The King of Cards

On my recent lec­ture tour, I spent a won­derful evening after the lec­ture dining with my fri­ends. Sud­denly a small dis­cus­sion about Denis Behr’s new full evening pro­gram came up. Some guys had seen it alre­ady, and the talk was about Denis’ ope­ning effect, which see­med to be quite strong (at least to me).

I was told the fol­lo­wing: Denis would spread a red backed deck face down onto the table in a wide rib­bon spread, each and every card visi­ble. Then Denis would intro­duce a sin­gle card with a dif­fe­rent colo­red back. He would show the face of this card and slide it slowly along the spread, until a spec­ta­tor stop­ped him. The spec­ta­tor was given the choice of a few cards more or less to the left or right. In other words: a com­ple­tely free choice. The card was cle­anly inser­ted into the spread at the point the spec­ta­tor decided.

The deck was then slowly and wit­hout any false moves squared and taken face­down into deal­ing posi­tion. Denis would then start to deal the cards sin­gly onto the table, into a faceup spread. The spec­ta­tors could see that the cards were in new deck order. They came from Ace to King in each color. At same time, the dif­fe­rent colo­red card would appear and when he dealt it face up, its value match the posi­tion in the deck order. For exam­ple, there was the Ace of Dia­monds, then the 2, the 3, the 4. Then came the dif­fe­rent colo­red card, which tur­ned out to be the 5 of Dia­monds, then came the 6, the 7, and so on.

Denis then remo­ved from his pocket the regu­lar 5 of Dia­monds, exch­an­ged it or the dif­fe­rent colo­red card and went on with his set (with an unpre­pared deck).

This see­med to be the rou­tine, because my fri­ends, who had seen the show, couldn’t exactly remem­ber all the details, nor did they know the exact method Denis was employ­ing. So my start­ing point here is wit­hout any know­ledge of the actual Denis Behr method (and right now I don’t want to know his method). Also, I don’t know about all the tiny details and work my way through with only the few things I heard from my fri­ends. A funny but inte­res­t­ing start­ing point. But I like the effect and it was a chall­enge for me to create a workable routine.

Kno­wing Denis and his unbe­lie­va­ble abili­ties with a deck of cards, I knew he could have employed almost any sleight of hand method, and he would have foo­led me with it. This includes false deals, etc.

But I know Denis a bit, and I do know that he COULD rea­lize this with pure sleight of hand. But I also do know that Denis is very cle­ver and has no hesi­ta­tion to use a gim­mick, if it makes things easier or stron­ger. After all, his dex­terity is only matched by his intel­li­gence. So ever­y­thing was in the open …

The one thing that gave me some hea­da­ches was the pro­duc­tion of the card from the pocket. An index? If so – which one? And how could that be prac­ti­cal? Luckily, my mind made a con­nec­tion to some­thing else, which sol­ves the pro­blem in a nice way and makes an index unneces­sary. The rou­tine now is totally easy to per­form and 100 per­cent prac­ti­cal. A real worker!

The works

For the first pro­blem, there are dif­fe­rent ways pos­si­ble to go. The easiest reminds me of an old Anne­mann rou­tine, where a waxed card is used. Nowa­days we have ’Sci­ence Fric­tion Spray’ so this could be a good alter­na­tive. The face of the card with the odd-colo­red back is eit­her trea­ted with a bit of wax (old-fashio­ned method, which makes the hand­ling of the ‘sin­gle card’ more secure) or it is trea­ted with the Sci­ence Fric­tion (which is easier to sepa­rate later, but requi­res a bit more atten­tion in the hand­ling whilst deal­ing). Pick your choice. I am happy with both methods, but tend to the old waxed card because of the care­less­ness whilst hand­ling the dou­ble card.

The index thing is sol­ved in a com­ple­tely dif­fe­rent way. The deck its­elf ser­ves as an ‘open index’. The card that Denis appar­ently pro­du­ced out of his pocket is in my case in my ‘Ava­lon Enve­lope’ (this is my ver­sion of a multi-pur­pose enve­lope, based on the workings of Roger Cursor’s great switch envelope).

In the enve­lope (and visi­ble through the win­dow cutout) is the back of a red backed card. This enve­lope is pla­ced in full view onto the table. Of course, the card in the enve­lope is a dummy card.

Now the red deck is shown and it is explai­ned that it is in new deck order (wit­hout show­ing the faces, of course). The deck is rib­bon spread on the table.

The odd and is intro­du­ced, again wit­hout sowing its face. Here I bring in a little subt­lety I lear­ned from the wri­tings of Theo Anne­mann: I ask the spec­ta­tor to sign the back of this card. This actually is not neces­sary, but makes it all more con­vin­cing. With this little stra­tegy, the idea of having more than the one card in play is can­cel­led out.

The spec­ta­tor stops and the card is fairly inser­ted at this point. Of course, this brings the card auto­ma­ti­cally right on top of the pro­per card in the new deck order.

The spread is gathe­red up and the deck squared. When using the wax method, a slight pres­sure onto the deck makes sure that the card sticks to the card under­neath. With the Sci­ence Fric­tion pre­pa­ra­tion, you have to do not­hing here.

Now the cards are dealt slowly face-up onto the table (in a spread, so the spec­ta­tors can fol­lo­wed the order). At one time there will be the card with the odd back. Deal this card (the dou­ble) onto the table and con­ti­nue with the rest of the deck. Due to the pre­pa­ra­tion there are no ‘moves’ to pay atten­tion to, and it is the natu­ral hand­ling wit­hout any ‘get-ready’ or any fumbling that makes it all so deceptive.

The effect is finis­hed here. In a low key, you remove the dou­ble card from the deck, and put it into your pocket. In the pocket, you quickly sepa­rate the two cards and palm the card from the regu­lar deck. In a sea­ted per­forming con­di­tion I use a simple gambler’s cop here.

Then you take the enve­lope and trans­fer it to the hand pal­ming the card (ther­eby loa­ding the card under­neath) and pro­duce the ‘regu­lar’ card from the enve­lope. Add this to the deck, which is now com­plete and unpre­pared and you are good to go.

Note:

When you don’t want to use the Ava­lon enve­lope (or the one from Roger Cur­zon), a clas­si­cal Fred Kaps Wal­let is a nice solu­tion. Have the wal­let set-up in the pocket. When you remo­ved the odd card (dou­ble) from the deck and pre­tend to place it into your pocket. In rea­lity, the dou­ble is loa­ded into the wal­let. This might be the easiest loa­ding pro­ce­dure of a trick wal­let, all done in the open.

After some time mis­di­rec­tion (important!), reach for the wal­let. Open the zip­pe­red com­part­ment and remove the red back card from it. The cards are sepa­ra­ted inside the com­part­ment, the­r­e­fore the Sci­ence Fric­tion pre­pa­ra­tion might be a bit easier and more practical.

I do know that it is a fine effect, when using an index, that you can bring out the regu­lar card and openly remove the dou­ble and replace it with the regu­lar card. Well, my solu­tion is quite close to this ideal but more more practical.

I per­for­med this a few times at my lec­tures wit­hout expl­ana­tion. Most magi­ci­ans were com­ple­tely foo­led and angry with me, because I didn’t explain it. Now you know how I did it!

Adden­dum:

Denis infor­med me that this is not his effect, but Hel­der Guimarães‘.