Module 3- Part 10: Pocket Ploys…
Benji
Pocket Ploys…
Of course, there’s one thing you can do if someone asks to shuffle the deck that’s both simpler and perhaps cleaner than anything previously discussed.
First, let them shuffle.
Then…
Switch the deck!
I’m not going to spend a huge amount of time on this one, but I will suggest one idea that is generally accepted as a pretty ‘failsafe’ way to switch the deck in the process of a routine.
Let your spectator shuffle the deck as much as they want.
(in fact, since this is the one time they really CAN shuffle as much as you like…give them ample time for that memory to sink in.)
Then take the cards back. Ask them to name any card.
Once they do, place the deck in your pocket and tell them you’re going to try to find their card ‘by touch alone.’
What you’re actually doing is dropping the deck into your pocket on one side of a ‘pocket divider’.
That sounds fancy, but it just means a piece of cardboard or something that splits your pocket into two compartments.
(it goes without saying you’ll need decently sized pockets for this to work.)
On one side of the divider is nothing. On the other is a stacked deck.
Drop the shuffled deck on the empty side of the divider.
Once you know their card, you can do an estimation cut inside your pocket. You don’t need to actually complete the cut, just cut from the top.
For example, if they named the 8C, we’d want to cut to about the 33rd card. We can estimate that amount in our pocket (and since the deck is out of sight, we actually have longer than usual to figure out the right amount) and take out the packet.
As we do, we have plenty of time to glimpse the bottom card.
Perhaps we overshot and cut to the KH (35.)
We now know the 8C is the 3rd card up (35, 34, 33.)
We can double undercut single cards to the top until the 8C is the card on the bottom. At which point we can reveal we found their chosen card in a shuffled deck. Now just replace the cards we displaced and remove the rest of the cards from the pocket, placing them beneath the cards to bring the stack to completion.
What if we undershoot?
Perhaps we see we cut to the 8D (29.)
Now we know we just need to cut an additional 4 cards from the top of the cards in our pocket to get to the 8C. This is easy to do since we can simply thumb count 4 cards within the pocket. We can do this and then reveal we managed to find their named card.
Tamariz discusses an idea similar to this on page 350 of Mnemonica. I believe Aronson has also discussed similar ideas.
That’s one idea, but there’s plenty more work out there on deck switching.
A lot of it is hard for me to prescribe, because it comes down to YOU.
What do you wear? How many decks do you even own? Do you perform stood up or sat down?
It really comes down to thinking creatively about your current performance standards and adapting to that.
Next, let’s get into one of the craziest ‘greases’ offered yet—stacking a shuffled deck in front of the audience…