This is basically an elevator trick with four jacks, although you could use Aces but then the name wouldn’t make sense.
Display the four Jacks face up on top of the face down deck. Use the Braue add on technique to switch out two of the Jacks for two indifferent cards, as you flip the Jacks face down onto the top of the deck. The order of cards from the top down is Jack, indifferent card, indifferent card, Jack.
Deal the four top cards into a row on the table. Remember where the two Jacks fall. I push off two cards and lay them down: Indifferent card, Jack. Then push two more over and lay them down to the right of the cards on the table, so the order from left to right is indifferent card, Jack, Jack, Indifferent card.
Now let the spectator point to any one of the cards on the table. The spectator thinks they are four Jacks.
For the first choice they can point to a Jack or an indifferent card. From that point there are a total of six cases that require different handling. Below is a table showing the cases:
| First | Second | Third | Fourth | Moves | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indifferent | Jack | Indifferent | Jack | bt, bt, tb, tilt | |
| Indifferent | Jack | Jack | Indifferent | best case | bt, bt, tb, mt |
| Jack | Indifferent | Jack | Indifferent | bt, tb, bD, tb | |
| Jack | Indifferent | Indifferent | Jack | bt, tb, bD, tilt | |
| Jack | Jack | Indifferent | Indifferent | best case | bt, bt, tb, tb or bt, tb, bt, mt |
| Indifferent | Indifferent | Jack | Jack | worst case | bt, bt, tilt, tilt |
| Key to Moves | |||||
| bt - put card on bottom, riffle up, turn top card | |||||
| tb - put card on top, riffle down, show bottom card | |||||
| mt - put card in middle, riffle up, show top | |||||
| tilt - Show Jack, do Marlo's tilt move, riffle up, double lift. Flip double face down, take top card and do mt | |||||
| bD - put card on bottom, riffle up, double lift, Flip double face down, take top card and do mt | |||||
As you can see from the table, there are two sequences of cards the spectator points to that are “best case.” This simply means that you don’t have to do any difficult double lifts or “Marlo’s Tilt” move. You simply place the card pointed at to the top and send it to the bottom, or place it on the bottom and bring it to the top. This is the classic elevator plot. If you don’t want to deal with the other cases, you can simple let the spectator choose if you should go from the right to the left, or from the left to the right. In either case, you have a “best case” scenario.
Below is a video of me practicing the routine. I go through it four times, each time in a different order. The first time is a “best case” order, with the moves: bottom to top, bottom to top, top to bottom, and finally middle to top.
At 43 seconds I go through it a second time, with the order of cards pointed to Jack, Jack, indifferent card, indifferent card. The moves then are bottom to top, top to bottom, bottom to top, and then middle to top. At about 1:25 I do it a third time. Here the order is Jack, indifferent card, indifferent card, Jack. The moves are, bottom to top, top to bottom, then a double cut to get rid of the indifferent card on the top, followed by bottom to top, and finally on the last card Marlo’s tilt move and then a middle to top. The fourth time through, at about 2:25, the order of the cards pointed to are indifferent card, indifferent card, Jack, Jack. The moves are bottom to top, bottom to top, Tilt, Tilt.