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MAGIC SHOW: CARDS

SLIP & RIFFLE
By Richard Robinson

The magician shuffles and cuts the deck, riffles through it asking a spectator to say Stop, and when the spectator does so the card selected at random is the one the magician planned on.

Slip & Riffle employs a novel Slip Cut combined with a Riffle Force. It allows the spectator to take the top, face down card of the bottom stack when the deck is cut at the riffle stop point. The Slip Cut used is based on a Stanley Collins move with a turn over of the hands added to obscure the fact that the deck is not cut at all.

Setup

The force card is the top card of the face down deck.

Handling

The deck is given an overhand shuffle without disturbing the top card. Do this by taking the deck in the right hand, the deck face up, moving it to the left hand so one long edge of the cards rests on the left palm, then pulling bunches of cards out of the center of the deck and dropping them on face of card. This leaves the top force card in place. Then proceed with the handling.


The force card, in this case the Jack of Diamonds, is the top card of the deck.	After the overhand shuffle, the cards are face up in the right hand.	The right hands places the cards face down in the left hand.

The right hand goes over the deck and lifts up about half the stock at the far left side.	The left finger tips press lightly against the top card.	The right thumb pulls up the top stock, pivoting at the front corner up and then away from the bottom stock.

Back view. The right hand swings up the top stock, the left finger tips hold back the top card.	As the right hand swings the top stock up and away from the bottom stock, both hands turn over to the right.	The left hand moves the bottom stock down onto the top stock in the right hand, at the same time both hands turn back over to the left.

As the top and bottom stock are brought together, the fourth finger holds a break between the two stocks.	The left thumb riffles down the front left corner of the deck until the spectator says Stop.	The deck is cut at the break, the top stock moved back, and the spectator asked to take the top face down card of the bottom stock, which is the Jack of Diamonds.

Performance Notes

The illusion of the deck being cut and the cut completed is quite good considering the deck isn't cut at all. The tilting of the hands down to the right, then back up to the left completely covers the fact that the top stock is lifted off and then put back on top after the left finger tips have slipped the top card from the top of the deck to the top of the bottom stock.

The advantage of this easy handling in combination with the riffle force is that the spectator takes a face down card rather than being shown the bottom card of the top stock as the card to remember.

In working this the cards should be held loosely in the hands as if they are being tossed back and forth in the course of overhand shuffling and cutting them.