Magic Tricks

Yet again, Dani DaOrtiz has done my head in. I may or may not ever perform this effect, but learning the method is a very rewarding experience in itself and Dani has given me material that I can use independently of the effect in question.
Speaking of which, it looks simply miraculous.
A special deck is needed, although an alternative method is taught, marginally less strong, but with an ordinary deck.
I'm assuming 52 cards are used, in which case I would have liked some detail as to which cards to discard in order to keep the number of cards at 52. I don't think this observation is giving too much away.