How to Cheat at Cards: The Second Deal

my name is daniel roy and today i'm going to talk to you about the second deal so let's start off with a little demonstration for this demonstration i'm going to need a four of a kind so let's use whatever four of a kind this happens to be here of course you'll notice that these cards are spinning out of the middle of the deck so we've got the jack of spades and the jack of clubs and the jack of hearts and the jack diamond now let's say i was playing a game of heads up poker and let's say i was cheating at this game i could palm the four jacks in my hand this would allow my opponent to freely shuffle the cards then i would be able to replace these palm jacks on top of the deck when it came time to deal so in essence i would be placing the jack of clubs and the jack of diamonds and the jack of hearts and the jack of spades on top of the deck now this presents a little problem because my goal is to deal myself the four jacks or better which means i can't deal the jacks to my opponent and right now if i were to deal the top card of the deck well that would be a jack even if i were to secretly deal the second card that would be a jack or the third card or even the fourth card all of those are jacks the only way i can avoid dealing jacks to my opponent is by secretly dealing the fifth card from the top that's exactly what i'm going to try to do so again i can't deal off the top because that would be a jack i have to secretly deal the fifth card from the top to my opponent so here goes i will start by dealing the fifth card to my opponent and the top card to myself then the fourth card to my opponent and the top card to myself then the third card to my opponent and then the top card to myself then the second card to my opponent and the top card to myself if i've done my job correctly my opponent should have nothing at all these cards should just be total junk nothing of value well those are the uh those are the four jacks uh well i did say that i was going to give myself jacks or better and hopefully these four aces here count as better so what's going on here well this demonstration functions through a family of techniques known as second deals now the second deal is simultaneously the most useless technique in all of car cheating and the most useful technique in all of carchi in order to resolve this seeming paradox i'm going to take you on a little journey and eventually we will get around to answering this central question of how this move can be so useless and useful at the same time the short answer of course is it's complicated welcome to the second deal [Music] so let's start off with the basic concept right now the top part of the deck is the ace of spades and i will leave it face down on top and now i'm going to start dealing cards around the table to the other players and yet the ace of spades is still on top i'll do it again a starts face down on the deck i deal cards around to the other players and yet the ace remains on top even if i leave it face up when i deal around you can see it just sits on top and i can deal it to my own hand whenever i want so what's going on here well i'm not actually dealing the top card as the name of this technique the second deal suggests i'm dealing the second card from the top you can see that the ace begins on top yet when i go to deal i'm not taking the ace i'm pulling out the card under it if i slow this way down you'll notice that i'm actually moving the top card out of the way and pulling out the second one so if i were to freeze this process halfway through it would look like this now if i turn the ace face down this will be a little bit more deceptive but you should still be able to see the basic principle at play once again when i'm pretending to take the top card i'm actually taking the second one like so now the second deal isn't just one technique it's actually a family of techniques and the method that i've been demonstrating so far is called the strike second deal and its advantages are that it's a very rapid second deal and it's a little bit easier to get up to speed and it's also very consistent however it doesn't provide the strongest visual illusion the reason is that there's no illusion of me actually taking the card i'm just moving the top card out of the way and grabbing the second one there's no motion of pushing the card over into my right hand before i take it that might cause you to think that i'd really taken that card and that's where a different technique called the push off second deal comes into play so with the push off second deal the ace of spades starts face down and yet when ideal i'm not dealing the ace of spades the ace is staying on top so when it's face up you can see the card is constantly being pulled back into position as the second card is dealt now from the top perspective you'll be able to see exactly what's happening here when i'm pushing over the top card i'm actually pushing over two cards and then i'm pulling one of them back and taking the second card but the retraction of the top card happens at the last possible instant which allows me to create the illusion that i'm taking the top card when actually i'm taking the second card now of course this push-off second deal can be done in myriad ways you can deal the card down to the table like this i could also pitch the card across the table if i wanted to like so i could also deal the cards face up like this you can even deal face up and then pitch the cards as well and there are a million in one other ways of doing push-off second deals that utilize different techniques now of course all second deals look much better from a front on view or especially when you're looking at the edge of the deck the weakest angle is from above and that's why i'm using that angle looking straight down on the deck is the easiest way to spot a second deal and it's also the easiest way to explain what's going on now with the second deal the type of cards that you use matter a lot these are border playing cards because there's a white border that goes all the way around the edge and these are called borderless cards because there is no white border the back design goes all the way to the very edge of the playing card so with the bordered playing cards you can see that it's pretty obvious i'm simply moving the top card out of the way and taking the second one even if i speed up the deal you can still tell from this top angle that i'm just moving the top card out of the way and dealing the second one by contrast with borderless cards it's much more deceptive even at a relatively slow pace and if i were to speed the deal up even from this top angle the fact that i'm dealing the second card becomes almost imperceptible and when you compare them side by side the difference couldn't be more noticeable now the second deal is an interesting move in part because there are many misconceptions about what makes the move deceptive and what makes it not deceptive now there are three misconceptions i'm going to talk about today the first is the brief the second is the necktie and the third is speed let's start with the brief now with the strike second deal the distance you push the top card over is called the brief so for example a second deal where i push the top card over this much before taking the second card would have a very large brief whereas a second deal where i push the top card over this much before taking the second card would have a very small brief now of course the size of the brief potentially could make the deal more deceptive theoretically if you move the top card less out of the way it won't be as obvious that you're taking the second one and while that is true to some extent the size of the brief matters much less than the rhythm as they say in other contexts it's not the size of the wave it's the motion of the ocean and with the second deal it's not the size of the brief but the rhythm of the deal i guess the only issue with this metaphor is that as far as the brief goes in the second deal smaller is usually better so for example using the ace of spades i can do a second deal that uses an absolutely tiny brief smaller than the white border or i could do a second deal that uses a gigantic brief where i'm pushing the card over almost as much as my thumb will allow however right now you've been looking at this from the top down angle let's look at it from a much better angle or in this case a much more realistic angle as if you're maybe sitting across a card table from me i've got the ace of spades and i'm not going to tell you right now whether i'm using a small brief or a large brief but as i deal across the table you'll notice that there's a consistent rhythm to this deal and it really seems like i'm taking the top card but the truth is the brief i'm using is about this large right now so it just goes to show that what really matters is the rhythm of the deal and a lot of the other more complicated mechanics that go into making the second deal look good not just using a teensy tiny brief of course the other problem with using a tiny brief is sometimes this happens this is called grabbing air where you apparently deal a card but actually you get nothing because you didn't push that card over enough and you just weren't able to deal the second card this is not good if you're cheating at cards this is like really really really bad because you know usually when you deal cards off the top of the deck this doesn't happen unless you have some weird death grip on the card so there are ways of managing it but not good so as we've seen it's actually possible to do a deceptive second deal while not using a super tiny brief the next misconception to tackle is the necktie so what is the necktie well the necktie is the idea of turning your hands up like this as you do the second deal it's as if you're going to adjust the knot of your tie that's why it's called the necktie and the theory is well the second teal looks best when you point the edge of the deck at the audience's eyes so why not just turn the hand all the way up like this when you do the second deal never mind the fact that you can see the face of the card that i am second dealing this just looks terrible i mean no one deals like this and it's totally unnecessary to turn the hands all the way up like that to do a second deal rather you can simply lilt the hands towards each other as you're dealing cards and you can create the same angle without having to turn the hands in such an awkward and obvious way so there are easy solutions to this problem but that neck tying motion is just totally unnecessary now the third misconception is speed it's often thought that you need to deal seconds really really really really fast in order to make it look good and of course speed does matter in this case there is a speed at which it's just impossible to cover the technique if you deal in slow motion like this there's almost no way that you can make this technique deceptive however we have to think about not just speed on the whole but when we use speed you can deal seconds quite slowly as long as a key moment is done relatively quickly so again i'm not having to neck tie the deck i'm not having to use a tiny brief i'm still using a sizeable brief i'm not bringing my hand all the way up here but as long as i do one critical moment of this move at just the right speed it will actually look fairly deceptive i mean i'm dealing way slower than you really ever would using this technique but you can still get a half decent illusion in this case once again the ace of spades is just remaining on top now as with all of these sleight of hand techniques that are used at the card table i'm a magician i practice them because they're fun because i enjoy the process and because for many of them they're actually somewhat useful in magic for me it's for the love of learning and for the love of performing for real audiences in other words i'm not a card cheat if i do a second deal poorly during a performance the worst thing that will happen is an audience member might say hey you dealt the second card if i were a card sheet and got caught doing a second deal in a casino or at the card table well the repercussions can be much more severe so i'm under a lot less stress when i'm practicing this maybe that's why i enjoy it luckily i do have some friends who are actual card sheets and one of them has given me permission to include a clip of his hands doing the second deal he's one of the greatest living sleight of hand artists in the world so let's take a look at the second deal in his expert hands so the first technique that he's going to demonstrate is the push off second deal but you'll see that it's absolutely invisible even though he's pushing over two cards and taking the second one it just looks like one and it's seamless and now he's going to demonstrate the strike second deal and you'll notice how perfect the rhythm is how consistent it is and how he's able to create the illusion that the top card is being dealt so that's what this technique looks like in the hands of a real expert not just some youtube magic guy who looks like a cross between harry potter frodo baggins and waldo so that was the reality however there are some much more fantastical fancy second deal techniques out there that really don't have much use but they're fun to practice and even more fun to demonstrate on youtube for internet likes to help feed my hungry ego okay let's start with the one-handed second deal the ace of spades starts on top of the deck and i'm going to deal a card but actually it's the three of hearts and the ace of spades is still on top i'll do it again ace of spades is on top deal a card but it's not the ace it's the jack so last time second card is the two of clubs top card is the ace of spades but once again i'm just doing a one-handed second deal so it appears as though i'm dealing the top card but actually i was dealing the second one and that one-handed second deal is actually a variation of a push-off second deal but of course done with one hand and now there's a siren this happens so often you don't know how many of my clips get ruined by sirens this is just a recurring phenomenon over and over i nail a whole sequence and then there's a fire truck but i mean their job's kind of way more important than mine i hope they get where they're going in good time and save people thank you fire department okay back to the second deal now of course the second deal deals the second card but what if you needed to deal say the third card well it might look something like this so the top two cards are the ace of clubs and the ace of spades and it's going to appear that ideal uh one card but actually that's the nine of diamonds and the black aces are still on top let's do it face up one time the ace of spades and the ace of clubs begin face up and i'm going to deal one card except of course that's the third card from the top this can even be done with one hand and i'm only going to do this once if i don't nail it this clip it's not going in the video this is a one shot i guess it's going in the video yay now of course it's possible to deal thirds much more rapidly so the two black aces begin on top and here goes deal some thirds a little bit more rapidly this time the back on top i'll do it with those cards uh face up and again aces are back on top now no matter which second deal you use this technique is utterly useless unless you know what the top card is think about it for a second if i don't know the top card and i don't know the second card there's no advantage to dealing the top card or the second card it's just random chances to which card's going to come out if i have no information about what the top card or the second card is there's no reason for me to use the second deal it's utterly useless so what this means is i need a way of knowing what the top card is or in some cases what the second card from the top is and there are two primary methods of doing this the first is called the glimpse now the glimpse is a secret method of citing the index of a card here i'm just pushing this card out just enough for me to know that it's the ace of spades of course i would need a reason for turning my hand over but there are a million and one glimpse techniques that allow you to know what the top card is or what the bottom card is or even what the second card from the top is and if you know what the top card is well if you need it to stay on top because you need to deal it to another player's hand or maybe your own hand then you can use a second deal to retain it on top of the deck until you get to your own hand alternatively if you know that the top card is something that you want to get rid of well then you just deal the top card and you get rid of it now the challenge with the glimpse is that you're usually only able to glimpse one card sometimes two cards at a time so you are limited in the amount of information you can glean and there are distinct techniques you have to use every time you want to gain more information now the other method of knowing what the top card is is to use marked cards now march cards are a topic unto themselves now cheats will refer to them as paper you might hear suckers refer to them as readers but the proper term is paper so what might marked cards allow you to do well for one they would allow you to control cards in the deck because as you shuffle if you can see where the marked cards are then you should be able to bring them under your control like in this case the 13 spades now the thing with marked cards is that there are just so many marking systems out there that there's no way i could possibly cover them in one video and there are certain secrets that i just don't want to expose to be honest however if you can read the markings well it's almost like the cards are a different color so for the rest of this video i'm just going to refer to marked cards as a concept and to illustrate those marks i'm just going to use cards that have a different back color in this case all of the spades have a red back and all of the rest of the cards have blue backs so let's imagine a scenario where all of the spades are my marked cards and i'm trying to deal myself a flush that means five cards of the same suit in let's say a game of poker so as you can see i'm washing all of the cards together mixing those marked cards into the rest of the deck now generally in a game of cards you would give the cards a riffle shuffle another riffle a strip cut another riffle and then you would end with a one-handed cut now notice right now that there's already a marked card on the top of the deck so i know i just need to start doing second deals right away and that's what i'm going to do if i see a marked card on top i'm going to do a second deal if i don't see a marked card on top i'm going to deal it off the top unless i'm at my own hand because if i see a blue card that i would be dealing to my own hand i might as well take a chance and do a second deal hoping that the second card from the top happens to be marked if that made no sense just watch and this should make a lot more sense in action i'm going to deal a six-handed game of poker so here goes and you can see that i've dealt myself five spades as i was dealing the cards you might have noticed that some of the other players actually got red cards and that's because if a red card is on top and i'm already doing a second deal i may accidentally deal marked cards to the other players there's no way i can prevent that from happening because if i'm holding back the top card i can't really pay attention to what's happening to the second card but as long as there are more marked cards in the deck than cards i need in my hand doesn't really matter you also notice that within the dealing sequence there were times when i was about to deal to myself and the card on top of the deck was blue so i did a second deal hoping that the card under it would be red and indeed that's what happened and that allowed me to get another marked card on a round where otherwise i wouldn't have been able to deal myself a marked card it's not a sure thing but it's worth a try because all it requires is one more second deal and this is the critical point this is why when you have marked cards at play the second deal is the most useful technique in all of card cheating because you can let the other players shuffle if i wanted to stack the deck well i have to be the one shuffling and of course my opponents can't shuffle because that would ruin the stack if i was going to deal cards off the bottom of the deck well i have to get the cards to the bottom which means i have to handle the cards and i have to keep them there which means my opponents can't shuffle but with the second deal provided the cards are marked the other players can shuffle to their heart's content and i will still be able to deal myself strong hands time and again so it's the most useless technique when i don't know what the top card is but it's certainly the most useful technique when i always know what the top card is now the sad part about all of this is that you don't really need sleight of hand or the second deal if you use marked cards and you can read the marks well it's like you're playing with the deck face up so you can just use the marks for information without even using the second deal sure it's nice to be able to control who's going to win with the second deal but if you know who's going to win on every single round without using any sleight of hand and having no risk of getting caught mid-second deal well that's a pretty attractive proposition especially given the fact that you don't have to invest thousands of hours in learning a difficult technique instead all you need are marked cards and the ability to read the markings and a pair of very large but where's the fun and all that i mean i spent so many hours of my life practicing the second deal i wonder why i did it i start to doubt myself in my previous life choices so let's try one final demonstration i'm going to give these cards a series of shuffles on the table followed by a running cut and one last good solid riffle shuffle and you should always end a sequence like this with a one-handed cut now i'm going to deal out let's say a five-handed game of poker and while i'm dealing this game of poker i'm going to maintain eye contact with the camera the entire time now i'm dealing at a game of five card drop bit of an old-fashioned game but what that means is that each player is going to get five cards and i'm going to deal five rounds in total let's see how i did with any luck that should be the ten of spades the jack of spades the queen of spades the king of spades and the ace of spades a royal flush in spades and that is the second deal one final point this video is not a tutorial on the second deal you really can't learn the second deal in a mechanical sense from watching this video if you want to learn the second deal go read the expert at the card table and take a look at some of the other sources that i will link in the description rather this video is meant to be a case study about the theory and the philosophy of the second deal these videos need to be educational but also because it's youtube entertaining and with that said thanks so much for watching i hope you enjoyed if you like this video please give it a like and if you want to see more consider subscribing to the channel and following me on social media if you're interested in taking private lessons i teach magicians of all levels or if you want to book a live or virtual show you can contact me on my website links are in the description see you next time

Channel: Daniel Roy

Views: 320,002

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Id: 8ulfbZ3aCnA

Length: 23min 23sec (1403 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 10 2021