Hi Jason,

I know you do quite a number of routines using the bottom deal. I've seen you do a Gary Plants routine from the Dan and Dave site, read your notes on the bottom deal and studied reccommendations in there too and was wondering if there is any more reccommendations you would suggest would be good to study. I picked up Derek's 2nd set of lecture notes from the 1st Magic Con and have been using the routine in there whenever the situaion is right and it plays extremely well. It's my favorite routine currently. I also like something I picked up from Ben Earl where he deals psuedo centers ( bottoms) that looks great as well. Look forward to your week here on the Café.

Sean

Hi Sean,

I do have a few favorites that unfortunately I can't talk about (because they don't belong to me), but I can tell you about some that are published that you should check out:

Return of the Ultimate Card Shark - This is Andrew Wimhurst's terrific version of Darwin Ortiz's Ultimate Card Shark routine from Darwin Ortiz at the Card Table. I did Darwin's original for many years until Andrew figured out a way to get into the set-up from NDO. Been using that ever since with small modifications. It uses the bottom deal as one phase (and can be modified to use a bottom deal for other phases if you need it).

Gambling Demo - A rather uninspired title I know, but I've never been big on naming my own effects or versions of effects. I just know what they are. Anyway, this is on The Unreal Work 2: Cheaters on a Train DVD that is available from me or from Dan and Dave Buck's website. It uses a bottom deal openly.

Last but not least, I've done the effect from the Laurie Ireland book that Darwin mentions in The Annotated Erdnase. It's a great little countdown puzzle that I've incorporated into a larger routine. The truth is I use a Greek deal for that trick now, but it was originally done with a bottom (actually a few) and it works just fine that way of course.

Hope this helps!

Jason