The UK card man gave me another one of his creations for my humble blog. Thank you, John! Along, here in his own words:
Hi Guys, Here’s a practically self working piece that’s a lot of fun to do. Set a royal flush in spades on top of the deck and you are set to go.
False shuffle the deck retaining your set up on top. Hand the deck to your helper and have them do the Jay Ose triple false table cut on themselves.
Then ask them to deal off the top 5 cards into a face down packet and discard the deck. Ask them to mix this packet and then peek at the bottom card and put the thought of that card in their mind. Let’s say it’s the 10 of spades.
Now for a sneaky Larry Jennings ‘Automatic Placement’. Direct them through a down under deal mix, dealing the first card face down and taking the next card and placing it under the packet. Have them continue this procedure, tossing the last card on top of the packet. This automatically sets their selection third from top.
Take the packet and place it back outwards inside your right pocket. Ask your helper to try and mentally project the colour of their card to you, then the suit and finally the value. Feign concentration and then go into the pocket and take out the top card of the packet and toss it face down onto the table. Repeat this, taking the new top card of the packet out and discarding.
The next two cards you remove will come from the bottom of the packet in the pocket, leaving just one card remaining. Get your spectator to call out the card they are thinking of and dramatically remove the final card to reveal their 10 of Spades. “Hey that’s not a bad card in Poker.”
Turn over the 4 tabled cards to reveal a Royal Flush. “And that’s unbeatable!”
Notes: The Jennings placement comes from his routine ‘Thought Card to Pocket’ in February 2016 Genii. Jay Ose’s false cut was first published in Harry Lorayne’s Close-up Card Magic.
For larger audiences I prefer another strategy for getting the royal flush into play. Position the flush cards on the bottom of the deck. Hand out small groups of cards to multiple spectators, making sure you hand the last 5 flush cards to the final person.
Have the cards thoroughly shuffled and then take back the packets and assemble the deck, taking the 5 royal flush cards last and placing them on top. Continue as per the routine above.
I first saw this brilliant holdout ruse used by my friend Mark Elsdon. It has myriad applications. Have fun!