Twisting the Aces…

A couple of weeks ago I posted a method for doing an Elmsley style false count that hid the second card from the top (you can learn this false count here) that I came up with on a long flight. Unfortunately, this count isn’t particularly useful and doesn’t have much of an advantage over a normal Elmsley Count.

Well, last week I was on another long flight from New York to Seattle and I was playing with the false count that hides the second card and I came up with a trick with it. It’s Twisting the Aces, but it has one advantage over the original Dai Vernon version and that’s that it all four counts look the same, so you don’t have to openly turn over the ace of clubs or do that weird strip out of one of the red aces and then flip over a few cards.


You start with the four aces (could be any order) face down in your left hand.

  1. Triple turn over to show the “top card”.
  2. Kill your wrist and turn just the top card over.
    -The position of the cards are: face down – face up – face up – face down
  3. Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, but don’t flip over the packet.
  4. Do the Second From the Top Elmsley and this will show the first face up ace.
  5. Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, but don’t flip over the packet.
  6. Do a regular Elmsley and this will show the second face up ace.
    -The position of the cards are: face down – face up – face down – face up
  7. Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, and secretly flip over the packet.
  8. Do the Second From the Top Elmsley and this will show the third face up ace.
  9. Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, but don’t flip over the packet.
  10. Do the Second From the Top Elmsley and this will show the fourth face up ace. As you do the count, leave the final ace out jogged.
  11. Strip out the final ace and put it on top of the packet face up
  12. Half pass the bottom card as you spread out the packet to show the three face down bottom cards (this is the Asher Twist move)

The main problem with the above version of Twisting the Aces is that it’s soo much harder than doing the Vernon version. Honestly, I don’t know if this is better than the original Twisting the Aces, maybe the variation in procedure makes that trick more watchable from the audience perspective?

-Louie