Hello everyone,

After recently reading through the explanation of this effect in Darwin Ortiz at the Card Table, I was surprised that Mr. Ortiz used it as a closer. I do think that it is a beautiful, visual effect. However, I would question how strongly it plays with an audience; isn't it obvious what the basic method must be for an audience? Or am I overthinking this as people have for the Unholy Three?

It's an extremely powerful effect however for magicians it dies flat because its technically uninspiring. There are several reasons I think it feels different for laymen: There is very high conviction on the initial conditions: 4 odd kings clearly in the deck. This allows the transformations to feel very powerful to laymen. This is added by the fact that the changes happen to cards that have odd backs from the packet. I believe for laymen this is incredibly strong. Look at it this way as a magician: Its easier to cover a move (such as a top palm or top change) when the cards look all the same, however, imagine performing sleight of hand with a card that is different from the rest: You have to see something. Here you change 4 aces with odd backs very cleanly with nothing to see. For laymen this is quite impossible. I actually I highlight this in my presentational theme.

The ending makes sense because you won't be able to change the aces to kings unless you know where they are, which you do, because you will now cut to them. This is my subtext for the ending and it works great.

One of my favorite Ortiz routines.

Thanks. I've asked some people I know about this as well and I'm convinced of how good it is.

How have people overthought the Unholy Three? That effect plays beautifully for a lay audience.

People have thought that it would be obvious to a lay audience that the magician had been cutting to the signed selections once their backs were revealed in the end, thus making it obvious what happened during the first half.

“People” are morons.

I've recently come up with a variation which has a different structure which addresses the concern I brought up earlier. Here's a video of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmdSgF4uDks

There are some tradeoffs between my variation and Mr. Ortiz's original which will become apparent to anyone who's familiar with the trick.