they thought of an idea first. Yes sir, creativity is highly

valued and fostered in our little world of magic. With one exception: we have to do it in

the privacy of our own homes under controlled conditions.

Imagine if you will, a Martial Artist with exceptional talent. He’s a black belt in several

disciplines and knows every move, every block and punch combination perfectly. One

day he enters a full-contact competition and enters the ring only to be knocked out in

less than 30 seconds. A reporter then asked him “How could you lose? You’re an expert

in your field and know every kata perfectly!” The Black Belt responds “Well, my

opponent didn’t react the way he was supposed to react. He should have ducked when I

threw that last punch so I’d be set up for the kick. But instead he blocked the punch and

counter-punched!” Here is a man who knew everything there is to know in his field of

expertise but could not adapt his knowledge to a combat situation. Unfortunately the

vast majority of magicians are of the same mindset. Why? Two reasons: risk and lack of

resources that can prepare us for truly interactive magic.

Personal Risk -- The ability to think on your feet, extemporaneously, strikes terror in the

heart of most performers. When you attach your self-esteem to your performance of

magic then any risk taken is a threat to your personal security and safety. Therefore we

cloak ourselves with the safety of performing by rote. Any deviation from the

performance we planned represents a risk to our self-esteem. Of course, if you’re in the

process of detaching your self-esteem from your performance and focusing on your

audience instead, then you have half the battle won.

Lack of Resources -- Clearly it follows then, that the best way to remain in the safe

haven of rote performance is to not think or prepare for anything else. Therefore there

are virtually no resources in magic literature that describe techniques that would

prepare us for anything else. Oh, there are books on “Outs, Precautions and

Challenges” but that’s like instructing someone on how to take care of a broken jaw

instead of teaching them to avoid the punch in the first place.

The rest of this section will give you ideas, techniques and strategies that will help to

prepare you for almost any situation that presents. These are some of the tools that I

use and it is my fondest hope that other performers will add to the list.

>>>>

It is a sad fact that most magicians think of sleights and misdirection as their most

important tools. They are not. The most important tool you could possibly have is your

brain. No, you don’t have to be a genius. You have to exercise. The ability to think on

your feet is a developed skill, not an inborn talent. Many organizations (the military in

particular) have designed entire methodologies of developing this skill and in my opinion

it’s the most untapped resource in the world of magic.

The first step in developing the ability to think on your feet is to force yourself to do it in

a live performance. Here’s how to do it. First, study Chapter Eleven of “Dai Vernon’s

More Inner Secrets of Card Magic” and study it well. Once you thoroughly understand

the concept of “The Trick That Cannot Be Explained” then I suggest you make the

following changes. Instead of writing a prediction, have a card selected and when the

card is replaced, peek the card as you hand the deck out to be shuffled. Then using the

techniques described in “The Trick That Cannot Be Explained”, bring the effect to a

successful conclusion. The reason I suggest you peek the card in this case is because

that way you will enter into this “live-fire” exercise with the absolute confidence that you

cannot fail—you already know the card!

The second factor in mental preparation is proactive thinking. A perfect example of this

was demonstrated by a former professional football player whose skill was incredible at

the time this incident took place. (He now plays golf and his wife was murdered— let’s

move on, shall we?) This pro won a crucial game in the last seconds by being at just the

right place and making just the right move. Later he was interviewed by an astounded

reporter who asked him “How did you know to do that? How could you possibly be

aware of everything that was going on and know exactly what to do?!?” His answer? “I

run plays in my head. All the time. I’m driving down the freeway and I’m running plays in

my head…” This pro had spent hours, months & years imagining every possible

scenario and what his best response would be in each of those imaginary scenarios.

Now I realize that most of magicians have real jobs, real families and as much as they’d

like to, they can’t spend eight hours a day meditating on magic. But every little bit helps.

When you’re learning a routine, run plays in your head. After a performance, take

mental notes of how people reacted and imagine what you would have done if they

reacted differently. And when you’re designing a routine, carefully consider what your

options would be if someone asks to shuffle the deck. Mental Exercise—it’s the

breakfast of champions!

2222

H . >

Always peek the card. Always. No exceptions. If you control the card using a side-steal;

peek the card. If you control the card using a crimp; peek the card. As soon as you

know what the card is, fear will be eliminated and you will have no hesitation to let

someone shuffle the deck if you need to do so. Here’s a tip from the CardGuy—before

you hand the deck out to be shuffled, cut the deck or give it a brief overhand shuffle. It’s

a bad idea to hand out a deck with the selection on top or bottom! In the section of

these notes entitled “Hybrid Sleights” there are several peeks that I have found

invaluable. Always be on the lookout for peeks—they are one of the most powerful

ProActive weapons available to you.

H >

Have several different ways to reveal the selection when it’s in a random place. Of

course, if you’ve studied the first section of the notes entitled “Showpieces” then you’ve

probably realized that if a spectator wants to shuffle the deck and you’ve already

peeked the card then you can go right into “The Card Trick That Has No Explanation”,

with only minor patter adjustments. It’s a perfect ProActive Revelation. Here are three

other “ProActive Revelations” that I find to be particularly useful.

/ G E

/ G E>>>>

Once you’ve peeked the card and the spectator has shuffled the deck, tell him to pull

out 20 or so cards from the deck and to make sure that his selection is one of the 20.

Turn you back while he does this. When he has completed the task, take the packet

back and quickly look through the cards as if you were making sure they were

adequately random. Take note of the card right above the selection and then hand the

face-down packet to the spectator. Request that when you turn your back, the spectator

start dealing cards face-up from the face-down packet. He is to correctly call out each

card as it is dealt, but when he gets to his card he is to miscall it—in other words, he is

to lie. Emphasize the fact that he is not to hesitate or stop on his card, he’s simply going

to miscall it. As soon as he calls out the name of your key card take a deep breath. The

next card he calls out will be his, but he will miscall it. The second he does, shout

“LIAR!” in a loud and dramatic voice. I’ll usually turn around as I do this and nod my

head sadly…”Couldn’t fool the family dog…”

If you’re a more serious performer or are dealing with someone that may have a

pacemaker, then this effect can be played in a much quieter way. Simply mention to the

spectator beforehand that you will attempt to detect the slightest change in the tone of

his voice or the slightest hesitation and when you do, you’ll know the card.

It can also be played as a memory stunt— when you look at the faces of the packet,

make it as quick a glance as you can and then hand the packet to the spectator telling

him you’ve memorized all 20 cards. Tell him to go through and call out the cards as he

deals them face-up, but when he deals his card he should lie and continue on without

hesitation. When he’s done tell him that the one card he missed in the sequence was

the “Four of Clubs” (or whatever his selection was) so that must be his card.

Occasionally you’ll have a spectator miscall his card as the “Five of Hearts” and then be

faced with the real Five of Hearts three cards later in the sequence. He will either lie

again or call it out correctly. In the spirit of ProActive control, I encourage you to figure

out a response to either situation.

Of course, you could also just note the position of the selection when you see the faces

of the cards, but I’ve been doing Card Magic for so long it’s easier for me to remember a

single card than it is to count…

>>>>

After you’ve peeked the card and the spectator has shuffled take the deck back and tell

the spectator that you can actually tell which cards have been moved just from the

sound! First, however, you’ll “need a baseline to which you can compare any changes.”

Bring the deck up to your ear and give the corner closest to your ear a slow, even riffle

and then hand the deck back to the spectator. Tell him to fan the cards with the faces

towards himself and change the position of his card, but only his card. Do not turn your

back when he does this but look away and watch him out of the corner of your eye to

make sure he only changes the position of one card. Have him square up the deck and

hand it to you. Go through the procedure of listening to the riffle again, but riffle the

cards a little slower this time. “Hmm…it sounds like the “Four of Clubs” has changed

position—is that right?”

Although this revelation is a powerful one, there is a possibility that the spectator could

lie or even move a card that is not his. You can discourage this by having the spectator

show the card to someone else—a procedure you should follow whenever possible in

all of your routines! If however, the spectator lies and tells you you’re wrong use one of

my favorite Clayton Rawson lines: “Hmm... somebody must be operating a faulty

electrical appliance in the nearby area…let’s try it again.” This time “get a baseline” with

the riffle procedure and then spread the cards face-down and ask the spectator to

simply touch a card. Outjog the card he touches and offer him one chance to change his

mind. Remove the card by holding it at the outer right corner between your right

forefinger and thumb and perform the Flicker Glimpse as you ask him to put it in his

pocket (or under a glass…). Then listen to the deck again in the same way and

announce that the missing card is “The Eight of Diamonds”. (Or whatever his selection

was...) He won’t get away with lying this time, will he?!?

# #

Now I’m in dangerous territory. The following ProActive Revelation must be used

judiciously. Failure to do so could result in personal injury, so for those with no

discretion (you know who you are!) I’ll describe alternate endings as well.

If a spectator has thrown an outright challenge, such as “I bet you can’t find my card if I

shuffle the deck, packet boy!” then occasionally it is appropriate to shut him down in no

uncertain terms. Roll your eyes indicating to the rest of the audience that you will

tolerate this minor diversion and let him shuffle (you have peeked the card, haven’t

you?!?). Take the deck back and tell the spectator that you will even let him see his

card is somewhere in the middle of the deck. Emphasize that he is in no way to indicate

where his card is or even if you’ve passed it—you’ll go through all the cards and won’t

even look at his eyes. Run through the deck face-up and when you see his card start

counting with his card as number one. Position his card so it’s 10

from the top. For a

more detailed explanation of how to do this, see the effect entitled “The Card Trick That

Has No Explanation” in these notes.

Look him right in the eye and say “Well, you’ve have selected a card of your choice,

thus ensuring that there is no way I would know it’s identity unless I was telepathic.

You’ve riffle shuffled the deck so the cards are in a mathematically random order.

You’ve made sure the card is in a random location and you obviously have the

demeanor of a well honed poker player, as your expression betrays absolutely nothing

that would assist me in locating your selection. In this situation, there’s only one

response to such arduous conditions…” start spelling by dealing one card for each letter

you call out: “Y-O-U-R--M-O-M-M-A” and then deal the next card face-up emphasizing it

by saying “Your Momma!” Right after the tag line, look him in the eye and wink. Please

be careful with this.

The words you use in the build up and how you use them is important to the comedy of

the effect. In short, use language that is as “literary” as possible thus playing up on the

contrast of ending with the slang phrase “Your Momma!”

You will find hundreds of these types of revelations throughout the literature of magic—

two very common ones are borrowing someone’s glasses to look for fingerprints on the

card (I’ve been known to wear two pairs of glasses at the same time to get “just the right

prescription”) or even “The Pulse Trick” in which you hold the spectators wrist as you

move your finger over the face-up deck. (Do I really need to explain the premise…?)

Knowing what you’re looking for is the largest part of the battle. The possibilities of the

impossibilities are endless.

& H >

Have several different ways to regain control of the card. If you’ve peeked the card then

you already know what it is so handing the deck out to be shuffled or even losing a

break when the heat’s on should be no problem and you should not even hesitate in

such situations. Once you know what the card is, regaining control will allow you to

resume whatever effect you originally were involved in. Yes, there are exceptions (six

card stacks come to mind) but I’ve seldom been asked to allow someone to shuffle

during an Ace Assembly. Regaining control through subtlety is preferable to using

sleights and the ways in which you regain control depend largely on your personal

performing style. I will describe two different ways that I use to regain control—one is

idiosyncratic to my performing style and one is utilitarian in nature so it can work for the

non-manic performers. It is important that you realize that the way you regain control of

a card must fit your personality and performing style. I encourage you to find your own

ways that seamlessly weave into your performances. In all of these we will assume a

selected card has been peeked, but not controlled.

/ )

For everyone who, like me, performs like a Wildman (or is willing to do so occasionally)

here is an extremely funny ProActive Control. Table the deck and start to say

something, but then get a look of realization on your face. Run through the cards in a

manner that keeps the audience from seeing the faces and upjog the card above the

selection. Table the deck face down with the card still upjogged and then take a deep

breath as if you’re trying to control yourself. Then, as if your efforts to control your

oncoming fit have failed, lift up the upjogged card so that the top half of the deck flips

face up and start tearing the card into little pieces. You must do this as if you were

demon possessed. If you can break a sweat, it’s even better. When you can no longer

tear the card into smaller pieces, look up at the audience as if you have regained your

senses and as if you’ve just realized where you were. Give them a sheepish, apologetic

look and say “Sorry… but I HATE that card…!” Pick up the face up half and put it in

dealers grip face down, place the other half on top of it and you have the selection on

top.

If you’ve handled cards for a few years then you can probably tell when you a selected

card is close to the center or not. If you can do that within 8 cards and feel confident that

the selection is within 8 cards of the center then here’s a technique I have often used

with great success—simply cut the deck as evenly as you can and give the deck an Off

Center Shuffle and that will bring the card to within a few cards of the top or bottom of

the deck. First, let me explain the concept of an Off Center Shuffle and then I’ll tell you

how to get rid of the pesky cards that might get in your way.

To do an Off Center Riffle Shuffle, cut the upper half of the tabled deck to the right and

then do a tabled Riffle Shuffle, but make sure the bottom six cards of the right half end

up on the bottom of the deck and the top six cards of the left half end up on the top of

the deck. The selection will be within a few cards of the top or bottom. When you get

very good at estimating the position of the card then the number of cards you have to

place during the shuffle can be minimized. For example, I can easily estimate the

selections position to within three cards so instead of six cards on the bottom and top, I

only have to place three cards on bottom and top.

If you’re proficient with an in the hands faro, the work is even easier. Cut the deck at 26

and do an Off Center Faro. (Explaining what this is at this point would be kind of

redundant now, right?). As a matter of fact, the small number of times I riffle the corner

of the deck and ask the spectator to say stop, I time the riffle so the spectator stops me

as near the center as I can manage. At this point, I can give the deck an in or out

perfect faro and I know the card will be within two cards from the top or bottom.

Now, how do you get rid of those cards? Simply fan the deck with the faces towards you

and sight the selection. If it’s near the top, take all the cards above it and flash the faces

of those cards to the audience while you say “Nope, I didn’t cheat! Not on top!” Then

bury those pesky cards in the middle of the deck. Right after you do that, flip the deck

face up and flash a few of the bottom cards and say “Not on bottom, either!” and then

bury those cards in the center.

If the card is near the bottom, hold the deck face up and then take all but the card

directly above the selection, fan them out and then bury them as you say “Well,

sometimes I get lucky…” Flip the deck face down and lift up a few of the top cards, fan

them out and as you bury them sigh “Guess I’ll have to work this time…” Then do a slip

shuffle and shuffle the selection to the top.

H >>>>

Always build in safety checks into your routines. A simple example of a safety check is

to make sure you have the correct card before you palm it into your pocket. However,

in more complex routines the safety checks have to be much more subtle and

numerous. They’ll also have to fit your performing style perfectly to the audience does

not even suspect they exist. Let’s consider a hypothetical routine as an example and I’ll

describe some possible safety checks. Then you’ll have to design some of your own.

Let’s say there’s a routine in which I control a card 24 cards from the top of the deck

and then deal the cards into two piles—one for me and one for the spectator. The

selection must end up in my pile. Most CardGuys would control the card 24 from the top

and then assume that if he dealt properly, the card would end up in his pile. Let’s put in

a few safety checks, shall we? First, I’ll peek the card before I position it just so I know I

can’t lose. Then I’ll position it in the right place (24 cards from the top) and then I’ll

design a non-suspicious way to check and make sure it’s in my pile after I’ve dealt the

cards. I can spread the cards quickly between my hands as I say “If your card ends up

in your pile then…” I can sight the card this way in less than four seconds. I know I can

because I’ve developed the ability to sight specific cards in a spread so quickly that it

would seem impossible to a layperson. That proactive ability can be developed by

anyone with a little practice. But I can even take it one step further. Since it would be

easy to calculate the position of the card after I deal the two piles, perhaps I could even

figure out a way to not only confirm that the card was there, but also confirm it’s in the

right position?

This type of thinking takes work and constant effort—but the rewards will make you an

exponentially better performer. I would encourage you to make the commitment to

developing at least one safety check for every routine you do. Once you develop a few

safety checks that fit your performance style perfectly, other safety checks will be that

much easier to develop.

5 # >

Developing the ability to think in a ProActive manner takes a lot of hard work. However,

the payoff is huge. If you make a concentrated effort to apply the principles I’ve outlined

here it won’t be long before you see a huge improvement in your ability as a performer.

You’ll have no fear, your controls can look impossible and even when something goes

wrong you’ll handle it with no hesitation whatsoever and your audience won’t have the

slightest idea that you just changed your entire show just to let someone shuffle the

deck! I really can’t think of a better payoff!

;1 0

1 0

;1 0

1 0

;1 0

1 0

;1 0

1 0

The “FBS” -- yes, the “full body shudder”—it’s what my friends and I use to call the

actual physical reaction we would get when we absolutely nailed someone. You know

what I mean—their face would flush or go pale, their breathing would be erratic and

their entire body would act as if you just touched them with a cattle prod.

These physical manifestations are the result of something called the “Fight or Flight”

Syndrome. It means that we were created with a little switch that goes off when we see

something that we know is does not jive with reality or something that might be

dangerous. When that switch is flipped, adrenaline pumps into your body and instantly

your breathing rate increases, your face goes flush from the your increased heart rate

and probably a thousand other changes start to take place. It is that switch that provides

us with our beloved “FBS”. Problems arise, however, due to several misconceptions

about the ramifications of the “FBS”.

First, many people make the mistake of believing that a trick (or magical performance)

is the exclusive catalyst of the “FBS”. It is not. The same exact reaction can be elicited

by a horror movie, sneaking up behind someone and shouting “BOO!” or even an

amusement park ride. It’s still the same bio-chemical reaction. Some people find this

reaction pleasant (what a rush) and others do not (it makes me sick). That’s why some

people delight in Horror Movies and some people can’t stand them. That’s also why

some people love magic and some people don’t. Of course, there could be other

reasons some people don’t like magic (like seeing a horrible performer) but the only

reason that cannot be changed through a solid performer is whether they like or dislike

the adrenaline rush.

Secondly, some people actually think that some types of effects can elicit this response

while other type of effects cannot. They are incorrect. A well constructed Card Trick is

just as capable of creating an “FBS” as any type of Bizarre Magic. As long as the

audience is completely convinced that the conclusion of the effect is entirely opposite of

what the actions that led up to it should have generated, you’ll get the “FBS”. You want

proof? Master a Card Trick like Brother John Hammon’s Signed Card or even The

Image Fades from these notes and you’ll get the “FBS”. Just as easily as someone who

sticks a needle through their arm or makes a dollar bill float on their nose.

Thirdly, some people believe that this physical response indicates that the audience

believes they’ve done real magic. Sometimes you’ll hear someone say something like

“My goal is to get the audience to believe I’ve done real magic—even if it’s just for a

split second...” The people who say this (or have published it) are incorrect. It is not

possible to get a rational person to believe you’ve done magic—even for a split second.

One of the traits that makes us human is called “Spontaneous Emotional Response”.

This includes horror, fear, laughter and amazement. Now I don’t want to develop an

entire taxonomy of emotions here, but let’s assume these are the basic four. How do

they classify as “Spontaneous Emotional Response”? Well, one qualification is that all

rational thought processes momentarily cease. When you laugh at a joke, you’re not

thinking about why it’s funny, why you’re laughing or even what’s going to happen

next—you’re just laughing. When someone comes up behind you and scares you,

you’re not thinking, you’re just reacting to a chemical jolt. Get the idea?

Out of the four emotions we listed, there are three that have the capability of producing

the “Flight or Flight Syndrome”: fear, horror and amazement. These three produce the

coveted “FBS” because they all are associated with things that might be dangerous.

Yes, I know that amazement is a good thing, but remember that the switch is on auto-

pilot so anytime we see something that does not jive with reality then it could represent

a possible danger, so the switch is flipped. Laughter is unique and produces a chemical

reaction that is unique—it actually had detoxifying properties. I like to define good

magic as magic that will elicit one or both of the positive emotional responses:

amazement and/or laughter.

So when that switch is thrown and somebody is going through the associated

adrenaline rush they are not thinking anything at all. They’re not thinking “Golly, I’ve

seen a miracle”; they’re not thinking “I think I just wet myself”; and they’re certainly not

thinking “Are Card Tricks Magic?” No, they’re not thinking at all until they recover a bit

from the initial rush. It is only after the chemical jolt that rational thought processes start

up again and they can analyze the situation and decide what to believe. Sometimes

they don’t put forth the effort and will just give up analyzing the situation.

So we know our audiences cannot possibly decide that we’ve done real magic until

we’ve actually done something and we know they can’t decide we’ve done real magic

during the moment of their “Fight or Flight” rush since all rational thought is suspended

at that time. That leaves us with only one alternative: they decide what to believe about

what they saw after their initial reaction—when their rational mind takes over again. So

clearly it is not a belief that magic has occurred that fuels the reaction.

Then what does fuel the reaction? Well, C. Lang Neil had it right almost 100 years ago:

“Conjuring consists in the performer’s audience being led to believe that certain

definite actions have been carried out before them, while they presently discover

that the results of those actions are something directly contrary to any natural law.

They immediately recognize that they have been deceived completely, but

without knowing how or when the deception took place, for they are not fools enough,

nor is it desired to make them think that the supernatural has occurred.”

C. Lang Neil in The Modern Conjurer (1937)

Now doesn’t that first description sound exactly like the process that initiates the “Fight

or Flight Syndrome”? That’s because it is! Mr. Neil knew what would generate the

coveted Full Body Shudder! Ah, but look at his next paragraph. Over 100 years ago,

Mr. Neil also knew that after the “FBS” audiences were sophisticated enough to

understand that real magic had not occurred! Now ask yourself this: Do you really

believe that audiences have gotten LESS sophisticated in the last 100 years?!

Let me list my conclusions in no particular order:

1) You will not get a sane person to believe you’ve done real magic—even for a

split second and to try and do so will let them know you have no respect for

them.

2) Good, well constructed magic consists in getting your audience to believe that

certain definite actions have taken place and then being surprised by an

unexpected result. Therefore, the more clearly the audience understands and is

convinced of the initial conditions and actions that supposedly have taken place,

the more amazed they will be with an unexpected result.

3) Since some people like an adrenaline rush and some don’t there will always be

people who like magic and some who don’t regardless of how well it is

performed.

4) Card Tricks have the same potential of creating the “Fight or Flight Syndrome” as

any other type of magic.

One final comment: Those who still insist that getting their audience to believe they’ve

done real magic (yes, even for a split second) is a worthy goal are much more

interested in feeling superior to their audiences than they are in entertaining them.

= ;

;;

)

It took some wrangling to get this out of Paul because he was concerned that people

would view it as a complete routine and it isn’t. What it is, however, is one of the

strongest ProActive Revelations I’ve ever seen and it is based on Dai Vernon’s “Trick

That Cannot Be Explained.”

Here’s what it looks like. A spectator selects a card and the selection is lost in the deck.

The spectator is allowed to shuffle and then the deck is spread face down. The

CardGuy has the spectator draw three cards from anywhere in the face down deck and

turn them face up. Immediately the CardGuy says “Well, you’ve picked the AH, 9S and

the 6C. Hmm… the only suit missing is the Diamond, so your card must be a Diamond

and since the values add up to ten, your card must be the Ten of Diamonds!”

It happens in seconds and works out right every time. I’ve seen him do it time and time

again and a few years ago he shared his thinking on this and I’ve been doing it ever

since. It came about because Paul was experimenting with Vernon’s effect and Paul

decided that one of the downsides of Vernon’s method was that there were too many

possibilities to consider and therefore the mind tends to go into overdrive considering

the massive amounts of options.

Therefore Paul decided to limit the options and learn to maximize them. So first, he

decided to limit the face up cards to three—that would guarantee him that the

appropriate suit would be missing or there would at least be a predominate color. Let us

assume the selection is the 10D. Pull out any three cards and you will likely be faced

with one of three possibilities:

1) The Cards will not contain a diamond and you could say “Well, the only suit

missing is the diamond, so your card must be a diamond.”

2) The cards will have a predominate color. If the color is red you could easily say

“Well, the predominate color is red, so your card must be red..” and then,

depending on which option works out best you could say “…and the highest

value red card is a diamond, so your card must be a diamond…” or “and the

lowest value red card is a diamond so your card must be a diamond…” If the

predominate color is black, you’d say “Well the color red is in the minority here so

your card must be red…” followed by “…and the only red card is a diamond so

your card must be a diamond…”

Essentially, the idea is to make the three cards work. Doing this with the suit is fairly

straight forward when faced with three random cards. However, getting to the value

requires a slightly fancier dance.

There are a limited number of mathematical possibilities and you must be able to

instantly exploit each of them:

1) Adding or subtracting various combinations of the values: “Let’s see, if we add up

all the values so your card must be a ten…”

2) Discovering a numerical sequence: “Wow, two, four, six… your card must be

next—it’s an eight!”

3) Finding two odd cards and an even card could lead you to say “Well, we’ve got

two odd valued cards and only one even value so that means your card’s an odd

number. Since the highest value card is a three, that means your card is next in

sequence so it’s the five of hearts!”

When Paul does this there is no hesitation and he makes it look like there are definitive

rules when there are none. You can develop this level of skill but only if you’re willing to

talk to yourself in a closed room.

Shuffle any deck and place it face down on the table. Then shuffle another deck and

place it to the right of the first deck. Turn one card face up on the deck to your left and

that will be your selection. Now take the top three cards from the deck on your right and

turn them all face up and then start talking your way through to making those three

cards work. When you first start these practice sessions, your goal is to find a solution

for every situation as it presents itself. When you can do that, then you need to practice

verbalizing the solution on the fly with absolute assurance and no stumbling—neither

verbally or mentally.

Although simple in concept, this will take just as much practice as an undetectable

bottom deal or a perfect table faro. Indeed, unless you have put in the necessary work,

this idea will be worthless and you’ll end up looking silly. Those who put in the time to

master it, however, will have the confidence of knowing that as long as you have

ProActively peeked the card, you can always produce an absolute miracle.