For me the stripper is a great way to do the out of this world because you can shuffle then cut the red and blacks the way they should be.

I there anything else we can used the gimmick decks for to make the magic better?

Cosmos Duo applies this principle.

Senor, just the title of this post made me smile; I imagine some sort of bawdy sci-fi novel with a cover illustration by Frank Frazetta....

That's funny Joe. I didn't even catch that one but you're right on.

I use a stripper deck for out of this world as well! The stripper deck is also an option for any card trick where you have to control a card but want to have the spectator shuffle the deck.

How would you do that? I could see a way or two but I'm interested in your way?

Encourage them to do an overhand shuffle.

I show them an overhand shuffle and ask them to shuffle the deck that way themselves

Most people don't change the orientation of the halves when doing a riffle shuffle.
If concerned you could always do something that doesn't rely on the stripper property and have them shuffle the deck to see how they handle it.

If you encourage them to do a hindu shuffle, they might even control the card themselves without them knowing

I saw these guys at the TRICS convention last weekend -- some nice stuff with the stripper deck.

www.penguinmagic.com/p/S23080

Norman Beck also has some work with it.

Definitely check out "A New Angle" by Plunkett and Feldman. Great ideas and terrific thinking in there.

I was there too. The book is not your typical stripper book. Not for beginners. Lots of good thinking!

An idea I was messing with tonight, inspired by the question in the topic:

If you shuffle half the cards face up into the face down cards turning them end for end first, you can obviously strip them back out for a Triumph routine. I'm not sure if it's well known that you can repeat the procedure over and over, [cutting half the deck, turning them face up and end-for-end, shuffling together] and still the face up cards will strip out. However, if your first shuffle is reds face up into blacks, and you keep repeating them, when you strip out the face-up cards they will be a mix of reds and blacks. No good for OOtW.

Instead, you can do the first shuffle face down. [So you could strip out the reds if you wanted to] But then start doing the end for end Triumph shuffle I described. As many times as you like. Now if you perform a strip, you'll get a mix of up-and-down cards in each pile, but all the face-up cards in one pile will be black, and all the face-down will be red. The other pile will be opposite. Still no good for OOTW but it makes for an interesting Oil-and-Water routine.

However... If you repeat the exact same steps in the paragraph above, but before you do the strip you separate the face up cards from face down cards [by hand, not stripping], each pile will be a mix of reds and blacks, but ready to strip apart. In other words if you reassemble the two halves [turning one end-for-end], you'll be right back where you were after the first shuffle. The other option is that the first shuffle of reds and blacks you do face up and face down, but DO NOT prepare them for a strip. What's going on mechanically is you are trying to make sure that face down reds always are in the same "stripper" orientation as face up blacks, and vice versa. If you start that way and always flip the cards end-for-end every time you turn them over, you will maintain that set-up.

I've used this before in a different context, and the way I presented it was that by turning the cards face up the audience can 'watch the cards getting mixed'. Starting with the suits separated and in order, I put the spades and clubs together, and the diamonds and hearts together. Shuffle the reds fairly [No stripper set-up yet] into the blacks, but face up. Say, "When we shuffle like this it's easy to see that one shuffle really doesn't do much. The cards are practically still in order. If you look at this side you only see black, and on this side you only see red. The suits don't mix, and they are still in sequence Ace to King. Let's do another [cut half, turn over, flip end-for-end]. After two shuffles, we've forced the reds and blacks to mix, but there are still only two suits on each side, do you see? And even though the clubs are mixed with the hearts here, each suit is still in order. Let's do another. [repeat] After three shuffles we finally start to see all four suits mixed together, but notice that this side of the deck shows all low cards and all the good cards are on the other side! Only after the fourth shuffle [repeat] do things start to look like a bit of a mess. In fact [repeating the shuffle several times rapidly], mathematicians say it takes at least 8 shuffles to completely lose track of the order. [spreading the deck and separating all the face up cards] Now how do these look to you? All different suits, some low cards some high cards from each suit, and no sequence left that I can see. Do you agree this finally looks like complete chaos? Great, then we can begin! [Turn the face-up cards over and end-for-end] Would you please shuffle these two halves together?

Now after they shuffle, you take the cards back and you are ready to strip the colors apart at any time. Sounds complicated, but it all happens fairly quickly and makes a strong impression. It's the kind of thing where even though you know what's coming, you surprise yourself at the end the first time through. Try it with a deck in hand and you'll see what I mean.

The stripper deck is full of opportunity. I use it a my go-to for card magic, even when doing effects that don't need it. I has gotten me out of trouble on a number of occasions...

CR_Shelton, great ideas!

I used to work a lot with a stripper deck. And I was hooked to the point whenever I had to perform with a normal deck I would feel strange and insecure, because my brain would focus on the effects I could do with the stripper. So I dropped it. I felt I had to work a lot on sleights and on technique so that one thing I liked wouldn't become my limitation.

But I had a lot of fun improvising magic for some close friends. And some ideas came by that could be developed into effects. Playing with it can be a good way to discover new possibilities.

If you faro end to end the reds and blacks, you can use the same principle of the Svengali deck in order to show only the red cards or only the black cards.

I've encountered some spectators aware of a Svengali deck, because of children magic kits or whatever. To those, when I noted they started to suspect about the stripper deck I would immediately go into an effect that I could use their help in doing a Rosetta Shuffle (Lennart Green). That basically wipes out from their minds the possibility of a stripper deck, as nobody has any form of control over the orientation of the cards in that situation, neither them nor I.

You can have two selections, one red and one black, appear each in the middle of the opposite color, with the colors separated. (fan of black cards with the red selection on the middle, fan of red cards with the black selection on the middle) and that can be an instantaneous effect, right after showing the faces of the cards completely mixed up.

You can use it with they key card and short card principle, to instantly cut to a selected card (and the selected card doesn't need to be on the reversed direction).

With a bit of practice, you can have a very direct "cut to the aces" presentation, where the performer cuts four piles of cards, and on the top (or the bottom) of each, there is an ace (or four selected cards). All of that very quick and very direct, without the need of fancy shuffles or cuts. It's almost a non-technique, as with the appropriate psychological cover, for the spectators, you did nothing, you simply cut to the aces.

I ust it as key card to cut for any number they want

Luke Jermay's "An Extraordinary Exhibition of Seeing with the Finger tips" comes with a USPC stripper deck.

But if you're going for magic... maybe "out of this world" would play as a stronger plot than "oil and water"?