Dafydd
You've all had this happen. You're at the magic club and you're in a jam session. At one point an older gentleman says that he's just learned a new card trick. For some reason, you're the only person who's got a regular deck of cards. You reluctantly give them your deck.
They then go into a 31 phase version of the Poker Players Picnic. Each phase more boring than the last. Everyone is nearly asleep. A few hours later after many stumbles and mistakes, the trick is finished with an ace on top of each pile. Finally.
As you gather your deck back they then ask "Hey, can you show us that trick where we say a number and a card and the card is at that number like you did the other week". You remember that trick well, it was a memdeck trick. However, you didn't have to do anything complicated because the number named (18) was coincidentally the card that was named (King of Clubs), so you didn't have to touch the deck at all. It's a miracle that hasn't been repeated since.
Unfortunately, your deck is out of stack. "I'm going to have to set it up, give me 5 minutes," you say.
"That's why I don't use memorised deck tricks" you hear someone scoff. "They're too much work. You have to set up your cards every time. Plus all that memorisation.". The cheek. They were already stacked before the previous monstrosity happened. You're going to have to stack the deck in front of them without them realising it. "Can I show you something else first?"
You do Thought Master.
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Thought Master's a creation from the mind of Patrick Redford. It was meant to be in his book "Completely Out Of Order", the third in the trilogy of his memdeck work. It's probably still going to be in that book. I don't know, it isn't out yet. The premise allows you to perform a multi-phase routine which has the advantage of having the cards end up in a memorised stack.
Patrick highly recommends the Redford stack for this effect. You can do this with any memorised stack but Patrick really recommends his. It's probably very good. Who knows. I'm just a plebeian who uses the Tamariz stack because that's the fashion of this time. Any stack is possible, except maybe new deck order. That one might be too obvious.
The first phase has the magician lay down cards into multiple piles while a participant thinks of any card they see and whichever pile it goes in. Once the magician has finished dealing, not only they can point to which pile the card is in but they can, with certainty, be able to determine which card the participant is thinking of. A strong start, but there's more to come.
The second phase has the magician have up to 10 people think of a card. The magician collects the cards and deals them into various piles again. This time they're able to name every card that people are thinking of.
At this point Thought Master the routine ends but as the cards are gathered again the magician is able to do any miracle that you can do with a stacked deck because, and get this, the deck is now stacked in memorised deck order.
The teaching video is an hour-long. It goes through every phase of the routine in detail. Parts of the routine could certainly make a strong effect in of itself, but this is wonderfully crafted to allow you to do the one thing that this was made for: getting a randomly shuffled deck back into stack.
Do you need to know a stack to do this? Well, yes and no. Patrick gives handlings on how to do some of the phases without knowing a memorised stack. However, the main attraction is being able to get back into stack right in front of your audience. I know this sounds like I'm repeating myself a bit here but I want to make it clear that this is the intention of the effect and not a "multi-phased thought of card". I mean, it *is* a multi-phased thought of card, but that's not why you would get this download.
Prior to learning this effect, I like many magicians would have been afraid to let our perfect stacks get out of order. Now, with this routine, I can confidently have the deck mixed and then do this effect if I so wish to get it back to the order I want.
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"Ok, that's a nice trick, but can you do the number thing now?"
You sigh, luckily your stack is in the memorised order now. All you need to do is figure out how many cards to displace and...
"King of Clubs".. "Eighteen!"...
...yeah.. alright then.
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