“We need to go deeper…”
Last time we looked at a method for performing a ‘Weighing the Cards’ routine using a (half) shuffled deck.
But what if we want to go deeper?
Here’s an idea that lets you let the audience genuinely shuffle all of the cards in the deck.
It uses a quarter-stack.
(Or in other words, 13 cards.)
My initial idea was inspired by a very clever shuffle procedure in Pit Hartling’s ‘Unforgettable’ (in his book Card Fictions).
The idea is to hand out packets of cards to each member of the audience but keep the first 13 for yourself. They shuffle, you cut (but eventually cut card #1 of the stack back to the top.)
I was then going to in-faro those cards into the first 26, then in-faro those 26 into the remaining half…then perform mathematical calculations (i.e each stack number is now in a position 4X that original number) based on the position of whichever of those cards ended up closest to the bottom of the cut-off packet to arrive at the number of cards.
However, I have a suspicion I’m not the first person to have thought of this.
(Woody Aragon has a routine called ‘The Human Scale’ that I imagine may be similar to this.)
So I decided to throw caution to the wind and go even ‘deeper.’
The idea I landed on is an interesting one.
Some will like it.
Some won’t.
And when it’s all said and done, it takes a certain ‘familiarity’ with the cards that only time can give you.
But done right, it’s very impressive.
Here’s what goes on:
You start in stack.
(Or, if you’d rather, you start with the first 13 cards of the stack in place and the rest of the deck shuffled.)
You remove the first 13 cards of the deck (easily done if you hold a break under them beforehand – if not just thumb count them off) and hand them to your first spectator to shuffle.
You then split up the remainder of the deck into various packets and hand them out to be shuffled further. It doesn’t matter how many cards are in each of these packets.
This way, the entire deck really has been shuffled by the audience. However, there’s still a factor you have control over—the 13 cards in the first packet you handed out are still the first 13 cards of your stack.
However, the ‘image’ is one of complete chaos.
It’s important to note: those 13 cards won’t be in stack ORDER. But they WILL be the same cards. It doesn’t matter how much they shuffle the cards, those cards will always be the first 13 cards of your stack.
Here’s what comes next:
You take the first packet back from the first spectator, then the second packet from the second spectator.
Now you’re going to in-faro the first packet into the second, perfectly weaving the cards together.
Alternatively, use our handling of the faro as taught in Skyscraper. Either way, make sure it’s an IN-faro.
In-faro means that the bottom card of the first packet becomes the bottom card of the combined packets, and the top card of the second packet becomes the top card of the combined packets.
Here’s some more info on the difference between an IN-faro and an OUT-faro:
https://www.magicalapparatus.com/card-techniques/in-and-out-faro-shuffles.html
You’ll be left with what I’ll call ‘Packet 1’.
Now take back the third and fourth packets, combining them into what I’ll call ‘Packet 2.’
You’re now going to in-faro Packet 1 with Packet 2. Again, make sure the bottom card of Packet 1 becomes the new bottom card and the top card of Packet 2 is the new top card.
Once you’ve done this (and done at speed just looks like you’re further shuffling the cards as you retrieve them) you’ve placed the first 13 cards of your stack at positions 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40, 44, 48 and 52.
(again, the magician I first saw make excellent use of this technique is Pit Hartling in Card Fictions – although my addition is the idea that the cards themselves don’t need to be in stack order for this particular effect.)
However, these cards aren’t in stack order. You could have the 4C at 24, the 5H at 4 and the QH at 36.
But that’s not the important part. The important part is that every 4th card is one that you’ll be able to instantly recognize as belonging to the first 13 cards of your stack.
Why is that useful?
Here’s why:
When the spectator cuts the deck, I’m going to estimate how many cards he cut.
I’m then going to take the cards, spread the top 4, and ‘check’ my estimate.
How do you justify this?
You could briefly spread the cards as you say:
“One way of figuring out how many cards you cut off could be to try to count them REALLY fast just by looking at them. But I’m not going to do that…”
I’m just looking to see one of my 13 cards. It doesn’t matter which one – I just want to see one.
When I see one (and there’s always going to be one within the top 4) I just look at how many cards deep it is.
Now, I’m going to adjust my initial estimate based on this new information.
I know this sounds ‘vague’, so let’s look at an example:
For example, let’s say I reckon they cut about half the deck (26 cards or so) off.
I already know that I have cards from my initial stack in positions 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40, 44, 48, and 52.
In this case, I think they’ve cut about half the deck (26.) If that’s the case, one of my stack cards should be the third card down (the card in position 24).
Let’s say I spread the cards briefly and spot the 3D fourth from the top.
In this case, I’m going to guess the number ‘27’. That’s because we saw the 3D, which we believe is more likely to be in the 24th position than 20 or 28. We then take 24 and add 3 (there are 3 cards on top of the 3D) to get 27.
On the other hand, if the packet looked to be slightly under half, I’d guess that the 3D was position 20, which would mean you were holding 23 cards (20 + the three cards on top of 3D.)
If it looked to be over half, I’d guess the 3D to be in position 28. When we add the three cards on top, we get 31.
If you REALLY wanted to be sure, you could have run through all of those estimates in your mind before making a call. Since you were left with the numbers 23, 27 and 31, we should be able to fairly easily see which one of those numbers looks the most likely to be the right one and call out that one.
You can apply the same process wherever they cut – estimate how many, and then estimate which position your stack card should be, then adjust your number based on where it actually is.
As you may be starting to realize, for this method to work optimally, you need to have a pretty good feel for ‘estimating’ how many cards are in a cut off packet. If you’ve been working with the mem deck for a while, you probably will have this. If not, don’t worry—it comes over time.
So, there’s a method for performing this that really makes it FEEL like the whole deck was utterly mixed beforehand.
It’s one you’ll need to practice and hone your ‘feel’ for, but once you do, it’s very clean.
That said, I think I prefer the method we’ll talk about next week (just for its sheer ‘cojones’)
I’ll see you then…
Benji