René Lavand’s Trick

Since my youth I was addicted to the ‘cut­ting the aces’ by Dai Ver­non (see Stars of Magic). Espe­cially when I learned of the the­at­ric­al present­a­tion of PUNX, which is described in his book ‘Set­zt euch zu mein­en Füßen’. What a gem!

But then the meth­od was too unsure for me, also I always felt it did­n’t look ‘right’. So I went on to devel­op some­thing to fix that.

Without the help of Mark Els­don’s ‘Hid­den Gems’ eBook this routine would­n’t have been pos­sible. In this book he points dir­ec­tion to a Dav­id Brit­land concept/​trick, on which my routine is based. Thank you, Mark!

The solu­tion was Dav­id Brit­land’s concept of the so-called ‘cyc­lic aces’, which he pub­lished on his blog CARDOPOLIS. This opened my eyes and finally turned out as the solu­tion for my ver­sion of the PUNX trick.

These days, because the trick is done genu­inely one-handed, I replaced the unknown gam­bler in PUNX’ story with René Lavand in my script.

The effect is an incred­ibly clean cut­ting to the aces, done to a lovely story about the great man. My main con­tri­bu­tion is in mak­ing the meth­od almost self-work­ing and – most import­ant for me – SAFE. If I had to do a trick in TV, then this would be high on my list of pre­ferred items …

Here is a little video clip that I made for the GENII magazine with a demon­stra­tion of the basic routine:

What you need:

A ‘Baraja Lavan­dia’: It closely matches the decks Rene Lavand used to use. The cards are slightly bev­elled and should have a used look. As if the mas­ter had giv­en the deck to you as a souven­ir. The con­di­tion helps to hide the gimmick.

The gim­mick is a spe­cial card, which makes sleight of hand unne­ces­sary. Take the two Jokers and glue them togeth­er to form a thick and broad card. The cards should over­lap for about 1 mm. On the face of the Jokers put two tiny drops of UV-harden­ing glue (or use epoxy glue). I use the pop­u­lar BLUEFIXX, which hardens in seconds.

This is sim­il­ar to the ‘Koorn­winder Card Con­trol’ gim­mick, only applied on the face of the card. It pre­vents a vacu­um in between the cards dur­ing the cut­ting pro­ced­ure and guar­an­tees prop­er cuts.

A fin­ger ring. Mine is made by Lolo from Sevilla, Spain. It is a Mor­gan Sil­ver Dol­lar, which Lolo skill­fully trans­formed into a fin­ger ring. The ring has actu­ally noth­ing to do with the trick, but is a lovely ring …

The set-up:

(from the back to the face) Ace, rest of deck, Ace, gim­mick card, Ace, 4, 10, J, Q, K (all Spades), Ace of Spades, 8–10 indif­fer­ent cards.

Per­form­ance:

This is a routine that closely emu­lates the style of Rene Lavand. The trick is per­formed with one hand only, as Lavand did. Because of this the routine appears as an impress­ive demon­stra­tion of sleight of hand, des­pite the fact that it is almost self working.

Take the cards out of the case and give them your best false shuffle and false cuts. Spread them face-up on the table. Be care­ful not to flash the top ace. Gath­er up the spread and put the deck face down in front of you onto the table. The gim­micked card is well hid­den, due to the beaten up con­di­tion of the cards. You will now start the cut­ting pro­ced­ure as con­ceived by Dav­id Britland.

Cut about a third from the top and place the pack­et in front of the deck . Then cut to the gim­mick card, which is about anoth­er third from the remain­ing deck on the table. Put this pack­et on top of the first third. Finally, place the rest of the deck onto the oth­er two thirds. This is the basic cut­ting pro­ced­ure, which you will repeat with each oth­er ace. Turn the top card of the deck face up and put it on the table in the front. You cut to the first Ace.

The second Ace is handled the same way: cut a third from the top, and put it besides the deck. Then again, cut to the gim­micked card and put this third on top of the first one. Put the last third on top and turn over the top card – anoth­er Ace.

Now the story changes and you are going to do the same thing, but with the cards face up. Turn the deck face up. The gim­micked card will be in the top third, so be care­ful when cut­ting. Cut off a few cards (about ten) and place them on the table. Cut to the gim­micked card as before and the third Ace will appear on the tabled pack­et. Place this on top of the cut off pack­ets. Take the Ace from the face of the deck and place it onto to table.

Turn the deck face down again. The gim­micked card will be near the top. It took me awhile to fig­ure out how to get out of this situ­ation. I had the idea to include a chal­lenge in the story: what if the spec­tat­or gives the deck a com­plete cut before the per­former cuts to the last Ace? This is the per­fect solu­tion and will deceive the spec­tat­ors, even magi­cians. The spec­tat­or gives the deck a com­plete cut in the middle. This sends the gim­micked card more or less back where it was in the beginning.

Now you go through the triple cut­ting and turn over the top card: it is a Four. Put it onto the table and deal the next four cards face down onto the table. The next card is the Ace of Spades.

For the finale, turn over the tabled cards to show the Roy­al Flush in Spades.

Here is a sug­ges­tion of the pat­ter. Adapt it to your style or cre­ate your own.

«Rene Lavand was an Argen­tini­an card mas­ter and I met him at a con­ven­tion in Italy many years ago. He was fam­ous for his skill with the cards and his poet­ic present­a­tion of his mar­vels. This is astound­ing, because Mr. Lavand had lost his right arm as a child, and there­fore was forced to do all these won­der­ful card mir­acles only with one hand.

Being young and sneaky, I thought I know it all and wanted to chal­lenge the grand­mas­ter. So I approached him and asked, if he could cut to the Aces in a shuffled deck [false shuffle and false cut the deck]. So I shuffled my cards and put them in front of him.

He said that this was very easy for him. He only needed three little cuts, and voila – the first Ace was on the top! [do the first cut­ting sequence]

Of course, I wanted to see it again, and without hes­it­a­tion or any false moves, he cut the cards a second time and had the second Ace on the top [do the second cut­ting sequence].

I was speech­less and thought of a way to beat the old mas­ter. I asked him wheth­er he could do that also with the cards face-up! He said, he nev­er tried it that way, but will do so [turn deck face-up and per­form the cut­ting sequence]. After he cut the cards as before, the third Ace was star­ing in my face. And he did that using only his left hand!

I couldn’t believe it and really wanted to trouble him. So I asked wheth­er he could still do it, after I had cut the cards [turn deck face down].

[address a spec­tat­or] Could you please cut the cards for me and com­plete the cut [spec­tat­or cuts the deck].

Mr. Lavand didn’t hes­it­ate and pro­ceeded to cut the cards as before. He turned over the top card, and it was a – Four. Ha! I thought I got him, but he said that the Four is only an indic­at­or card. All he had to do was to count four cards off the deck and the next card would of course be the last Ace [count the four cards onto the table and turn the next card face-up].

And he gave me some use­ful advice and a warn­ing: Nev­er under­es­tim­ate people you don’t know. It could hap­pen, next time when you play cards, that you hap­pen to meet someone who always has the bet­ter hand [reveal the Roy­al Flush to com­plete the routine].

And so ended my one and only meet­ing with the great Rene Lavand. Funny thing is that I don’t know till this day how the hell he did it …“

This art­icle, along with some pho­to­graphs, will be pub­lished in my column in GENII magazine.

[For the Span­ish read­ers: As you can see, I am using Javi Ben­itez’ won­der­ful ‘tapete’ (means close-up mat) in a cre­at­ive way. I use the oth­er side of the tapete. Which dis­tin­guishes me from magi­cians like Tam­ar­iz, who use the black side…]