Early Christmas Present from CaptainJR

[CaptainJR]

So what can I give my friends at AZB. A real puzzle. What can I give over the internet? A little knowledge maybe. Yea, but there are people on here that know a lot more than me about pool. Some other knowledge then, but what would interest them. I've got it! I've never met a pool player that didn't like a good card trick.

So here is a little known 'professional' level card trick for you all for Christmas. It takes a lot of practice, but nothing you can't do. Once you've got it, it's a dandy. I'm giving it to you early so if you spend maybe 40 to 50 hours on it between now and the New Years Eve party you go to, you can have some fun with it.

I was trying to just write this out today and found that I couldn't do it without pictures. So when I got home I had my daughter Stacey take some pictures for illustrations. This will take several posts so here goes. There are several pictures on this page. I made them as small a file as I could so that it will load even with a dialup connection. If you do have dialup, be a little patient it shouldn't take vary long.



Needed - One high quality deck of playing cards. Bicycle brand preferred. No, casino cards are not high quality and will be vary difficult to do this with because the cards are not consistent in thickness and are not flexible enough. (besides they probably have a hole punched in the middle) Just take my word for it and use Bicycle cards. It will make it a lot easier.


Here is "THE FLYING ACES"




1. Start with the deck face up. Pull the four Aces out of the deck. (pic 1)

2. Holding the deck in your hand as shown in (pic2), riffle your thumb across the corner of the deck placing an Ace in the deck every so often. (pic3) Show the audience that the Aces are spread throughout the deck. (pic4)

 

[CaptainJR]

3. 'The Cut' - Re-grip the deck putting the first finger in front and the thumb and other fingers on the side of the deck. (pic1) With a light grip tilt the cards away from you. It's almost like a slight flick of the wrist. This throws the cards above the first Ace on top of the Ace and leaves the rest the way they were. (pic2) With your right hand take hold of the cards that didn't move. With your left hand move the thumb and outside finger up to where they are just holding the Aces and the cards that moved over the Aces. Slide the cards apart. (pic3) Place the bottom cards on top. (pic4) Practice it enough that it just looks like a normal cut from bottom to top.

 

[CaptainJR]

Where you stand now? Once you turn the deck face down the Aces that you just cut to the bottom are now on top. The audience thinks they are well spread throughout the deck.

4. (optional) If your vary careful you can do a regular shuffle to the deck once or twice here. Just be vary aware of which hand has the top half of the deck (with the Aces), because the Aces must stay together and on top. If you shuffle, riffle the bottom half more quickly thus the top cards of the top half stay on top and never get shuffled. (If you not sure you can do this, skip this part, it's not necessary. If you do it anyway and think you might not have if right, before you push them together just pull them apart acting like the cards were stuck or something and try again)

5. 'The Ferrel Shuffle' - This is not the easy part. It will take a lot of practice. You now have to learn to shuffle the cards exactly every other card. Even sounds tough doesn't it. You start off by separating the deck into two parts. (pic1) Make sure the top part (with the Aces) has less cards than the bottom part. Holding the cards as shown (important, exactly as shown in pic2), using the pinky as a guide put the corners together and roll them across each other (making sure the smaller half with the Aces goes into the middle of the bigger half. (pic3) They will interweave exactly every other card. Don't push them all the way together, just a little less than half way. (pic4) Notice in pic4 that the part of the deck with the Aces in sandwiched in the other half. That is why the part with the Aces had to have less cards.

This is the part that requires a quality and fairly new deck of cards. when your rolling the corners together to do the shuffle it needs to be firm yet gentle pressure pushing the corners together. It takes a lot of practice to be able to do it quickly enough that it doesn't arouse suspicion from the audience that your doing something sneaky.

 

[CaptainJR]

Now you have the cards pushed half way together, weaved every other card. The Aces are on the top of the half that is in the middle of the other half. Oh, in part 5 above, while pushing them half way together you can say "they don't seem to want to go together". You will be telling the truth, when they are exactly every other card there is a lot of resistance while trying to push them together. Then say "ah, I'll just let them like this." then go immediately to the finally - part 6.

6. Take the thicker half with your thumb and curved pointer (pic1) grip just that half firmly enough that the other half with the Aces doesn't fall out. then slap your other wrist with your fist. (pic2) When you do this, what ever cards are on the top of the front will start to fly out. We have just made sure that they are the Aces. (If they are not shuffled exactly every other card anything could fly out) Took quite a few pictures before we got a picture with an Ace in mid air. (pic3) repeat until four cards have come out and stop. They will be the four Aces. (pic4)

A couple will usually land face down. When the audience turns the last one over and it is the last Ace, I guarantee you the audience will be stunned.

Merry Christmas All


P.S. Poker anyone?

 

[CaptainJR]

Jam
why are the pictures showing as files instead of the actual picture showing?
Thank you
JR

 

[XzyluM]

Sweet. I'm always interested in new card tricks. This one sure looks nice. You did a fine job of showing how the trick is done. I'm going to have to get good at this one. Thanks.

 

[piglit]

Oh, to think! If only our powers could be used for good!!

-piga

 

[sjm]

Thanks for the gift, Captain. It will be interesting to see whether a clutz like me can do this trick.

 

[CaptainJR]

Your welcome XzyluM and SJM.
I know this isn't the easiest effect to learn. I just didn't want to put something ordinary up. If it was not going to be ordinary, then I had to pick one that took a little practice. Back in the 70's and early 80's when I was getting $100 for a 45 minute card magic show (not bad money back then), this trick was always one of my best crowd pleasers.

Another thing I should have mentioned. You can practice the every other card shuffle with some cheaper cards. Bicycle cards are a little more expensive and you could go through 4 to 10 decks before having this good enough to do. (the corners start to go bad for this if your really practicing it hard) So you might want to get some cheap cards to practice with, then when you use Bicycle cards it will be easy.

Are you ready for the (two year) BONUS? You all are going to have to coax this out of me.

 

[CaptainJR]

Are you ready for the (two year) BONUS? You all are going to have to coax this out of me.

I thought I'd get at least one person to say 'What in the world could a (two year) BONUS be?"

OK, so I don't have to be coaxed. It's like someone walking up to me and asking me if I want a beer and I say, "I don't know, maybe if you twist my arm".

Even if you had no interest in learning the card trick and only looked through it to see what it was about. You still might find this interesting.

The shuffle that you must learn to do the trick, that shuffles the cards exactly every other card. (pic3 on post #3, Clip5C.jpg) This can be used to do the most stunning card trick I do. The only change is, in step 5 I tell you to make sure you make that part of the deck with the Aces in it, smaller. For this trick they have to be the exactly the same. 26 and 26. To cut the cards exactly in half is not as difficult as you might think. If you hold and cut them as in (pic1 on post #3, Clip5A.jpg) you just look straight at the cut, If it is off by one card, that makes the halves 25 and 27. Which is a difference of two cards thickness. You can see this much of a difference and you just transfer a card to the other half.

Now that you have the deck cut exactly in half, you do the shuffle, making sure to keep the bottom card of the deck, on the bottom. (oh by the way, the Aces mean nothing in this trick, so if your thinking what about the Aces, that's the other trick, we are just shuffling here)

Now do that half and half cut and the every other card shuffle keeping the bottom card the same, 7 more times. The result is the cards are in the exact same order they were when you started.

The trick - I always took at least one brand new 'sealed' deck of Bicycle cards to every show. You know how cards originally come out of the box, suited and in order. So I break the seal, pull the jokers off the end of the deck and spread the cards face up showing the audience that they are suited and in order. (this is just to reinforce the fact that it was a new unopened deck). Then you start shuffling. 8 times. The fasted I've ever done this is like 52 seconds. This is what I was talking about when I said "(two year BONUS)". To get this shuffle down good enough to do this trick it would take at least that long. Anyway after about 25 to 30 seconds of shuffling the audience starts to get bored so you have to continually entertain them by talking. Saying how a card trick means absolutely nothing unless the cards are shuffled. When you're doing this shuffle it does become obvious that the cards are really getting mixed up. Somewhere about 45 seconds into this someone in the audience usually says something to the effect of 'OK they are shuffled'. I say 'are you sure'? Then when I'm pushing the cards together, again I make sure everyone notices how much they are getting mixed up. As I mentioned above after 8 of these shuffles the cards are exactly the way they were to begin with. Finally after the 8th shuffle, I spread them out face up and everyone sees the card are still suited and in order. Nobody can believe it. That's it.