Hi - one of the tricks I like to perform involves having the spectator cut the deck into 4 piles, and then have them move the top three cards of pile 1 to the bottom of pile 1 before dealing the next 3 cards onto piles 2, 3 and 4. They then following the same action with the remaining 3 piles. When all of that is complete, they turn over the top card of each pile to reveal that they are 4 cards of the same value.

My struggle with this trick is that I don't have a logical patter that explains why I'm asking them to move three to the bottom, etc. I don't remember where I learned this, but I don't think it offered any suggestions for patter. Do any of you perform it, and if so, how do you present the instructions?

Hope my explanation of the effect made sense.

Thanks very much.

I think I know the trick you're talking about. Maybe you could bring up how they burn cards in poker games in order to mess up shuffle stacks. Just avoid anything that alludes to the setup. They do all the work and you can throw in some slick comment at the end about adding the extra burn cards to the stack. That would only fit a pseudo skill demo but the justification for the procedure works.

Alex - that's a fantastic idea. I'm going to play around with it and come up with a presentation. I never thought of that trick from a gambling perspective, so thanks very much for the advice. It always felt unnatural having the spectator perform a series of moves that I had no real justification for, until now.

Your explanation made perfect sense, I know exactly which trick it is. I don't perform it myself but I know a couple guys who do.

Anyway, Paul Zenon covers this trick in his street magic book, and the way he handles it is something like "You know, I think you'd make a pretty good card sharp. Let me see your hands. Yep, I think you'd be pretty good, let's try something here."

Then you tell the person to cut the deck into four piles the way you normally would and compliment him or her as it's being done ("Oh, yes, well done, nice even piles, good work there."). The key, the way Zenon described it, is to start building up the spectator's ego with compliments the second he or she starts touching the deck.

Then you tell the spectator to do the dealing. I forget exactly how he described it (again, it's not a trick I do myself, so I didn't memorize it) but basically it's like "Deal three cards down, nice and fast, oooh, good dexterity there, it looks like I was right but let's make sure, do the same thing with the second pile..." and you compliment him or her every step of the way as you go through all four piles. And then when you show the end of the trick by flipping over the top cards you say something like "Wow, you're even better at this than I am, and I've been doing this for years!"

I'm paraphrasing and probably adding stuff, but that is the gist of the way Zenon performs the trick on the street. Seems to work pretty well for him, so you might try it, but Alex's "burn card" idea sounds good, too. I never even thought of it, but I thank Alex for suggesting it because it would work well for a trick that I actually do perform.

Best of luck,

Roger

Thanks Roger. I'm not familiar with Paul Zenon's work. There might be a way to combine both of these approaches into one presentation. I appreciate the advice.

There's a ton of options. I was on the run when I posted off my phone, and it's worth mentioning that you could use the excuse of burn cards and really move away from anything gambling related at that point. I'd probably do it and make the spectator feel like they were the cheat now that I think about it, but you could really go in any direction. I'm also a fan of really buttering up the spectator whenever they do something because they know something's up but never what it is.

Let us know how it goes.

I did this at my job and did it like this: I said " the other day this magician showed me this trick" and explained it like I was just showing the people at my job what the magician showed me, NOT like I was doing a magic effect, but just what he showed me. (I'm actually doing the trick but they don't think that I'm doing an actual trick- only what the magician showed me). I say "he shuffled the cards" (I false shuffle them leaving aces on top") "then he had me cut 4 piles" (person at my job cuts), "then he said something like deal 3 cards to bottom", etc. (girl at my job does this)- "he asked me if everything was fair and random and I said yes", etc. "and I couldn't believe it when he turned over the top card of each pile and it ....etc . That's the way I do this effect

That probably killed 'em. I ended up doing it to my roommate and he was so busy watching for palms or bottoms, the whole trick snuck up on him.

I think nattefrost's patter suggestion works well, and I would perhaps also work in a false cut after the shuffle -- the only thing I might do differently is I would not say in words, "First he shuffled the cards..." I would just do the false shuffle, and the false cut, while talking about the magician you saw the other night -- where you saw him, or what night it was, or what he was wearing perhaps -- but don't SAY you are shuffling and cutting, let the other spectators just see that you are doing so.

This is just my opinion. In coin tricks and in cups and balls, we ALWAYS narrate what we're doing as if the audience can't see it ("But what if I put this ball in my pocket?"), and perhaps that works ok for those kind of faster-moving effects. But when I do card tricks, I try (emphasis on TRY, sometimes I catch myself breaking my own rule) to never narrate what I am doing, particularly when those actions can speak for themselves.

Not to be a weirdo -- but this is actually a fairly old, fairly well-known, and some might say "exposed" card trick. (It is in a large number of kid books.) Not that you shouldn't do it -- and you can often even do the set-up right under the noses of your audience, as you are talking -- but in this type of well-known effect, I find the false shuffle (and cut) done casually can go a long way toward dispelling any lingering suspicions. Just my two cents....

Great advice guys. I agree that a false shuffle and/or cut can really add a new element to this trick. Yes, it's a very old and well known basic trick, but I still like performing it.

If you get a chance, take a look at this performance which aired on tv. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8tQgHiMGGU

That was absolutely horrible!

I want my 4:09 back!

What a video. Such a simple trick... to go so horribly wrong.

I have done this one some. Never been a favorite becasue I could never really get a good patter or reason. I try to say we are going to do some random moves... but all the decks are handled exactly the same. I have been thinking about having the first three handled differently because it really only has to be the last stack done right. Just keep up with how many cards get put on top of the last stack. But something to make it feel more random.

I agree with Tukaram, not bad making moves appear 'randomly' executed, not following the same order with every packet, inserting cards in the middle of other packets instead of the bottom as if you were improvising etc. This was also my tactic the rare times I performed it ( because I must confess it's not a favorite of mine *blushing* ).
That 'randomness' would require another type of patter, maybe ; I simply acted as wanting 'mess' with heaps a little more, without giving any particular reason for this.
Another little convincer - unless, like Alex, you have a roommate always watching for palms, of course - could be have the spectator shuffling by himself the deck, and when is given back secretly adding Aces on top.
( A devil's advocate could object that at this point the trick is no more a self-working, I realize )

I believe the effect in this discussion is titled "Poker Player's Picnic" from Hugard and Braue's classic, The Royal Road to Card Magic. This version does indeed start with a gambling premise, judging from the title. Richard Osterlind has his version of this called "Dad's Favorite" which follows the haphazard movement of cards to and from piles. There is no set procedure and the effect at the end is mind-blowing because it looks so random. It fooled me badly the first time I saw it and I laughed out loud when I realized such a simple method completely took me in! I love these moments. Check out Richard's version. You may never go back to the original method again.

I will admit that this will not exactly work everywhere, but I sometimes get away with:"Three on the bottom, three on top - sounds like the title of a p0rn-movie, does it?" After that, no more justifiying is required ... ;-)

Robert Giobbi performs this effect with a slight change in handling that you may like.

In a nutshell the number of cards to be dealt down is determined by the original top card of each packet. Obviously some minor extra setup is required for the 4th packet.

The strength of the Giobbi handling lies in the fact that the arbitrary rule of dealing 3 cards down, before dealing onto the other packets, has been removed and a layer of deception has been added. The trick becomes less vulnerable to retro-analysis

However I think the trick becomes even less suitable for a display-of-skill effect. Though I like Giobbi's reworking of the trick, I still find the presenation rather meaningless. But, I reckon, if you were to reframe the meaning of the effect into something about fortune-telling – where the 4 top indifferent cards have a meaning and establish a dealing ritual, where the participant asks a question about the future say, and the outcome is determined by the top cards revealed after the PPP procedure, then you might elevate it to a meaningful and impressive trick. The presentation might be tongue-in-cheek or serious – depending on your persona.

Claudio, it that effect in one of his Card Colleges?

"Belchou Aces Revisited" is on Card College DVD Vol 1, but not in the CC books. If you like Belchou Aces, aka Poker Player's Picnic, it's worth getting this revised handling as the RRTCM version is well known among laypeople, and they won't be able to backtrack it.

Thanks

Another way of justifying the "burning" of the three cards before dealing one atop each pile that I used to use all the time is to have a three spot at the bottom of the deck. Once the four piles are cut, you explain that the game is begun by peeking at the card on the face of any pile. Then you turn up the original bottom pile as an example. "It's a three," you say as you burn three cards, then deal three cards, one to each pile. You could use equivoque to arrive at the "three" pile but that would most certainly be overkill. In fact, you could argue that any justification at all is sort of overkill. As Harry Lorayne has said about a great many tricks... "Don't make a big thing of it. Just do it." Nobody will ever question it or ask what would happen if you burned and dealt a number other than three. If they are surprised enough to find the four aces, they won't care how many cards you dealt.