http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl5eiwmG214

This was a handling I worked out in August of 2002 after reading Lou Gallo's Only The Lonely from Richard's Almanac. The Hotel Trick doesn't seem to be a very popular routine anymore but it has always played well for me. I have only performed it at most a dozen times in college. I called it the Frat House trick and had a very R rated presentation that isn't suited for YouTube but I put an appropriate song in the background

Thoughts on why it doesn't seem to be popular anymore? I always thought it was a cute trick and was the only story effect I ever performed. It was fun to do but the situation had to be just right. I used to do this witl the nasty cards we were using for whatever drinking game was being played at the time, haha.

I am sorry I don't like that at all. I may be tired or something but I can't see any magic having watched it twice.

It's one of "those" hotels where* a threesome is not unusual but the guys just want to play cards so the girls went to sleep.

*sorry folks this is a family friendly site and not everyone knows that Talking Heads song.

It's not really an effect without a presentation. The effect is old though, dating from 1940ish. Then Marlo introduced the Hotel presentation which is basically that the two Queens go to their separate hotel rooms and are each supposedly joined by two Kings, but when everyone wakes up in the morning it turns out that the Kings were all in one room and the Queens together in another. I just assumed everyone was familiar with the premise.

Didn't like the handling. Like Tommy I had to watch it twice to understood an effect had actually taken place.

I dunno if that's really a fault of the handling as much as from lack of any presentation. I'm really not doing anything different from the standard handlings except I'm using deals to accomplish the switches rather than lifts. I can't seem to get the audio and video to match up when I record so I can't really make a video with a presentation. I kind of just figured everyone was going to know what was gonna happen before watching the video so a lack of presentation wouldn't have been as big of an issue

Dear Jonathan,

I like it. On video, it'd look clearer with two spot cards and four Kings. And, it needs patter. I have a "hotel" trick in my 1996 book Nocturnal Creations. It's called The Bed-Sit Mystery." It's three-phase version...

Yours, however, is fast & neat! Well done...

Paul Gordon

Nice Work, Thanks for sharing. For a nice and more "Direct" approach you may want to check out Lou Gallo's "Only the Lonely" from Kaufman's Collected Almanac pg. 93

It sure has served me well....

Justin

Lack of presentation is usually the biggest issue!

My biggest problem with the video was that it wasn't clear. I had to keep pausing it to see whether it was a King or a Queen you laid down. While my problem is probably related to aging eyes, I would imagine "beer goggles" might also make it difficult, if you are performing at frat parties. With an appropriate presentation, this should play just fine, but you really need to make sure they can see the difference between the Kings and Queens. Paul may be onto something, maybe using Aces for the men, to provide visual impact?
Don

I made the mistake of reading the posts before watching the video - but it has still left me wondering what it was all about.

The "Hotel Trick' plot first got printed in 1859.

You are probably right. I was referring to the presentational premise which I believe came much later.

I'm actually kind of shocked that not that many people here seem to know the effect though. Also that people seem to post without reading any of the previous posts, haha.

Have a look at the effect "Like With Like Version" from the book "The Card Magic of Nick Trost". The patter of this effect retains most of the 1859 publication. This is what the book mentions.

Also in the recently published book "Subtle Card Creations" Vol 2 by Nick Trost has a chapter on "Hotel Mystery" containing five effects.

From a magician's point of view...maybe
(they'd say, "Oh, that's a Marlo trick).

From a laymen's point of view...nah
(they'd say, "What just happened?")

I think the effect is very clear:

You lay two Aces side by side. On each you place two Kings. Total of three cards in each pile. Then - instantly - you have two Aces in one pile and four Kings in the other.

My adult patter is about four studs (guys) visiting two call girls. Two guys go into one room (with one girl) and two in another (with the other girl). Then, when they awake (ho, ho) - the four guys are together (yuch) and the two girls are together (nice). The logistics of my patter/presentation are too rude to publish here. As I say, it's in Nocturnal Creations and the patter on one of my old dvds.

I get a lot of laughs from it.

Paul Gordon

A) the Persi diaconis handling is in the Cervon castle notebooks. It is lovely!
b) In Kaufman's the Looking Glass is the Jenning's Handling, which has a beautiful kicker.

I completely agree that this effect is undeservedly overlooked; particularly with today's younger audience.

Yes this is very much a story effect, in fact the only one I've ever done. And yes the presentation is very...dirty. The overall idea I used was that a group of guys decided to try and take advantage of some girls they saw at a party using some..chemical means of persuasion. The girls catch on, however, and turn the table on the guys. It always got laughs and it was always entertaining. That is what is was designed to be, entertaining and funny. It is not flashy.

I'm a little saddened that I don't have the opportunity to perform it anymore. It was very situational and so I only did it a few times. I would only do it if I was at a party (which was pretty common) and playing a drinking game involving cards (again..common) and also decided to do some magic (very uncommon). It's not something I wanted to do for very drunk people so it would only be done while pre-gaming before going out. But it played.

For the 9001st time though, I didn't record this as a presentation of the effect. It is merely a demonstration of the method which I think is pretty clear. Rather than any counts or displacements I use a bottom deal and a stud second deal so that it, hopefully, doesn't look like you are doing anything to the cards. I also used the cards that were being played with and they tended to be sticky, wet, etc, so using tecniques like multiple lifts might not have been an option. Clearly I was wrong when I assumed most would be aware of the plot.

Anyway to get back to the original issue: Why do you think it seems to have fallen out of use. Most people who have performed it before will tell you that it plays well. The only problem I can see is that it doesn't fall into the category of visual magic that people seem to think is required today.

You should check out Meaux-tel Mystery by my good friend Jason Comeaux.


Trini

I'm not sure that is evidence that the Hotel Trick is from 1859. Of course one way to check is to look in a copy of the book (The Secret Out; or, One Thousand Tricks with Cards) but Trost only mentions that he uses the presentation from that effect for his routine. His routine is not the Hotel Trick and from the presentation I would be willing to bet neither is the original. I don't really know the entire history of the effect but what I've found says it is a Henry Christ plot, which originally appeared in the Jinx No.74 in 1940. In 1942 Ed Marlo published a version called the Hotel Mystery in Let’s See The Deck, which gave the Hotel presentation to the trick. Marlo and Persi Diaconis worked out methods using only two Queens and four Kings. In Richard’s Almanac Volume One Number Eleven from July of 1983 there is a handling of Lou Gallo’s entitled Only The Lonely which was the starting point for this handling. Perhaps some of the more knowledgeable historians on here can shed some more light on that.