Finish read this routine, it's brilliant. Also looks good for a deck switch. Anyone doing it?

Simon Aronson's "Two Deck Canasta" from Try The Impossible. Will work with any full deck stack, and you don't need it memorized. I use Mnemonica, but will work beautifully with Si Stebbins or Eight Kings.

And don't neglect Maven's Mockingbird, which depends on a rosary stack (Si Stebbins is but one option) and the Gilbreath principle.

Les

Been doing it for many years off and on.

My favorite is "Sympatico" by Ned Rutledge. This effect has blown away everyone I've shown it to, magician and layperson alike. A simple, easy effect that I have strengthened by changing the handling and patter. Original effect: the spectator cuts to a card while the magician's back is turned, and puts it sight unseen into her pocket. The spec then removes the next card, turns the deck face up, and places the second card face down somewhere in the deck. The magician turns around and proceeds to "mirror" the actions of the spectator. Eventually, he/she names the invisible card in his/her pocket, as well as the card in the invisible deck. They match the spectator's two cards. PM me if you want to know how I strengthened the routine. I am a big believer in effects like this where not even the spectator knows what card he/she has chosen: it makes the whole thing that much more impossible.

Another fantastic Rutledge effect (though one I haven't performed myself yet) is "Foiled." Three spectators each come on stage and remove a bunch of cards from a tabled deck, placing them face down inside a sheet of tin foil, and then wrapping them. The magician proceeds through "touch" to name each of the cards in turn. (There is a special handling involved: knowing the stack alone wouldn't enable you to know which cards were fronted on the foil.

I picked up these and a bunch of other yellowing, mimeographed tricks at a a magic auction in Boston. Priceless stuff.

Oh, and another thing: Rutledge's "Sympatico" is a great lead-in to "Out of This W*rld." As probably most of you know, the Stebbins is perfect for getting into it. After the Rutledge effect, I "show" the faces quickly, then try another "experiment," dealing the cards into four piles. Then I test the spec's intuition: what card do you think is on top? We turn over the top cards, and of course the spec has failed. I put the piles back together, R-R and B-B, and bang--all set for one of the greatest card miracles extant.

I love PSI Stebbins by Larry Becker and get into Stebbins via Darwin Ortiz Method