Do any of you have favorite tricks involving a stack that doesn't involve memorized deck work? Personally, I like Stewart James stuff, Phil Golstein's Abacus, and Lennart Green's Fractal trick. Any thoughts? How about tricks that used to need a stack but turned impromptu. Those are great, too.

Simon Aronsons book, Try the Impossible, uses his stack, but for tricks that don't involve memorizing the stack. But if you are using something like the Aronson stack I think it's wise to memorize it anyway. That way if one accidentally gets out of place in performance you know where it goes.

In Simply Simon there's a neat trick called Double Lazy that doesn't use a memorized stack.
But if you take the effort to learn one, you can do Everybody's Lazy from the same book. And that one's really cool!

The various algorithmic stacks allow you to do many "memorized deck" effects without actually having to memorize the deck. You can't do all of them, as for some you really do need to have done the memory work; for many, though, an algorithmic solution is more than adequate.

There's something of a discussion of this topic in my essay on full-deck stacks.

... Doug

My favorite Stacked Deck effect (not memorized) is still "Sam the Bellhop". Now that I think about it, it probably is memorized because you have to tell the story.

Anyways, I kinda like topsy turvy aces that uses a nine card stack on the top of the deck. There are also some stacks I use for my gambling demonstration.

Play It Straight Triumph by John Bannon.

--Rick

Another vote for Play It Straight Triumph by John Bannon. I also like Sam the Bellop, but I don't use that trick at all.

I like to tip my hat to Stewart James' Robot Deck. Poker, blackjack, bridge deal, spelling to two selceted cards, mentalism. All with in one stack.Very ingenious.