Old man, old cars, and old whisky
Here is where I have my thoughts and techniques on performing magic. You must log into this site in order to read the posts. If your don’t have an account you may register here. After you register the site admin will have to approve the registration before you can login.
There are a lot of techniques for stacking poker hands, from the simple milk shuffle, to Erdnase, to riffle stacking, to using Zarrow shuffles. But one of the simplest is to do a “pick up” stack, which is simple stacking the cards you want as you pick cards off the table.
This is how I do it for a “poker stacking” demonstration. A I present this as a shuffle stacking demonstation, it really is a bluff stack, in that the shuffle is not doing the stacking.
Continue reading “Pick up stack”I am teaching a friend some card technique and put together this video to give him a practice routine. Below is the video with text instructions.
Here is the video without instructions
There is a simple false cut that I like to do on off beats, those times when the spectator attention is not riveted on the deck. Although, done properly and with the spectators at the right angle this is an excellent cut that closely mimics a single fair cut.
Continue reading “And yet another false cut”Here are some more false cuts. These are in the class of false cuts that look like multiple cuts but in reality simply cut the deck once, leaving the deck as if it was simply cut once. These are useful when dealing with a stack such as Si Stebbins, or Eight Kings.
Continue reading “False cuts”
Most of the electronic copies of this book that I have found on line are not very readable, so I made my own copy. Click on the book to start reading.
In playing with the Faro Shuffle simulator I noticed that it takes only three faro shuffles to move the card that is seventh from the bottom of the deck to the top. I am sure that someone else has written about this, but here is my take on using that fact as a card control,
Continue reading “Faro card control”Below is a table showing patterns of Faro shuffles that will move a playing card from one location to another in a deck of 52 playing cards. This table was generated using the formulas in the paper “The Solutions to Elmsley’s Problem” by Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham (The Solutions to Elmsley’s Problem – Stanford University ).
Continue reading “Faro Shuffle table for moving any card to any location”
In writing the Faro Simulator I used formulas for generating the in and out shuffle patterns needed to move cards from and to the top of the deck. These patterns can be seen when using the simulator but I thought it would be useful to see them all in a table.
Continue reading “Faro Table for moving cards from and to the top”The Faro shuffle is a shuffling technique that causes two packets of cards to interleave perfectly. That is to say that only one card at a time from each packet is released, alternating with one card from the other packet. It is a semi-automatic technique, meaning that when properly executed the cards weave together without any effort by the individual doing the shuffle. That said, it is a technique that an individual must master with factors such as the conditions of the cards, the grip of the packets, pressure and angles are also playing a role.
Continue reading “Faro Shuffle Tutorial”I use two different stacked decks, the Si Stebbins stack and the Osterlind stack. When using the Osterlind stack I do several mind reading effects and then offer to demonstrate how a card shark uses the deck, and shuffle the cards ending with four aces on top. Here is how I do it.
Continue reading “Osterlind stack to 4 aces”