Broken Key - Stone Cold Magic Magazine

This is a simple idea that I’m sure has been around forever. It’s a simple technique for controlling a card, or better said, getting a secret key card. It’s very straightforward and simple to do. If you can do an overhand shuffle, then you can easily do this.

Procedure

A borrowed deck is fully shuffled by the spectator. A card is selected. While the card is being shown around, you peek the top card using your . . . wait for it . . . favorite method. To have the card returned, hold the deck in the left hand dealer’s grip and cut about half of the cards from above with your right hand. The card is then replaced on the left hand’s packet.

Next, rather than replacing the cut on top of the selection, you overhand shuffle the cards from the right hand onto the left hand, milking off (image below) the top card (the one you peeked) first. Thus your key card is placed directly on top of the selection.

You now can have the spectator cut the cards as many times as she pleases using the old “I shuffled the cards, but maybe you don’t trust me so you’d better cut them just in case” ruse. Take a look at the video below for the handling. Keep in mind that I’ve done it slowly and from an exposed perspective for training purposes only.

The Twist

Ah . . . but it wouldn’t be fair to leave you with just that now would it. So, try this on for size. As you cut the deck to have the selection returned, riffle up the back of the deck and catch a thumb break about a fourth of the way down. Keep riffling, however, and cut the deck at about the half-way point. What this does is give you half the deck in the left hand, and half the deck in the right hand. However, the right hand half has a thumb break in about the middle of the packet.

If you tilt the palm of your right hand slightly toward yourself (while gesturing/pointing toward the left hand packet with your right index finger), you’ll get a glimpse of the card in the middle of the packet where the thumb his holding its break. In other words, you now know the bottom card of the upper half of the right hand’s packet. Once the card is replaced on the left hand packet, if you rotate the right hand’s grip from Biddle Grip to I’m about to do an overhand shuffle grip, the break will hold itself in place.

Then you can allow the weight of the packet (i.e., gravity) to take over and sort of throw the top “broken” packet onto the selection. Then shuffle off the rest. You’ve now, much more sneakily, placed a key card onto the selection. Below is another video for you. Again, a slowly performed exposed version. Enjoy this little subtle yet simple way to get a key card into place.

By the way, if you don’t know what a key card is or why/how one is used, stop reading this article and go back and read The Royal Road To Card Magic.

Gaff is Up Baby

If the deck happens to not be a borrowed deck, but one you can prepare in advance, you can use a similar technique with a gaffed card. Pick your gaff, breather crimp, short card, long card, etc. Once the cards have been shuffled, get your gaffed card to the top of the deck or to about one-fourth of the way from the top a la The Twist explained above.

Getting it the top is easy enough. The whole point of the gaff is to make sure that you can find the card by cutting to it. So cut to the gaff and bring it to the top. Then you can just undercut about 15 cards from the bottom to the top, and you’ve now placed your gaff in the perfect spot. Of course, consider that after the shuffle you might get lucky and find that the gaff is already in place and you won’t have to do anything.

If you’ve chosen to just get the gaff to the top, then proceed as originally explained by shuffling the top card on to the selection and then shuffling off. If you’ve chosen to get the gaff to the one-forth of the way down position, then proceed as follows. Simply use your thumb at the back of the deck to find the gaffed card and hold a break there. Then proceed to have the card replaced; dump the packet above the break onto the left hand’s packet, and shuffle off exactly as described in The Twist.

However, you’ve now bought yourself a little more freedom. You no longer have to spread through the faces of the cards to spot your key card. You can merely cut to it after the spectator is done cutting the deck as many times as they want. You have total control of the card. Keep in mind that if you use a short card as your gaff, you’ll have to stick with the “have your key/gaff card on the top of the deck” option. Due to the nature of how short cards work, you won’t be able to easily get it to the bottom of the “broken” top packet in your right hand. I would stick with a long card or a breather crimp, favoring the latter.

Picking the Gaff

What if they pick the gaff as their selection? That’s the best because you can just hand them the deck and tell them to return their card and shuffle to their heart’s content. Then you take the deck back and still have complete control over their card. So with that thought in mind, here’s a sleight variation of the concept. Forget the whole key card thing . . . rather, make sure to keep a gaffed card (in this case, even a short card will work) in your deck at all times. When the moment is right and you need a card selected, just force the gaff.

Then you can immediately hand the deck out letting them replace their card, and shuffle the heck out of the cards. Yet you still have complete control over the card. If you’re willing to lose the gaff each time, have them sign the card and return/shuffle it. Then you can take the deck back, and in the act of boxing the cards, riffle to the gimmick and side steal or top palm, etc. and load the card into your favorite impossible location (e.g., wallet).

You now have a pretty impossible card effect. They picked the card. They signed the card. They took the deck and replaced the card. They shuffled. They had complete control of the cards. You simply placed them in their box. But somehow, their signed card ended up in your wallet. Powerful magic folks.

Final Thoughts

Going back to the original key card concept, believe it or not, you can actually shuffle the deck once the card has been replaced. Once you’ve got the key card in place above the selection, you know roughly where in the pack the cards are. You can perform an overhand shuffle where you start by milking off a huge chunk of the cards off of the top making sure your chunk contains the two cards. Then just shuffle off the rest of the cards on top. You’ve now moved the two cards (key and selection) to very near the bottom of the deck. Let the spectator’s cut, and you’re ready to proceed.

Tell us how it goes (comments below). These are all simple and easy to implement concepts. I’ve used them all to great success in one form or another. Good luck.

Emory Kimbrough says:

August 2013 at 6:23 pm

An old but little-used idea is having a glued-together block of several cards in the deck – The REALLY thick thick-card. I’ve always thought this gimmick was underappreciated and underexplored. Use the block as the gaff card as Jeff describes above, loading the block over the selected card. (The easy handling is to just peel the block from the top, as in Jeff’s first key-card procedure. The better handling is to have some loose cards above the block, as in The Twist above.) Now overhand shuffle thoroughly, but avoid separating the selection from the block. Finish with block in the middle of the deck.

Now why use the block instead of a breather crimp? Table the deck in front of the spectator and ask them to “quickly cut the deck in the middle.” The odds are quite high that the spectator’s fingertips will land on the block. They’ll cut to their own selection in the middle of a thoroughly shuffled deck!

If it’s impossible for you to find it, it’s even more impossible for the spectator to find it, and I always favor effects that make the spectator the hero.

There’s no pain if the spectator somehow misses the fat block even though they were cued to cut in the middle. Just complete the cut as if that was what you intended. The selection is still below the block, so you can find it yourself. (Or shuffle the block and selection back to the middle again and try for better luck with a second spectator.)

You can sometimes get a spectator to cut to their own selection with a corner crimp or a breather crimp, using the “quickly cut in the middle” instruction. This also works sometimes for a reversed selection if the deck has a natural bend – Try it if you enjoy being bold. But for the cautious performer, this is way, way more reliable with the glued block.

You can use quite a thick block and still have the deck handle and appear very near normal. Spectators never notice that the deck is actually cutting a few cards below where their fingertips have maximum contact.

More uses: The glued-block cut also makes for a very fair-looking force. Or put the block third or fourth from the top and enjoy the world’s easiest no-get-ready double- or triple-lift. (Using the gaff as a packet-trick version of Paul Harris’s Solid Deception, however, is somewhat lame.)

Since Jeff is a fan of the Tarot, I’ll also mention that having a spectator so freely cut to their own Tarot card can be made into a powerfully creepy thing.

Jeff Stone says:

August 2013 at 7:09 pm

@Emory – As always, beautiful insight sir! I love the block gaff idea because after a while, even a breather looses it’s “strength” if you will. I do tend to prefer coin-beveled-breathers which sit more flush and last longer, but I’m diggin’ the block thang. Thanks for sharing.