Tri­bute To Lenn­art Green

When Lenn­art Green put out his com­mer­cial rou­tine cal­led ‘Sto­len Cards’, it pro­ved to be an imme­diate hit in the card magic world. Like many, I imme­dia­tely bought a set. Wit­hout his inven­tion and rou­tine, this hum­ble offe­ring wouldn’t exist.

The trick is a very strong one and fairly easy to per­form. With this pre­sen­ta­tion, I chan­ged a cou­ple of things, which make the whole rou­tine more logi­cal (at least in my mind). It is based on a gambling theme, lucky cards and money: all things that belong tog­e­ther. Now we have a com­ple­tely self-working card trick, which regis­ters very well with laymen.

I intro­du­ced three bills with pre­dic­tions writ­ten on the backs. The atten­tion which is on the bills helps to camou­flage the actual workings of the trick.

I also chan­ged the deck to a PRISM-Deck, which is available through Card Shark. In my ver­sion the final effect is the color change of the backs of all cards, which is a strong effect indeed.

First, you have to decide on two force cards. I always use the 9 of Clubs and the Jack of Dia­monds. Remove these cards from the PRISM-Deck and replace them with two cards from a gam­ing the­med deck, such as a ‘Gol­den Nug­get’ deck or some­thing similar.

The Jack of Dia­monds is on the second posi­tion from the face, the 9 of Clubs is on the back of the deck. That way you can put the deck into its appro­priate card case and it will appear as if all the cards have the same back design when you take the cards out of the case.

For the pre­dic­tions, take three dol­lar bills and write the pre­dic­tions on the back of each of them: 9 of Clubs, Jack of Dia­monds and on the third one you’re write ‘The two cards match.’

Pre­sen­ta­tion is very simple. Put one off the bills in front of spec­ta­tor. We will call them spec­ta­tors A, B and C. Spec­ta­tor A gets the 9 of Clubs pre­dic­tion, B gets the Jack of Dia­monds and C gets the ‘match’ pre­dic­tions. Of course, the pre­dic­tions are put face-down in front of the spectators.

Take out the deck from the case, so the spec­ta­tors get a flash of the back card. They will assume it is a nor­mal deck with the gambling-the­med back design.

Turn the deck face up and spread it on the table. Ever­y­body can see it is just a nor­mal deck of cards. Gather up the spread and hold the deck in a phase of deal­ing position.

Approach spec­ta­tor A and start deal­ing the cards sin­gly into a pile onto the table. But here you do you the first two cards from the face of the deck as a dou­ble (like a dou­ble deal). This pre­vents the spec­ta­tors to see the face of the Jack of Dia­monds tour early. The Jack of Dia­monds thus beco­mes the lower­most card of the face up packet on the table.

When spec­ta­tor A stops you, you take his bill and put it right onto the face up pile on the table. The bill will pro­trude over the cards, which is exactly what we want.

Imme­dia­tely put the rest of the deck right on top of the bill on the tab­led packet. This will put the 9 of Clubs directly over the bill with the ‘9 of Clubs’ prediction.

At this moment you will ring in some mis­di­rec­tion and ask spec­ta­tor C to take up his bill (but do not show the pre­dic­tion to the other spec­ta­tors) and read the pre­dic­tion on his bill for hims­elf. This will put the atten­tion on the spec­ta­tor and divert the atten­tion away from the actual con­di­tion of the cards.

Now pick up the whole deck from the table and turn your atten­tion towards spec­ta­tor B. As before, start deal­ing cards sin­gly face up from the face of the deck onto the table, until the spec­ta­tor stops you. At this point put spec­ta­tor B’s bill on the the face-up pile on the table and put the cards in your hands right on top of it. This will bring the Jack of Dia­monds right above the second bill.

Again you are using some mis­di­rec­tion to cover the actual posi­tion of the bills and the cards. For this you will use once again the help of spec­ta­tor C.

Have him read aloud and show the pre­dic­tion on his bill. After he has done this, spread the deck on the table in a wide rib­bon spread. Remove the bills and the cards directly above them out of the spread and push them for­ward on the table. The pre­dic­tion reads ‘The cards will match’ and you show that they indeed match with the pre­dic­tions writ­ten on the under­side of the bills!

Then you say that the cards also match in ano­ther way: Turn over the two cards on the table and show the matching backs. This will get a moan reac­tion, but this is exactly what you want.

Turn over the PRISM-Deck on the table and show all the dif­fe­rent colo­red backs: the two sel­ec­ted cards are indeed the only two cards with matching backs in the whole deck!

That is the trick and ever­y­thing can now be examined.

I enc­lose a clip of a (very spe­cial) per­for­mance of this trick, which I gave as a pre­sent to the magi­ci­ans atten­ding the recent magic con­ven­tion in Ger­many. The per­for­mance is in Ger­man lan­guage, but it shows the hand­ling quite clearly.