Module 3- Part 6: The good ‘ol ‘butt’ shuffle strikes again…
Benji
Alright, here’s a big one…
If you want to be a good mem deck practitioner, you NEED a good repertoire of false shuffles.
As we established earlier in the module, the number one danger to ALWAYS be on the defensive against is the feeling that you care about the order of the cards.
Well, the ‘bread and butter’ way of defending against this is to use false shuffles.
But not just any false shuffles.
GOOD ones. Convincing ones. Ones that give the impression you really don’t care about the order of the cards.
It comes down to this:
The strength of your mem deck work will be in direct relation to the conviction of your audience that the deck is shuffled.
There are other, more advanced, techniques that will let your audience feel like THEY shuffled but by far and away the most common technique you’ll be using throughout your performance is a good set of false shuffles.
I should mention at this point that I’m going to assume you’ll go back and ‘plug in’ these false shuffles to all the various effects we’ve been showing you. All of them can be made stronger by the introduction of convincing false shuffles.
Here are 4 false shuffle techniques to start implementing right away:
- Cut the deck overhand shuffle style
Don’t scoff at this one.
Sometimes the simplest of techniques can be the most fooling.
If you watch Juan Tamariz perform, he’ll often just ‘chop’ the cards in a manner that mimics the movements of an overhand shuffle but is really nothing more than a cut.
(my thanks to Michael Close for pointing this out so clearly.)
In essence, he’s cutting the deck but making it feel random and chaotic.
And that’s a lesson in itself:
It’s not about the ‘technicalities’ of the particular false shuffle, it’s about the FEEL.
As long as it feels chaotic and like you don’t care about the cards—it’s doing its job.
I believe Chan Canasta did a similar thing (see the first routine in video 1/3.)
And folks…if it works for Juan Tamariz and Chan Canasta, that’s a pretty good ‘track record.’
Really, I think the strength that this one has going for it is the fact that it just feels so offbeat and casual. Combine this with the fact that Juan will often do this while asking a question or talking to a spectator and the attention is totally lifted from his hands. And with all the attention on his face, we distantly recognise the ‘shuffling’ going on in his hands but not enough to focus on it.
Honestly, don’t underestimate this kind of shuffle when presented right.
Of course, never say “watch, I’m going to shuffle the deck” and then do this, because it’s not going to stand up to intense scrutiny. But if you just work the motion into your routine without calling attention to it, it can be a wonderful thing.
This false shuffle is false in the sense that the order of the cards won’t change, but the deck will be cut (as we discussed in Module 2, cutting the deck doesn’t disturb the overall order.)
Now, there are all kinds of advanced false shuffles out there, but some of them are VERY hard.
And don’t let the fact that you can’t do the hard ones stop you from mastering the easy ones.
My advice would be to keep those false shuffles in mind as a potential distant goal, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that the reason your effects aren’t having the impact you want is that you aren’t pulling off those super-complex shuffles.
If you already have the ‘chops’, some good false shuffles include:
- The Truffle Shuffle
- The Heinstein Shuffle
- The Zarrow Shuffle
- The Hollingworth ‘In The Hands’ False Riffle Shuffle
But even the above shuffles I hesitate to recommend.
Why?
If it ain’t broke…don’t fix it!
Furthermore, I LIKE playing on the fact that I’m not an expert card handler. To suddenly bust out these kind of elegant false shuffles would be entirely out of character for me.
(although the opposite is also true—if it’s within character for you, why not shoot for them?)
And if anything, some of these fancy false shuffles look far too ‘orderly’ to me. Not in terms of how they look, but how they feel. They feel ‘neat’ and ‘tidy’ and really don’t contribute to the messy feeling I want to create. Because, at the very least, there’s thought and there’s intent going into them. Which lends them instant importance and subjects you to attention. This shuffle doesn’t feel that way, and so it flies under the radar.
Don’t underestimate the power of this one!
- My variation on the ‘butt’ shuffle
I actually came up with this handling before I discovered the ‘butt’ shuffle. When I did, I saw that they’re pretty closely aligned.
The ‘butt’ shuffle is described on page 342 of Mnemonica, and I demonstrate my variation on it in the Live Session.
The basic idea is that you start in overhand shuffle position, cut off a portion of the deck, drop it on the top, and then move the cards up and down so they spread out and look to be shuffling, when in reality everything is contained in place, just bouncing up and down—almost like a bungee jump.
Alright, I knew I’d lost this battle as soon as I started reverting to extreme sports metaphors…
But fear ye not—the complete demonstration of this can be found in the Live Session.
- The ‘optical shuffle’
If you own the Royal Road to Card Magic, a good description of this shuffle can be found on page 131.
The idea is simple. You hold the hands as if about to launch into an overhand shuffle. You lift a portion of the deck like you would normally, and then move it over to the front of the deck in preparation to run the cards.
Now, you essentially simulate the LOOK of an overhand shuffle by running your thumb down the top card in the same motion you would normally—but without dropping a single card.
The right hand aids in this motion by moving up and down, and the thumb appears to strike against the cards when in reality it’s just sliding down the same card.
At speed this can be quite convincing—but I would caution you to treat this the same was as all the previous shuffles: as something you do on the offbeat, that spectators can see, but without calling specific attention to it.
- False overhand shuffle
For this, I refer you to Erdnase. Fortunately for you, you don’t need to buy anything. In fact, here’s the link to read for Expert At The Card Table for free:
https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbc0001.2010houd11604/?st=gallery
Don’t worry…it’s perfectly legal (thanks to the magic of the public domain.)
You’re looking for the false shuffle described on Page 159 of this text.
- False cuts
If you really, REALLY insist, you can also throw in some false cuts.
But I don’t like doing an awful lot of this, with perhaps the exception of the Jay Ose false cut.
Here’s why:
I find the vast majority of false cuts to FEEL very ‘orderly’ and ‘neat.’
Like the fancy false shuffles, I don’t want my audience thinking I’m ‘good with the cards.’
Furthermore, the whole picture they paint when I watch them done is one of neatness and order—the cuts are generally done with complete packets, neatly cut and picked up.
I think audiences aren’t stupid, and doing these kind of false cuts probably doesn’t measure up to washing the cards on the table casino style in their opinion. It could lead some of the more insightful of them to wonder if the order of the cards might matter.
(And as we discussed—the minute we give a whiff of a hint of the speculation of the possibility of the IDEA that the order of the cards matters, we lose.)
The fact of the matter is that you’re simply juggling packets around, not shuffling cards. That fact is plain as day to the audience too.
Furthermore, I find them to be overkill and a sign that the magician is trying too hard to prove the deck is shuffled.
The audience should be ‘sold’ on the main shuffle. If you require a follow up false cut to convince them the deck is shuffled, you need to work on the initial shuffle.
And when magicians JUST do false cuts, it always makes me wonder:
If this is meant to demonstrate the cards are mixed…why wouldn’t you just shuffle them like an ordinary human?
That said, here’s ONE decent enough false cut I use when the mood takes me:
The Jay Ose false cut (first published in Close-Up Card Magic by Harry Lorrayne.)
Cut a packet from the top of the deck and place it to the left. Then cut another packet and place it in the center. Then place the remaining packet on the right.
Now place the left packet on top of the middle packet, and then place both packets on top of the final packet on the right.
If you try this with cards in hand, you’ll see that the pickup process just undoes the initial cutting process.
But done at speed, this looks far more random than it really is.
(plus, you can get the spectator to do these exact actions—which is a major plus.)
Now that we’re all on the same page regarding false shuffles, let me tell you my ‘advanced’ secret for making the audience swear THEY shuffled the cards…