PROS

After some intro and history of the deck and the effects, they go directly into some effects possible with this gimmicked deck.

FREE CHOICE CUTS
Performer shuffles the deck. Three participants select a card each. A fourth participant cuts the deck in thirds. The top card in each pile is the selected card.

DOUBLE ACAAN
Two cards are selected. The cards are shuffled and spread. The two select a number each between one and 52. The cards are counted and each of their selections are removed from the deck.

ULTIMATUM STOP
This is done with a couple. She cuts the deck and looks at the card she cut to. Performer deals out cards and he stops at any card. He stops at her card

LUCK AND INTUITION
Two people select a card. Performer asks one if they would like to use luck or intuition. They say “Luck”. He turns to the other and says: “That leaves you with intuition. Using your intuition, name a number between 1 and 52.” They cut the deck. Performer counts to their number and that is the other participant’s card. performer goes back to the first participant and asks them to toss the found card into a deck of cards being dribbled onto the table.

The video also includes original footage with several additional routines.

The explanation is EXTREMELY thorough as you get the original complete explanation of the deck and a number of effects with three individuals in a magic session environment and you get a newer explanation of a number of effects. There is some overlap of the effects, but each set of explanations has a ton of great routines.

The difficulty level ranges from beginner to more advanced, depending upon the routine performed. On this video there are a large number of effects to choose from, ranging from really easy to more challenging. However, even the more challenging routines don’t involve knuckle busting sleights. They involve more practice and being accustomed to the way the deck works.

The system and routines are true to the ad copy. If you liked what you saw, you are going to love this.

CONS

You must know this is a gimmicked deck. While the video covers how you can display the deck in such a way that is doesn’t appear gimmicked, you can’t turn over the deck to a participant to examine.

I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t cover more about bringing the deck into play and taking it out of play. Magicians perform in a wide variety of settings. Most magicians are amateur, performing in casual settings with family and friends. In those more casual settings, you will do an effect, and another individual in the group will want to show a card trick or suggest you play poker, etc. They didn’t get into any exit strategy at all. In the Suggestions section, I will cover such an idea.

VERDICT

I would have given this five stars if they had just covered how to take the gimmicked deck out of play and perhaps a few suggestions for what to do next. People who sell magic should understand that their audience is not only professional magicians, but also amateur magicians who are mostly performing for friends and family, perhaps even other amateur magicians who are going to want to take the deck and do something with it, perhaps not even for inspection, but perhaps to show another trick or to use the card to play a card game. The suggestion section has an idea for this.

Suggestions

This is really a tremendous deck with a lot of potential. However, it can’t be handed out for examination. They do cover some ideas for how to do simple false shuffles and false cuts, but they really don’t cover anything regarding how to get the deck out of play. I have not used this deck, but if I did, I would modify my Ultimatum deck to contain either a specific four of a kind to do twisting the aces or all the sixes and nines which I use for oil and water. I would simply take those cards out of another deck and box the remaining cards. I would then place them into the Ultimatum deck, removing other indifferent cards. If someone asks to see the deck to do another trick or to play poker, or for whatever reason, I would say: “Wait, let me show you just one more thing”. Then, remove the packet of cards you need for the effect, let’s say either oil and water or twisting the aces, box the rest of the cards and place them in your pocket where the un-gimmicked deck minus that packet of cards is. Do the effect and then take out the un-gimmicked deck and hand it to the person to shuffle the cards into the deck. I would suggest you also be prepared with a “Can you do that one trick again?” question when you have a regular deck. Be prepared to do something similar, or just any strong magic effect with a regular deck of cards.