Imagine this…
You tell your audience that you’ve been handling playing cards for so long—you can tell all kinds of things about them just by touch alone.
To demonstrate, you take a deck of cards from your pocket. You shuffle it, then hand it to a spectator. They cut the deck a few times, then cut a packet from the top of the deck and hand it to you.
You hold them for a second, with a contemplative look on your face.
You tell your audience:
“The longer I hold these cards, the more I learn about them.”
After a second or two of holding the cards, you say:
“See, I now know exactly how MANY cards are in this packet. There are 18 cards.”
You count the cards one by one, and sure enough—18 cards.
Then you hold the cards for a little longer.
“Okay…I now know even more about these cards…the top card is red!”
You turn over the top card, and sure enough, it’s red. You repeat this a couple of times.
“The longer I hold them, the more precise I can get. In fact, I can figure out the identity of any of the cards inside this packet. Here—let me show you. Spectator #1, give me a number between 1 and 10.”
Let’s say they say ‘7.’
“Incredible. I know that the 7th card down is actually the Nine of Clubs.”
You deal 7 cards and show them the Nine of Clubs.
“Thank you very much!”
Then, when they think the effect is over, you say:
“Actually, can I tell you a secret? Everything I just said was a total lie. I really can’t figure much out about cards just by holding them. I just make it up. The REAL trick is making you THINK you saw all those cards.”
You take the deck and spread it face up on the table to show that all the cards are completely blank.
Sound good?
Nice.
Let’s see how it’s done…
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This is the idea I alluded to in last week’s Inner Circle content. The original idea for those routines and this one occurred to me while reading Matt Baker’s excellent ‘The Buena Vista Shuffle Club’, in a routine called ‘Outlier.’
In case you didn’t catch last week’s effect, the basic idea is that we have what FEELS like a deck of 52 blank cards, but is actually 104 ‘ultrathin’ cards—52 blank cards with the 52 cards of our stack ‘hidden’ behind the blank cards.
Here’s how to set that up…
- You’ll need to know the stack, if you haven’t already got it down, you can learn ‘The Babylon Secret’ as a FREE bonus for being part of our Inner Circle.
Learn here:
https://innercircle.jasoncoppage.com/module-1-part-1-transformation/
- You’ll need to pick up a custom deck of cards from the link below.
https://www.card-shark.de/?page=20&lang=en&detail=true&Category=7&ArtID=142
(In case you’re reading this at a later date and the above link no longer works, the product is a ‘Phoenix Double Decker’ deck)
You’ll want to select ‘blank face decks with red backs’ and then any of the ‘1x standard deck’ combinations. You’ll end up with a spare deck, but that’s okay.
Once you’ve got them, you’ll have 52 ultrathin blank cards and 52 ultrathin regular cards.
But how do you join them so every blank card/stack card handles like one?
Again, I have to credit Matt Baker for introducing this genius idea to me…
- Science Friction
Science Friction is a magic product that allows you to ‘glue’ two cards together while still being able to detach them at will.
Here’s the link:
https://www.penguinmagic.com/p/9981
It’s not super cheap, but once you get it, you’ll be able to use it for a whole bunch more than just this trick.
(in fact, I think they teach you a whole bunch of tricks and techniques when you buy the spray).
Alternatively, I believe this would also work with regular ‘Roughing Fluid’ which you CAN pick up cheap.
Either way, you want the cards to adhere to each other so you can spread to show the blank cards without revealing the stack cards beneath them—but easy enough to separate that you can do so when you need to display the chosen card.”
Last week I showed you how to leverage this genius idea for the Mnemonicosis effect, and a cool named-card revelation.
This week I want to show you how to use it to perform the gnarly effect I described above.
Let’s get into it…
- You tell your audience that you’ve been handling playing cards for so long—you can tell all kinds of things about them just by touch alone.
To demonstrate, you take a deck of cards from your pocket. You shuffle it, then hand it to a spectator. They cut the deck a few times, then cut a packet from the top of the deck and hand it to you.
We’re starting this trick in stack. Give it any false shuffles/cuts you like—or none, if you prefer. The spectator really can cut the deck as many times as they like—as it won’t disturb the order of your stack. However, make sure they keep the deck facedown while they do so, to keep the blank faced cards out of sight.
Once they’ve finished cutting, simply note the card on the top of the deck. Since the Phoenix back cards are marked, we don’t need to employ any fancy glimpses—just look at the marks and you’ll know it.
Let’s say the top card is the KH (#35 in the Mnemonica stack.)
Now, we get them to cut a packet from the top of the deck.
Once they do so, just glimpse the marks on the top card of the remainder of the deck. Let’s say you see the 2H (card #2 in Mnemonica stack).
That means the BOTTOM card of their packet is the 4C (card #1 in Mnemonica stack.)
- You hold them for a second, with a contemplative look on your face.
You tell your audience:
“The longer I hold these cards, the more I learn about them.”
After a second or two of holding the cards, you say:
“See, I now know exactly how MANY cards are in this packet. There are 18 cards.”
You count the cards to one by one, and sure enough—18 cards.
This works in the same way as the regular Weighing the Cards effect—we just have to modify our calculation based on the cards we previously glimpsed.
We previously glimpsed the top card of their packet to be the KH (#35) and worked out that the bottom card of their packet is the 4C (#1)
All we need to do now is calculate the difference. 52-35 is 17. However, we also have card #1, so 17 + 1 = 18.
We know that there are 18 cards in the packet, which we can demonstrate by counting them.
NOTE: When we count the cards, we want to make sure we don’t reverse the order. It’s not the end of the world if we do, as we can simply re-reverse the order again (perhaps by counting them again “to be sure”), but it’s simpler if we don’t have to do that. To count them without reversing the order, simply pass each card from your left hand into your right hand (or vice versa), each additional card going beneath the previous one. In this way, you count all the cards while maintaining the order.
- Then you hold the cards for a little longer.
“Okay…I now know even more about these cards…the top card is red!”
You turn over the top card, and sure enough, it’s red. You repeat this a couple of times.
Since you know that the top card is the KH, you know it’s red. (we’re purposefully only revealing the color, so we can ‘build’ the strength of the next phase by taking it even further.)
Now, here’s an important point.
The way I would suggest revealing this card is as follows:
- Take the card WITHOUT sliding the KH off of the blank card, and lay it on top of the remainder of the deck.
- NOW slide the KH off the blank card and reveal it.
- Once finished, place it firmly back on the blank card on top of the remainder of the deck
This way, we don’t have to deal with leftover blank cards getting in the way during the next phase.
We can repeat this a few times, since each new top card is not only the card that follows the previous in the stack—but also marked!
- “The longer I hold them, the more precise I can get. In fact, I can figure out the identity of any of the cards inside this packet. Here—let me show you. Spectator #1, give me a number between 1 and 10.”
Let’s say they say ‘7.’
“Incredible. I know that the 7th card down is actually the Nine of Clubs.”
You deal 7 cards and show them the Nine of Clubs.
“Thank you very much!”
Again, this is just another classic use of the memorized deck.
Let’s say we discarded the top 3 cards in the previous phase, meaning the new top card is the 10H (#38 in the stack.)
We ask someone for a number between 1 and 10 (just so we don’t have to spend ages counting, you could go higher if there are still more cards in the packet).
Let’s say they say ‘7’.
We simply do 37 + 7 to get 44.
Why 37, when the 10H is card 38?
Well, the 10H is going to be card ‘1’ of our count. We’re not starting on the card AFTER the 10H, the 10H IS the first card.
38 = card 1
39 = card 2
40 = card 3
41 = card 4
42 = card 5
43 = card 6
44 = card 7
Card #45 is the Nine of Clubs.
We name the Nine of Clubs, and then deal to the 7th card.
Like we did earlier, we lay this card on the remainder of the deck and slide off the Nine of Clubs, display it, and then reapply it to the blank card.
We’re ready for the ‘kicker’…
- Then, when they think the effect is over, you say:
“Actually, can I tell you a secret? Everything I just said was a total lie. I really can’t figure much out about cards just by holding them. I just make it up. The REAL trick is making you THINK you saw all those cards.”
You take the deck and spread it face up on the table to show that all the cards are completely blank.
Even though this is the most impressive part, it’s actually the easiest.
Simply spread the entire deck face up on the table to show that all the cards are completely blank!
Alright.
I’ve very much enjoyed exploring what we can achieve with this concept of blank face cards and hidden stack cards on their back, but I’m ready to talk about something else.
I’ll be back next week with more exclusive Inner Circle content!
Your friend,
Benji