This location principle is short and sweet but it packs a lot of dynamite. As far as I can ascertain it is original with me. Others in a select group have worked on similar ideas but I have never seen what I am going to reveal as much as attempted.

Can you stir your imagination sufficiently to see a person going into another room with his or her own deck — a deck you’ve never seen nor touched? Or imagine a card party where you are across the room — calling over that you’ll do a trick and that they should use whatever cards are before them?

Your instructions to the spectator are as follows :

1. give the deck a good mixing. (If he wants to know should they be shuffled in any particular way tell him to mix them as he wishes)
2. Take one card out from anywhere in the deck and remember it.
3. Drop it on top of the deck.
4. Now give the deck an overhand shuffle.
5. Now give the deck a good dovetail shuffle.
6. Lastly give the deck one complete cut.

For the first time you see and take the deck. Stop and think for a few minutes. The above has been fairly described. How would you go about finding the card? I’m not going to say this always pays off. But I have worked out the procedure which, seven out of ten times, will put the chosen card within five cards of the top or bottom of the deck!!! Unbelievable? That’s what Carl Jones, publisher of Greater Magic, said when I told him. Then, on test, it worked four out of five times, the actual card being cut at twice, once on top and once on bottom, and once it was second from the top.

If your top card is face up before the (4) operation, you can see how it all works out. An overhand shuffle merely leaves it about 13 from the bottom. A dovetail brings it close to the center — and a cut leaves it close to top or bottom.

My customary way to a climax after getting the deck is to fan it through roughly and note the top and bottom four. It isn’t at all difficult to memorize their positions by values only, and the deck is held behind the back with the remark that perhaps “out of sight” will help. The spectator is asked how many spots are on his chosen pasteboard, and, as said before, seven times out of ten you’ll have it among your eight cards. If not, bring out as close to it a value and hold face down while the spectator gives the full name. Then show, and try again with someone else. Some readers may snort at “chance” and “guessing” principles, but I’ve made excellent use of this and want to get it into print before it gets kicked around with a thousand people claiming it.