Yes, using the Tarodiction method one deck can be stacked in about 1.5 to 2 minutes. And once you know the simple system, there is no need to remember some complicated formula. For more info, email bammomagic@cogeco.ca

Here is a way of setting up that takes only the time needed to deal 104 cards alternatingly into two piles, plus the time for a f*r* and some riffle shuffles.

Buy a deck of sh**t cards. Take a regular deck. Make sure both decks are in the same new deck order.
F*r* both decks into each other. Assuming sh**t cards went in front (on the face) of matching cards from regular deck, proceed as follows:
- Turn combined deck face up.
- Give the combined deck several face-up riffle shuffles, cutting and riffling at narrow ends (sh**t-card principle ensures both decks get shuffled into the same random order)
- Take combined deck in dealing hand
- Deal cards alternatingly into two piles, dealing cards face up onto one pile, face down onto the other.
Done.

You will want to keep a close eye on the perfection of your f*r* and you might want to spread the deck after each riffle (before squaring), to confirm all cards stay together where they should. (Performing CuPit by Pit Hartling has taught me, though, that the principle is fail-safe.)

This set-up requires you to invest in a special deck once, but it really speeds up the process.

Thanks, Tilman, for your detailed description. I haven't learned to F*r*, but I'll keep what you wrote on file so that I can use it once I've learned that move. I already have the cards you describe, so *that's* done!


Bob

Check out the Chinese Shuffle (Brother John Hamman) for a way to get into Stebbins from a shuffled deck. You can use the roadrunner cull to speed things up even more. Then deal or overhand run one of the decks into the reverse order of the other.

There is also surely a way to use the Chinese Shuffle principle to get a deck into reverse Stebbins. That way you just do two Chinese Shuffles, each with a different "formula", and you are set, from two shuffled decks.

I'm not familiar with Intuition, but if it doesn't destroy both stacks, you have miracles on hand....

Thanks, Yowie. Lots to look into here. I have The Secrets of Brother John Hamman; hopefully that book has the Chinese shuffle. I hadn't thought of using overhand shuffle to reverse the order of one deck -- good idea.


Intuition is an amazing trick; it's in The Card Magic of Nick Trost. Spectator and magician choose same card at same position in their respective decks. I need to look carefully to see whether the stacks remain intact. I guess your idea is that after performing it, you could go into another trick that required Stebbins? That would be fun.


I've been working on the G. W. Hunter shuffle; I don't want to perform a trick with a set-up without doing some shuffles first. I'm getting better, but still inconsistent. To make Intuition work, you have to be sure your shuffle is going to retain the entire order of the two decks. I'm still running pairs of cards occasionally during the Hunter shuffle. From what I've read, that's about the easiest full-deck shuffle, but if you know of any easy alternatives I'd be interested!


I'm not familiar with the Roadrunner Cull. I'll look into that.


Thanks again,


Bob

The Optical Shuffle is another option, Bob - it's detailed in Card College and looks really deceptive when you see people do it well.

Though the Stebbins stack is not part of the "Intuiton" trick, Hamman's "Chinese Shuffle" is a handy thing to get into other stacks. It is slightly off-topic, but I use the idea behind it to set-up for the Nick Trost trick "In the Pocket Coincidence". Not to give too many details away, but it requires a fairly big set-up - and using Hamman's idea, you can do it with five quick runs through the deck. Done beforehand, of course, not in front of people.

Thanks, Carlyle -- that's good to know about the Chinese shuffle. And of course Trost is great, so I'm eager to look up "In the Pocket...."


I'd considered the optical shuffle -- and I'm not ruling it out -- but it must be really hard to make it look deceptive. I've watched some teaching videos of people doing it and I saw right through it. (Of course, I knew what they were doing, so maybe I'm biased, but when I've watched the Hunter shuffle it always looks convincing to me.)


Nice as always to hear from you.

The Optical shuffle is an excellent false shuffle that I use regularly. The best I've seen is Bill Malone's (that really fooled me), but Ben Earl's is pretty good too:

I really enjoyed this video, Claudio. There's a delicacy to Earl's touch that makes it a pleasure to watch, and I agree, it really looks like he's shuffling. (Except for that back-and-forth stuff where he occasionally drops packets on the face of the deck. I guess some people do overhand shuffle that way, though, alternating between throwing packets on the top and the face of the deck.)


Is the Malone version on his Penguin lecture? Jared Kopf referred to it in a download on the optical false shuffle, but didn't give a reference.


The optical shuffle seems more surefire than the Hunter shuffle, so I guess my question is, how hard is it to make the former look deceptive? I realize that's a subjective matter -- some lucky people are able to learn sleights both quickly and well. I like to learn things well, but they don't come quickly to me.