Module 4 – Part 8: ‘Blimey…I wouldn’t want to play cards with YOU!’
Benji
‘Blimey…I wouldn’t want to play cards with YOU!’
Have you ever heard that kind of comment while performing?
I would always enjoy getting that kind of feedback, but the truth was:
I wasn’t a good card cheat!
But I liked that aura. It was just a shame I couldn’t back it up with any kind of gambling based routines.
Nowadays, my presentation is not geared so much toward wanting to look like a cardshark (quite the opposite) so I can’t imagine myself performing the following effect a lot.
However, in situations where it might be appropriate, it’s a very fun semi-gambling themed effect that uses the power of faros and anti faros (don’t worry, it’s not complicated) to make you look far better a card mechanic than you really are.
I call it ‘Los Ojos’, meaning ‘the eyes.’
Effect:
The deck is shuffled, cut by the spectator, and four hands of cards are dealt, and left face down.
The performer then engages the other players in an informal game of ‘highest card.’ The idea is simple: they need to guess which player holds the highest card.
The spectators try, with varying luck. Once you’ve let them have a go, you explain that being able to know who holds the highest card at any given moment is a very useful skill for card cheats. You get each of the spectators to pick up their new top card and look at it. You ask them if it’s a high card, and they can choose whether or not to bluff to you.
Despite their best efforts, you are able to get a ‘read’ on them each time.
This continues into the last set of cards, which you attempt to go one further with. This time, you not only guess whether or not they have a high card—you tell them the exact card they’re holding.
Of course, there’s plenty of room for interplay and improvisation based on the cards dealt, but that’s the basic idea.
Method:
The deck starts in memorized order. Give it some regular false shuffles, and then two out faros—using either the regular faro or our method. Then sandwich those faros between some more false shuffles.
Now the spectator really can cut anywhere in the deck. It doesn’t matter where.
Once they do, start dealing four hands of four.
(alternatively, you could get your spectator to deal. If you’ve had them help you with the faro too, that gives you justification to later say: “you shuffled, you cut, and you dealt!”)
This is actually a very clever way of disguising the fact that you’re performing an antifaro-2 (4 piles of 4.)
It makes perfect sense.
And because you gave it two out faros prior to this, once you deal the cards, each pile will have 4 cards in reverse memorized order (antifaro-2 reverses the order.)
Therefore, once you know the top card of each pile—you know every single other card in the pile. (just count backwards in the memorized order.)
We don’t need to try to ‘glimpse’ the top cards (although you certainly could attempt to glimpse the top or bottom card if you wanted to try.)
And as it happens, we have a perfectly motivated excuse to look at the top cards—the ‘practice’ round.
This is a great little ruse because it gives us a chance to explain the rules of the game, demonstrate how hard it is to guess correctly, and of course…look at the top cards of each pile.
Once we know the top cards, the rest is just presentation. All the work is done. We can have them pick up the cards on top of their piles one by one, and since we know the exact identity of each card, we will be able to tell if they’re bluffing or not.
Of course, we could reveal the identity of each card in each round, but we want to save that to the end since it’s the most impactful part.
Let’s look at a quick example.
You out faro twice, they cut and deal four hands of four.
The top card of Pile 1 is 3S, the top card of Pile 2 is 10S, the top card of Pile 3 is 7C, and the top card of Pile 4 is
We now know the various piles consist of:
Pile 1 Pile 2 Pile 3 Pile 4
3S 10S 7C 2S
JH 8C QD 9S
2D JD JS AS
KC KS 9C 6D
So in round 2, we would know that Pile 3 contains the highest card. And in round 3, Pile 2 and 3 are tied, but 4 takes the cake. And so on.
It’s very important to remember that the order of the stack is REVERSED—the top card is 3S, which means the second card is the JH, NOT the 8S.
But if you can remember that, this trick becomes one of the easiest effects you’ll ever do…but deeply mystifying.
I hope you enjoy it!
NOTE: An alternate presentation I think could be fun is doing this effect with ‘blank back’ cards—regular cards with blank backs. I’d talk about ‘marked cards’ and do a demonstration of how the ‘marks’ can come in useful in card games.
Of course, the humor would stem from the fact that the cards clearly can’t be marked (they’re totally blank) but there seems no other explanation for how I keep guessing the right cards.
I’m sure you can think of more ways to fit this idea to your own style and performances.
Wow.
So that’s our last effect for now. Faros will come up again over the course, but for now we’re going to move on to some other concepts, safe in the knowledge that we understand the faro and why it’s so powerful.
Join me in Module 5, where we’re going to discuss ‘The 20th Floor’…