Magic Tricks

Impromptu Ace Cutting gives you exactly just that--it gives you a method find the aces and cut to them from a shuffled deck of cards. The primary method involves true riffle culling and cutting to the aces. Also included are two magical methods of cutting to the aces that require a set up but are faster and require far less skill.

Carl Irwin is a patient and effective teacher. He starts with some background, gives a detailed tutorial of how to riffle cull, and includes a tutorial of the Zarrow shuffle. Additionally, he goes over two alternate, more magic-based, methods to cut to the aces. These methods require far less skill/practice and will be faster than riffle culling, but also require minimal preparation of the deck.

The tutorial is 48 minutes long. It is mostly a shot from behind (the card handler's perspective), which is the perfect view to see all the real work that occurs behind the scenes. The quality of the video is good but it has been shot in 650 x360 (nHD) resolution. This is lower than SD resolution. It will look quite pixilated if you tried to view it on your HD TV but everything is more than clear enough to follow along in a smaller window on your computer screen (and certainly on a smartphone or smaller tablet).

Note, this is the real deal: you will learn how to riffle cull and cut to the aces from a shuffled deck in use. This is not a pseudo-ace cutting technique using a preprepared stack. When you are done with this tutorial, you will know how to take a fully shuffled deck, scan the entire deck within 4 shuffles, and genuinely cut to the aces.

Of course, it will take a fair amount of practice until you can do this smoothly and quickly. The specifics of the moves, as such, are not so involved, but the ability to peek cards quickly and shuffle them into the correct position smoothly, quickly, and without dropping a beat, requires a lot of time investment and muscle memory.

Additionally, although real impromptu ace cutting is a great skill to have in your armamentarium, even with a high level of proficiency, it takes more time to do it this way than if you 'cheat' by 'finding' the aces using a stack or other sleight of hand method. In this light, some might argue that Irwin's core method is more of a demonstration of skill than it is magical. I would argue that whether this method is perceived as 'magical' or a 'demonstration of skill' will depend on your presentation, audience expectations, and how proficient you become at the technique. As if anticipating this issue (and as noted above), Irwin includes two versions of cutting to the aces that are faster/easier than riffle culling but require prior set up of the deck.

Note that we often frame magical 'false' ace cutting/gambling demonstrations from a prestacked deck as a demonstration of skill. We often let the audience assume that we have honed the skills of a card sharp, when we are in actuality 'cheating' by using sleight of hand and magical short cuts to show off our imperceptible 'center deal.' Conversely, using the same techniques, we might opt for a more magical moment by simply changing up the patter. The same is true of this technique. Once you are proficient, you could change up the presentation to make the ace cutting appear to be a skill demonstration or a magical appearance of the aces. (The same could be said for techniques such as culling--when Kostya Kimlat does a full deck separation with a cull it's so fast it's pure magic. I can cull out select cards very quickly, but a full deck cull, at this point, would be too slow to be magical in my hands...)

All in all, this is a very valuable resource for someone who wants to learn how to riffle cull and cut to the aces. Clearly, this is a basic technique and there is room to expand on one's skill set. As a beginner, I found this to be a rock solid tutorial for getting started in this area. And at this price point, there is a lot of bang for the buck here. Recommended.