The Berglas Effect
by Oli Foster

Oli Foster leads an exciting double life as an underwriter by day and magic enthusiast the rest of the time. Ahem. When he's not pretending card stacks are work-related, he enjoys collecting old magic books and working out superfluous mental card routines, like the one you're about to read...

I'm not sure if even David Berglas could have imagined how many heads he would set scratching with his legendary occasional performances of Any Card at Any Number, consequently now popularly known as The Berglas Effect. Everyone's got their own take on it, each making individual compromises to meet the impossible conditions set by the various embellished descriptions.

It seems like the perfect card problem and there are a lot of good solutions - notably Barrie Richardson and John Born's recent contributions. I wanted to find my own angle, which would also solve some of the practical problems associated with performing the effect. The elements I considered important were:

- A free choice of any card
- A free choice of any number
- A single deck of cards
- The spectator deals the cards to discover her named card at her named number with the feeling that the magician cannot have manipulated the cards
- A practical method without recourse to complex calculations/handling.

On that last point, this may just be me but I find it difficult to work with a stack for this effect. I think I get that glassy-eyed look on executing the necessary calculations (as simple as they may be), which is always somewhat distracting. Half of the justification for creating another variation was to make this calculation instantaneous. The other half was to devise a subtle method with an ordinary deck.

The most direct solution is to simply cut the deck at the right point to bring the required number of cards above the selection. However, this method needs to be disguised. That age old ruse of spreading the cards face up "to remove the jokers" just doesn't cut the mustard in the middle of what should be a clever trick for a clever audience. Methodologically, this meant I needed some kind of simple set-up which would enable me to cut a face down deck to bring any card to any number.

There is one final element behind this development which dovetails with my last paragraph - presentation. How do we misdirect from the required handling in a way that enhances the effect? My solution is to hide in the open. Rather than try to pass the cards or create some extraneous pretext like removing the jokers, the aim was to convince the spectator the cards can't have been manipulated by allowing her to cut the deck herself.

Effect

The magician removes a cased deck of cards from his pocket and asks the spectator to name a playing card and any number between one and fifty-two. The spectator names the six of spades and the number thirty two.

The magician removes the cards from their box and briefly fans them to show a complete deck of 52 cards. The spectator now gives the deck a complete cut and deals thirty two cards. Believe it or not, the thirty second card is her card, the six of spades.

Preparation

This uses a stacked deck. Any stack will do, provided the cards appear to be in a random order on casual inspection and the sequence is familiar enough for you to instantly work out the location of any named card. If you have difficulty memorising a stack under fire, you can take the slightly less clean option of sticking a crib sheet to the back of the card box listing each card in value order next to its position from the face of the deck, like the example overleaf.

Alternatively, there are a couple of very simple formulas that negate memorising a sequence.
Whichever method works best for you is fine, provided it enables you to instantly identify the location of a named card.

One further note on the stack is that, to simplify later calculation, the stack should run from the face of the deck rather than from the top.

Having established that the deck is stacked, we move on to the tiny bit of physical preparation that gives us a mechanical advantage in working this trick. Whatever order the deck is in, the thirteenth, twenty sixth and thirty ninth cards of the stack are breather crimped. The crimp is applied to the face of each of these three cards to create an almost imperceptible dome raising from the centre of the face down card. The breather crimp enables you (or a spectator) to almost unwittingly cut to one of these three prepared cards, thanks to the slight break it raises in the deck.

Placing breather crimped cards at particular positions in the deck therefore means that you can instantly cut to one of these predetermined positions. By placing the crimped cards at positions 13, 26 and 39, the deck is divided into quarters. You can see the break in the deck caused by a crimped card and, by cutting to the crimp that falls closest to the required position, you will always be able to cut within 6 cards (in either direction) of ANY NUMBER BETWEEN ONE AND 52.

One final preparation is to subtly mark each of these crimped cards so that, having cut the deck, you can quickly check that you haven't missed the crimp by one or two cards. The outermost wing of the angel perching on the top left and bottom right corners is coloured in the same colour as the back of the card (ie red on a red backed deck). I've found a red sharpie marker matches up perfectly with red Bicycle cards and you can buy a pack of four sharpie markers containing red, blue, green and black for around £3. This marking is invisible on dealing the cards but means that you can check your position by very slightly spreading the cards at the crimp.

The illustrations overleaf show this marking. The last two photos are "before and after" shots so you can see exactly how the marked card on the right compares to a regular card on the left: Instantly noticeable to you but subtle enough not to be seen when you're not looking for it.

Place the cards in their box. You're ready to go.

The Mark

Performance

This handling assumes you've opted for a crib sheet on the card box instead of a memorised deck. Start with the boxed deck in your pocket and ask a spectator to name a card. On hearing the name of her card, remove the box from your pocket with the crib sheet facing you and concealed from the audience. Look down at the crib to note the position of the named card and remember this position, whilst saying "There are 52 cards in this deck and 52 different locations for each of those cards. Please name a number between one and 52". [If you have taken the trouble to learn a stack rather than write out a crib, you would work out the position of the named card at this point]

On hearing the named number, mentally add this to the position of the selection. The total will be the position of the card you will need to cut to the face of the deck to bring the named card to the named number. This is because the stack is running from the face of the deck but the spectator will later count from the top of the deck. The selection's position from the face of the deck will therefore be cancelled out, leaving just the required number of cards above it.

Now you know how many cards you need to cut from the face to the top of the deck, remember the positions of the three crimped cards, and decide which crimped card is nearest to the point you need to cut at. On opening the card box, you'll see the breaks created by the three crimped cards. It's helpful at this stage to mentally reiterate which break you're going to cut at. The position of each break is written on the picture and you visualise these three numbers as you open the card box.
Remove the deck from the box and place the box in your pocket. Hold the deck face down in your left hand and run the fingers of the right hand down the edge of the deck to find whichever of the three crimped cards is closest to the card you've established you'll need to cut to the face. Now jog all of the cards above the crimp diagonally to hopefully expose the marked angel on the corner of the crimped card.

As established, you are, at this point, up to six cards away from the card you need to cut to and, believe it or not, you are going to openly count this balance of cards in front of the spectator. Slightly spread the cards at the break. If the marked angel hasn't appeared, you should see it within this small spread.

Once you've seen your guiding angel, mentally count its number. In the above illustration, we've cut to the crimped card resting 26th from the face of the deck, so would mentally count, "twenty six" on sighting this marked card.

You are now going to casually spread the cards from the crimp to find the card you need to cut to the face. You'll either need to spread the cards immediately to the left of the crimp or immediately to the right of the crimp depending on whether the card you need to cut to the face is lower or higher than the position of the crimped card. In the below illustration, the position of the card we need to cut to is lower than 26, so the cards are spread to the left of the crimp.

As you start to spread the cards, raise the deck to chest height to show the faces of the few spread cards to the audience, saying "a complete deck of 52 cards in no particular order".

As you spread the faces toward the spectator mentally count as you spread each card closer to the required position, "twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty three" etc.
On reaching the required point, square up the deck and insert a break beneath the card you're going to cut to the face. As you bring the deck to waist height, diagonally jog the upper packet slightly away from the lower packet as depicted earlier, when we were trying to glimpse the one-winged angel (which is the ethereal counterpart of a one-armed bandit). The above illustration shows how this jog would look end-on, if your hand was contracted by a sudden spasm.

The illustration to the right, just like the angel, is an ethereal counterpart to the aforementioned circumstance, and shows how your hand might look under normal circumstances (although perhaps only on Halloween).

You'll see that the thumb covers the exposed part of the bottom half, whilst your fingers mask the gap beneath the overlapping top half.
This might seem ridiculous but you are now going to induce the spectator to cut to this break. This is partly achieved by what you say.

If the break is near the central crimp, say, "please cut about half the cards off the top of the deck."

If the break is near the top of the deck, say, "please cut a few cards off the top of the deck."

If the break is toward the face of the deck, say "please cut a nice lot of cards off the top of the deck." Subtle NLP it isn't but it does the job and is non-specific enough to fly by.

As they reach for the cards, your first and second fingers push the lower portion of the deck toward your thumb while the ring finger and pinky rest loosely against the top half.

Because the top half of the deck is jogged diagonally from the top half but the spectator will grip the cards squarely from the top (and slightly tentatively to comply with your recent instruction), cutting to the break is almost unavoidable.
(This diagonal jog also stops them cutting to any of the crimped cards.)

They can't cut lower than the break because your first two fingers are squeezing the life out of the lower packet. If they cut off too few cards, say "and a few more". At this point, as they're already holding a packet of cards, they'll naturally scoop up all of the cards above the break on the face of their packet.

If that old-one winged angel has really decided to smite you and you're still left with too many cards, insert your fingers in the break and push all of the cards above the break up against the face of the spectator's packet, saying "just a few more." You could alternatively resort to a Charlier Pass to reverse the positions of the two packets either side of the break - this option means it doesn't matter if the spectator cuts too few cards.

Once they're holding the correct balance of cards, ask them to hold their packet squarely in their palm. Finally place your remaining packet on top of the cards they're holding to "complete the cut." If you've opted for a Charlier pass, this moment provides the small amount of misdirection and movement required to cover the pass.
Although they've cut the cards themselves, their named card is now at the named position in the deck.

Say that you don't want to touch the cards now that they've been cut and ask them to deal the cards face up into your hand, counting each card aloud as it's dealt. Have them stop before dealing the selection and recap the impossible conditions. Again borrowing from John Born, ask them to turn over the card and look at it before showing everyone else.

To reset, simply locate the first card of the stack and cut it to the face. Replace the cards in the box and you're ready to go again.

Credits

This method came about as a murky consolidation of all of the things I've seen and read on this problem. Particular inspiration has come from

David Britland. David is the author of The Mind and Magic of David Berglas and writes a brilliant blog which, if you like this kind of magic, I highly recommend you check out at www.cardopolis.blogspot.com. His level of knowledge, insight and creativity is astonishing and what's more astonishing is the nice articles he includes on this blog completely free.

I'm too cheap to fork out the several hundred pounds that second hand copies of David's limited edition book are now fetching and have, rather sadly, scoured the web for clues to the system Berglas might have been using. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I've found very little other than the general murmur that he used a bridged 26th card.

On considering how this bridged card could be used and reading David's own handlings, I came up with the idea of quartering the deck to minimise the distance between these fixed quarters and any number between one and fifty two. It wasn't a huge leap to take and I'm indebted to the clever minds who've puzzled this out before me.

Simon Lane. Simon is another freak of nature in that he is equally obsessed with this weird problem and his own solution is as slick as this gets. I've always had pipe dreams of methods which may or may not be workable but watching Simon's performance of this effect gave me the incentive to devise a practical method that I could actually do.

I'm also indebted to Simon for the wealth of experience he's shared on this problem - from simple things like avoiding reset by having the spectator deal the cards face up to the more ingenious formulas to negate memorising a stack.

Alternative handlings and ideas

At the end of this effect, you're left with three crimped cards in the 13th, 26th and 39th positions. You can, of course use this setup for subsequent effects to locate or spell any cards as the fancy takes you.

You might like to use the fact that the cards are crimped to create an entirely different effect. For instance, if the three crimped cards were aces with the fourth ace at the top, you could slip cut and reveal the fourth ace before removing it and handing the deck to be shuffled to have the spectator then cut to the three remaining aces!

Alternatively, you might prefer to make the handling of this ACAAN effect a little cleaner. You don't need three crimped cards. You can achieve exactly the same effect and handling using two crimped cards which can be jokers - so that these can be used and discarded in a subsequent effect to leave you with a completely ordinary deck.

The jokers would be crimped and marked in the same way and placed at positions 13 and 26. You're therefore working with a 54 card deck but the principal is the same. If the key number (the actual position of the selection plus the named position) is higher than twenty six, you control the balance (ie 52 - the key number) and the spectator later counts from the face of the deck. If the key number is lower than 26 however, you just control the key number and count from the top of the deck.

There's a subtlety in counting from the face which, from the various accounts, I think Berglas must have used in some form or other. That is giving the spectator the choice of which end of the deck to count from while they're holding the deck! Obviously, the only way you can achieve this (unless their card is 26th from the top) is forcing one end or the other and it's therefore all in how you phrase it. If you say,

"Now you can either count cards from the top of the deck so that you deal them all face down or you can count them from the face so that you can see the face of each card that's dealt. Which would you prefer?"

Under these conditions, who wouldn't want to deal from the face?! Interestingly, you can apply a similar linguistic strategy in situations where you require the spectator to deal from the top but want to add to the impossibility by making it seem as though they are able to deal from either direction. You simply ask,

"Do you want to deal the cards face up or face down?"

If they say "face up", you can either interpret this as having them deal from the face or having them turn each card face up as its dealt from the top, as required. Before revealing the selection, you reiterate that, having cut the cards, they had the choice to deal cards from either the face or the top of the deck.

Finally, you could reverse the handling by controlling the balance of up to six cards from the top or face of the deck before handing the spectator the deck to cut. With just the two crimps, you can place the deck on the table before them and, using the earlier strategy, ask them to cut either "a few cards" or "about half the cards" from the top of the deck and place this cut pile to the side.

Hopefully they'll hesitate a little and cut to the correct crimped card, in which case, you'll see the marked angel on top of the lower half. If they've missed it, you can have them cut slightly more or less before completing the cut or simply reach over and remove the right balance yourself. Assuming you don't have to touch the cards (the breather cimp seems surprisingly reliable, you can then give them the choice of dealing from the face or top of the deck and it should really seem like you haven't gone anywhere near the cards.

Finally, I rather like the idea of handing the spectator a boxed deck of cards, having them remove the deck and cut it before dealing from either end to find their named card at their named number.

On reading, this sounds impossible. However, if you think about it, as we're relying on them cutting to one of the two crimped cards and using a linguistic out, all that remains is to secretly introduce up to six cards to a boxed or tabled deck, remembering that the boxed deck can start in your pocket.

If you're a certain type of magician, I'll bet you've already come up with a few ideas, so I'll leave this one for you to puzzle out. If you do come up with a novel spin on this, I'd love to hear from you.

Cheers!

Oli Foster