When I was a teenager I remember reading Bob Farmer’s column in Genii Magazine (I think it was Genii) on the 10 card poker deal. I would read about it and work through it, but never did it. I played with the 10 card deal again about a decade later when I was learning a memorized deck, as the Aronson Stack has one built into it, but never really did it.
For about the last year I’ve been fascinated with the 10 card poker deal. It’s really an amazing trick that’s built on a very simple method. I’ve ready a lot of the modern works on it, however it appears a lot of the best stuff is pretty old. Bob Farmer put out a book called the Bammo Ten Card Deal Dossier.
This book is full of the history of the deal and most of the published works on the 10 card poker deal. Within it there are tons of routines. I’ve put together a three deal routine using parts of other routines that make the whole thing feel super fair, and each step gets more fair.
My three phase routine is something that I don’t think would play for a huge group in a live setting for me. It’s really a head to head “competition” with someone. However I am working on a stage version of this trick, but I think it will feel different from most 10 card deal routines.
There are tricks that come in and out of your life, that you dabble in here or there. They just aren’t right for you, or you aren’t right for them a that time. Then one day at the right time, you rediscover it and the trick finally works for you (or you for it). I think this is why it’s important to constantly be learning things and revisiting old things.