The Poker Lesson

This effect1 incorporates the poker deal built into the Aronson Stack into a
three-phase progressive, interactive routine which concludes with the
spectator dealing herself a Royal Flush. It’s a nice way to close a memorized
deck set if you work with the Aronson Stack.

Effect and presentation: The performer offers to teach a volunteer how to

cheat at poker. “The first thing you do, when no one’s looking, is to remove a four-of-a-
kind. My lucky number is seven, so I’ll remove the four sevens.” The performer spreads
through the cards face-up, removes the four sevens, and turns the deck face-
down. He cuts the cards and then places the four sevens on the bottom.

“Once the four sevens are on the bottom, you can give the cards a legitimate shuffle as long
as you make sure the sevens fall first and stay on the bottom.” He demonstrates, riffle
shuffling the deck but visibly keeping the four bottom cards on bottom.

“Now you deal out the cards. You deal the first round normally, like this, but when you
come to your second card you do what magicians and gamblers call a bottom deal, dealing
the card off the bottom instead of the top.” The performer openly and slowly
demonstrates a bottom deal.

“Every time you go to deal yourself a card, you deal it from the bottom.” In this way, the
performer deals out five hands of five cards each, with the last four cards of his
own hand being dealt off the bottom. The first two bottom deals are done
slowly and obviously, the latter two a bit quicker and more subtly. After the
dealing is finished, the performer’s hand is turned over to show four sevens.

“The only problem with this method is that if your bottom deal isn’t that great, you might
get shot. So I’ve developed a more subtle way to cheat, which is to place the four sevens in
the middle of the deck.” Saying this, the performer places his cards face-down on
top of the balance of the deck, then scoops up the other four piles (in any
order) and places them on top.

1This routine was originally published in John Guastaferro’s “Magicana” column in

Genii in September 2017.
“This time, you don’t let the bottom cards fall first, you shuffle the cards as fairly as
possible.” The performer gives the deck a couple of riffle shuffles. “Also, you may
have noticed that I didn’t cut the cards before; in a real game of poker you always have to
cut the cards.” As he says this, the performer gives the deck a straight cut. He
begins dealing five hands of poker again. “And this time you really deal the cards off
the top — none of that bottom-dealing stuff.” The audience can see that all the cards
are really coming off the top this time. The performer finishes dealing all five
hands.

“Now one thing I didn’t mention before is that it’s not enough in poker just to deal
yourself a good hand – you also need to deal good hands to your opponents so they’ll bet a
lot of money. Let’s see what everyone has…”

The first player is revealed to have a pair of tens. The performer comments on
how that’s a pretty good hand, one worth betting on. The next player has a pair
of Jacks. The following player has a draw to an inside straight. The player after
that has a pair of Aces. The performer comments briefly on each hand.

Pointing out that the four sevens are already on the table, the performer says:
“Now it seems that I didn’t manage to deal myself the four sevens. But I don’t need four of
a kind, I just need to beat a pair of Aces. Let’s see what I have…” The performer turns
over his hand, revealing two pair, Eights and Kings.

The performer turns to Joanna. “Let’s see if you can do it now!” The performer
gathers up the cards on the table, hands them to Joanna, and asks her to shuffle
the cards. The performer shuffles the remainder of the deck. They then switch
packets and continue shuffling. Finally, the performer mixes the two shuffled
packets together, gives the deck a cut, and hands it to Joanna. “Please deal out
five hands of poker, just like I did.”

Joanna does as she is told. As she deals, the performer reminds her that she
shouldn’t just deal herself a good hand, she needs to deal good hands to the
other players as well. When she’s finished dealing, the performer turns over the
hands one at a time to see how she did.

The first player is revealed to have three sixes. The next player has a flush. The
performer comments on how remarkable this is. The next player is shown to
have a full house; the performer says, “Come on now, you’re just showing off at this
point.” The next player has four nines. “You realize that you’re supposed to deal
yourself the winning hand, don’t you?” Joanna’s hand is turned over to reveal a
royal flush in spades.

Method: The deck begins in Aronson stack (Jack of Spades on top). In the act
of removing the four sevens, you secretly cull the King of Hearts and Eight of
Spades. Specifically, as you spread through the cards, cull the King of Hearts
using a standard Hofzinser Spread Cull, then remove the 7 of Clubs and 7 of
Hearts and place them face-up on the table. Spread one more card and then
cull the 8 of Spades under the King. Continue spreading, removing the 7 of
Spades and 7 of Diamonds and placing them on top of the other two sevens.
Spread one more, deposit the two culled cards in-between the 2 of Diamonds
and King of Diamonds, and hold a left pinky break between the 2 of Diamonds
and culled cards. Turn the deck over, transferring the break to the right thumb,
and cut the cards above the break to the table. Remove the bottom half of the
remaining cards and cut them to the table, on top of the other face-down
cards, and drop the remaining cards on top. You are now set for the
demonstration.

The shuffles are all false; a Zarrow shuffle works well here but a push-through
shuffle or any other deceptive false table shuffle will also work.

Perform the first two phases exactly as described. The bottom deal need not be
perfect, or even particularly good. If you have a good bottom deal you can use
the first phase to impress the audience with your skill; if not, you can play up
the comedy aspect of the line, “The only problem with this method is that if your
bottom deal isn’t that great, you might get shot.”

After the second phase, gather all the face-up cards and give them to the
volunteer to shuffle. You take the balance of the deck and give it a false
overhand shuffle (I use Dan Garrett’s “Underhanded Overhand Shuffle” from
his Garrett in the U.S.A. lecture notes).

You will now do the “Daley’s Delight” switch (Pallbearer’s Review, Vol. 7 or
Apocalypse Vol. 9; see Darwin Ortiz’s Lessons in Card Mastery, pp.190-101 for an
alternate handling), where you apparently take the spectator’s packet and give
her yours but in reality you give her back her own packet. In more detail: while
holding your half-deck between the index and middle fingers of your right
hand, take the spectator’s half between the thumb and index fingers of the left
hand. As you bring the hands together, clip the half you shuffled between the
index and middle fingers of the left hand and the spectator’s half between the
thumb and index finger of the right hand. In a continuing movement, extend
your right hand and give the spectator back the half she just shuffled. Done at
a suitable speed and with a natural rhythm, this is very deceptive.

Overhand false shuffle the same half again, then take your half and the
spectator’s half and falsely shuffle them together so that the stacked packet
ends up on top. Give the deck a false cut if desired.

Hand the deck to the spectator and have her deal out five rounds of poker,
finishing the demonstration as described above.

Restoring the Stack: You can maintain the stack of 25 cards which comprise
the original Aronson poker deal by employing the “Routine Maintenance”
procedure from Simon Aronson’s book Try the Impossible. Specifically, after the
spectator deals out five hands of poker, you will reveal them in the following
way. Pick up the first hand which the spectator dealt and reveal the cards one
at a time by dealing them in stud fashion from left to right into a face-up row
of five cards. Now pick up the second hand and do the same thing, dealing
each of the cards in this hand face-up from left to right directly onto the
face-up cards from the first hand. Continue in this way with the remaining
three hands, so that at the end of the revelations you have five piles of five
face-up cards in a row.

When the routine is over, casually gather the five face-up piles from left to
right as follows. Pick up the leftmost pile and drop it face-up onto the second
pile from the left, picking up both piles as you do this. Continue from left to
right across the row, dropping each combined pile onto the next one until you
have a single face-up pile of 25 cards. These cards will be in their proper order
within the Aronson stack.

Afterthoughts: I personally use a Zarrow shuffle for the first two phases. For
the first false shuffle, when I’m demonstrating how to keep the four sevens
secretly on the bottom, I try to cut just over half the cards, then openly move
one card from the original top half to the other half while saying something
about “equalizing the packets”. The displaced card becomes the top cover card
for the Zarrow shuffle and there is no need to do a slip cut.

Credits: The two immediate inspirations for this effect were the poker deal
built into the Aronson stack (described in Simon Aronson’s A Stack to
Remember) and “Lorayne’s Poker Deal” from Harry Lorayne’s book Close-Up
Card Magic. The latter routine owes much of its overall structure to the classic
Gardner-Marlo Poker Deal. I still love and frequently use Lorayne’s Poker
Deal, which can be done with a borrowed shuffled deck, but this effect turbo-
charges it. (To do Lorayne’s routine from a shuffled deck in use, secretly cull
the 10 through King of Spades to the top of the deck under the guise of
removing the four aces in order to show the spectator how to cheat at poker.)
You can skip the Daley’s Delight switch if you prefer and just false shuffle the
two packets together after the volunteer has shuffled her cards and you have
apparently shuffled the balance of the deck.

When you hand the cards to the spectator after the two halves are combined,
instead of cutting the cards yourself you could also have the spectator do a Jay
Ose false triple cut on herself (see Chad Long’s “A Shuffling Lesson” from Paul
Harris’s The Art of Astonishment, Vol. 3, p. 299). Alternatively, if you put a top-
cutting breather crimp in the 6 of Hearts and lightly pencil-dot the back, you
can place the spectator-shuffled half on top of the stacked half instead of vice-
versa and have the spectator give the deck a straight cut. If she cuts the
breather to the top, proceed to immediately have her deal five hands of poker.
If not, have her give the deck another cut and then give the deck one final cut
yourself, making sure to cut to the breather.

Finally, although this should be rather obvious at this point, you don’t need to
have the Aronson stack memorized in order to perform this routine.