talkmagic.co.uk

Yes, I am working with the BCS and was wondering if anyone knows a way to be able to tell a card a X position in the deck? I am searching for this answer. If you know anything let me know.

Thanks.

I don't know diddly-squat about the BCS but I saw this yesterday and it may be of use to you:

http://www.talkmagic.co.uk/ftopic6583.php

if anyone knows a way to be able to tell a card a X position in the deck?

In short no, although with the memorised BCS (or any memorised stack)yes.

With some stacks, such as Si Stebbins there is a formula you can use that will do what you wish, although it would mean doing a certain amount of math during your performance, which is not to everyone's taste (or ability).

Nope, but if you are looking for a 'Card at any Number' trick, then Dan Garcia's C.A.A.N is perfect.

Its on the The Dan Garcia Project

i very much dislike maths in magic (which is strange saying that im a mathematician read: mathemagician!) since i find that nearly everyone can do some silly little card trick involving adding up or whatever.
is that CAAN move the same one as on Devils Picturebook? which is, possibly the cheakiest CAAN move ever!

I must admit that I bought BCS few weeks ago and I don't like it

I just fail to see the difference in doing all that math or brute force memorizing the deck which takes only a week and you have "your own" system and at the end if you want to really learn BCS it will eventually become the same as if you have memorized the whole deck...than you don't have to do any math...

I have been using tetradistic stack for long time and it is much much much better that BCS....it allows you to make the stack as you like it and you can be sure that there will be noone with the same stack...you can use it for the same effects as BCS and besides that it gives you a possibility for an effect which makes people jaw drops.....with only 2 shuffles you can cull every 4 of a kind in the deck....

So I'm sticking with my tetradistic stack....

BCS is a good stack but if you want to know which card is at which position then you need to memorise it.
There are lots of ways to memorise a stack (if you have Hugards Encyclopaedia of Card Magic -it is available via The Learned Pig if you don't have a hard copy- then the section on the Nikola stack gives a common memorization system that workd). The question then is which stack to memorize and that question has been debated high and low.
A stack is a wonderful thing but is only useful if it does what you want it to. The BCS has the advantage of having an inbuilt memorisation tool in case you forget the order. However as most people out there who know a stack will tell you, once you know a stack, you know it properly. With practice you get to a stage where you can do the following-
-give the stack number of a card named instantly
-name the card instantly, given its stack number
-run through the order of cards forward and backwards.

Once you can do all this, the you don't need the crutch of a calculateable cue for the next card. As this is the only benefit of the BCS then maybe it's worth memorising a stack with some built in bonuses.
The two main stacks (and yes there are more than these) are the Aronson Stack and the Tamariz Mnemonica stack.
I personally use the Tamariz stack. I bought Mnemonica which is a superb book and has so many fantastic sections including history of the stacks, bibliography of stack effects, different ways of learning the stack (3 hours Tamariz claims) plus lots of gambling, mental and classic effects aswell as useful ruses and sleights.

The Aronson stack has several effects built in to it, but I believe these are mainly gambling effects, plus a spellable section of the stack. If you own A New World by Dean Dill and Michael Weber, then there is another advantage which you will know about.

So think about what you want from a stack. Decide if you really need a memorised stack (although you will always be able to use it and it is great for those impromptu situations with someone elses deck). Then choose your stack based on these decisions.

Good luck

Shanester

Thanks for all the replies. I was actually being a bit silly and realized a way to work the trick without having to know the card at x number. It was quite obvious, heh. Usually is.