Deck switches are an important tool for memorized deck work, so
it’s efficient to have an effect that’s both strong and
entertaining in its own right, but also secretly rings in a
memorized stack for use in further effects. (My “Bait and
Switch,” from The Aronson Approach, has been one of my favorite
such effects).
“Shuffle Tracking” fills these requirements admirably. Because
you apparently explain secret “gambling skills,” it has an
intriguing, almost plausible hook, and may earn you credit for
being a sophisticated card technician. It also subtly emphasizes
that the deck is well shuffled.
Technique Needed: One good
glimpse. I think Steve Draun’s “Fan Glimpse” (Kaufman, Secrets
Draun from Underground, (1993), p. 31) is the ideal move for this
effect (and, indeed, is one of the most useful and most deceptive
moves in card magic). But any glimpse that allows you to secretly
learn the identity of a freely chosen card can be adapted to this
effect.
Alternatively, if you don’t know a good glimpse, there are still
other ways of getting into this effect (see comment 3).Preparation:
“Shuffle Tracking” can be performed at any time during any card
routine. The only requirement is to have a matching deck in
memorized order in one of your pockets, loose (i.e., without the
card box) with the bottom card facing your body. I find it
helpful to put a pocket divider next to the face card (a piece of
cardboard works fine, or in a pinch a comb will do). During the
routine you’re going to put your regular deck into this pocket,
and the divider simply helps keep the two decks separate.
I’ll present my patter script along with the procedure.
Working:
1) Have your spectator, Ginny, shuffle the deck. “The
main difference between a gambler and a magician is that a gambler
takes chances. A magician wants his trick to work every time, but
a gambler plays the odds. A gambler’s skills don’t absolutely
guarantee a win, but they better the percentage. Let me show
you.”
2) Retrieve the deck. “Let’s use just one card, as a
target. I’m going to show you the cards like this. Can you see
them as they go by? … Good, as I go through them, just call stop.
Now remember that card.” Have a card freely peeked at, and
obtain a secret break below the selection. Immediately do a
pressure fan, with the faces toward the spectator, actually
performing Draun’s “Fan Glimpse” in the process to glimpse the
selection. All of the “work” is now behind you; the rest is
presentation.
One note. Ordinarily when I have a card “peeked at” I make a
point of turning my head aside, so that I “can’t see anything.”
Here, however, I don’t turn away. The ensuing patter explains
why.
3) “You might think a gambler wouldn’t know anything about
your card, but that’s not quite true. He doesn’t know anything
about the identity of your card, but he can estimate, sometimes
very closely, its approximate position in the deck. And
estimation is enough to give him an edge. I still have a rough
idea where it is.” Table the deck in front of Ginny, so the long
edge faces you.
“Let’s take it a step further. A second skill is called
shuffle-tracking, trying to follow a card during shuffles. I’m
only a beginner, but cut off half the deck, and give those two
halves just one riffle shuffle. I need to watch the edge of the
deck.” Have Ginny give the deck a riffle shuffle, and as she
does, focus your eyes intensely on the edge of the deck. “And, as
long as I’m in the line of sight, give it one cut.” Again, feign
concentrating on the deck. “So, now I’ve got a narrow range of
possibilities. It’s not exact, but it’s not completely random
either.”
4)“Those first two skills were visual. The third skill
is tactile – the sense of touch. You don’t want to constantly
stare at the deck, so a gambler develops finger sensitivity,
without looking at the cards.” Place the deck into your pocket
below the pocket divider.
Here’s what’s going to happen. Apparently you’re now going to try
to find Ginny’s selection by your sense of touch. In essence,
you’ll remove cards in bunches from your pocket, as you attempt to
narrow in on the spectator’s “target” card. Actually you’ll
simply remove small groups (about ten cards at a time) starting
from the top of your memorized deck. As you remove each group,
hold the cards with the faces fanned or spread toward Ginny, so
she can see each card (and so you can’t see the faces). You’re
supposedly relying on your shuffle tracking and estimation skills,
to determine that these groups don’t contain her target. As the
spectator confirms that each group does not contain her card,
you’ll drop that bunch face up, in a casual spread across the
table. At one point you’ll hesitantly remove a single card from
your pocket face down, and place it face down on the tabled
spread. You’ll then continue with more bunches, tossing them face
up onto the tabled spread, until the deck is exhausted. Ginny
will not have seen her target card, so the suspense and
foreshadowing grows.
Of course, since you already know the spectator’s card, you know
exactly where it lies in your memorized deck. You will thus know
exactly when to remove a single face down card, and can act
accordingly.
5) Let’s follow a detailed example. Suppose the card you
secretly glimpsed was, say, the KH (which happens to be stack
number 30 in the Aronson stack). In this example, you can quickly
grab a bunch of cards off the top of your memorized deck, and
remove them from your pocket with their faces toward the
spectator, saying something like, “A gambler plays the odds. If
I’m right about the approximate location of your cards, the first
bunch is easy, look. Don’t say what your card is, but confirm,
your card’s not in this group, is it?” Make sure you fan
the cards so Ginny sees them all, and wait for her to take a
serious look. I play this up as if my attempts at getting close
are “for real.” When she confirms that it’s not there, only then
do you turn these cards face up and drop them, still spread in a
fan, onto the table.
6) The face card of the tabled group tells you exactly
where you are in your stack, so there’s no need to count or
calculate (yet). Let’s say the face card is, say, stack number
11. That tells you there’s still plenty of room to go, before you
reach position # 30. Continue to remove another bunch, perhaps a
dozen or so cards, from the top of your stack, again with the
faces toward your spectator, saying “It shouldn’t be here either.
Please check, it’s not there, right?” Once she confirms it’s not,
toss this fan of cards face up onto the tabled spread, gradually
building a loose pile on the table. Let’s say the face card of
this group happens to be stack number 23.
7) You now know you’re getting close to # 30. Do one
simple (the only) calculation (here, 30 minus 23, minus 1, = 6) to
determine how many cards should be in the next group. So, reach
into your pocket and count off the next six cards and bring them
out, as another bunch. Don’t rush the counting, because your
patter covers (indeed, suggests) a hesitation. Say something
like, “If I followed your shuffle correctly, I think I’m getting
close. But I don’t think it’s one of these, is it?” Show the
faces of these six cards to Ginny, and when she confirms it’s not
there, again toss them face up onto the growing tabled spread.
You now have a visual check: if you’ve done things right, stack
number 29 (the stack number immediately before the target) is
staring you in the face.
8) Remove the next card singly, without showing it, and
toss it face down onto the spread, saying, “I’m not sure about
this one.” (It will, of course, be the selected card.)
9) Continue on through the rest of the deck, removing
further bunches, showing them to Ginny, and tossing them face up
onto the spread. At the conclusion, you’ll have 51 cards face-up
in a loose spread, with just one card face down, ready for the
revelation.
I like to nudge cards in a few places in the spread, glancing as
if I’m just checking something, and then I say something like,
“One final gambler’s skill is a good memory. If I’m right, I’ve
seen only three Kings so far, so this last card should be a
King.” I then remove the face down card from the spread, so that
only I can see it. “You didn’t happen to choose the King
of Hearts, did you?” Turn the card around, for a strong display
climax.
Casually replace the selection back into its position in the deck,
and the deck is now in memorized order for further miracles.
Comments:
1) Credits. My inspiration for “Shuffle Tracking” is
Martin Nash’s deck switch, from his Ovation Act (see his
videotapes/DVDs, A1 Multimedia). Indeed, my major contribution
was simply to adapt his effect to the memorized deck. Martin
simply forced the top card of a cold deck; by using a memorized
deck, you can actually do the same effect, and accomplish the deck
switch, with any freely selected card. The peek allows for a
presentation with an apparently unknown card. There are
similarities in procedure, but not presentation, with Ramblar’s
“Cards from Pocket Stop Trick” (Tamariz’ Mnemonica, p. 147) and to
Laurie Ireland’s “Producing Selected Card at Any Number At the
Same Time Cold Packing” (Ireland Writes A Book, p. 19).
2) Alternative Positions. Depending on where the
selected cardhappens to fall in your memorized order, the
face down selected card may get removed from your pocket earlier
or later. Indeed, if it’s quite near the top of your stack, it
could hypothetically appear among the first group. Of course,
since you know its exact location, you can control for this
eventuality, and could start counting from the top immediately.
But for dramatic and aesthetic reasons I think it’s best for the
face-down selection not to appear too early. You can always
achieve this result, by “mentally cutting” the memorized deck to
re-position the selection approximately where you want it. You
don’t need to actually give the deck a physical cut inside your
pocket. Here’s how I proceed. If the target card is, say, among
the top fifteen or so cards of my stack, instead of starting by
removing a bunch from the top of my stack, I just begin by
removing a dozen or so cards from the bottom of the stack. Then,
I go back and remove the top bunch, and proceed forward from
there. Nothing needs to be exact, since the stack will always
inform you, as you “approach” the selection. Simple
experimentation will show you that it’s quite easy, for example,
to remove the first bunch of cards from the face of the deck, thus
moving everything down about a dozen cards or so. At the climax,
the deck, of course, will still be in cyclical order.
3) Alternative Methods. Any method by which the magician
secretly learns the identity of the spectator’s selected card can
be adapted to the “Shuffle Tracking” presentation. Thus, you
could use Nash’s method of forcing a card, but without any
restriction of it being the top card of your stack. This allows
you to force a card that will arrive at an optimum position in the
spread (per comment 2 above).
Theoretically you could perform any simple location or control
that secretly tells you the identity of the selected card. Just
don’t openly reveal that you know it, and instead go into your
shuffle tracking patter.
Indeed, here’s a radical suggestion: you could theoretically
dispense with any “secret” method! Consider this: you patter
about shuffle tracking, and have the spectator remove any card at
all, and show it around to everyone (including you!). Explain
that it will be your target card, and have the spectator replace
it anywhere into the tabled deck, under your watchful stare. Then
proceed exactly as in the text, as you apparently try to follow
the target card through the shuffles and cuts. You still find it,
just as written, and accomplish the deck switch. (Of course, you
then can’t use my final patter line about a gambler having a good
memory, since you openly know the card already.)
I feel strongly, however, that whatever you do should be as simple
as possible, so as not to clutter the basic plot. That’s why a
glimpse is my preferred way to go. Marlo’s Book break glimpse, or
David Williamson’s glimpsing the card in the act of springing the
cards from hand to hand, or Tamariz’ glimpse from the center of
the deck, are other instant glimpses that don’t involve extraneous
procedures.
4) Alternative Revelations. You may want to experiment
with different revelations. For instance, it can be convincing
if, during the pocket removal, you hesitantly remove two or three
single face down cards, located at different places in the spread,
as if you’re not sure which one it is. (“That cut threw me a
bit. It might be this one … or (after another couple bunches)
maybe this one.” You then can build up the revelation at the
end, narrowing it down to one card. (Caveat: Don’t give into the
temptation to, say, take out four cards face down, and then
cavalierly reveal, “Well, I wasn’t sure, so I hedged my bet and
found all four Kings!” While such a feat is obviously easy to
accomplish (since you know the location of every card), such
overkill just gives away the deck switch. Less is more, here.)
I’ve also experimented with holding back on removing the selection
from your pocket, until the very end of the deck. When you get to
the selection in your pocket, just turn it perpendicular to the
rest of the deck, leave it there in your pocket, and keep on
removing further bunches. At the very end, remove the last two
cards (the selection and the final X card), backs toward the
spectator, and announce, “I never can be sure, but it’s probably
one of these.” Then, tenderly toss the odd card face up on the
table, as you narrow your choice to the final one.
