Psych-Out by Bruce Bernstein

This is a wonderfully strong and effective Poker Deal effect that is very easy to do, and each section of the routine leads to an even more impossible demonstration. This is Bruce Bernstein at his best and I love it!

Effect: Psych Out is a four phase gambling routine in which you offer to play a most unusual and fascinating game of poker. Instead of being left up to chance, your opponent gets to choose (with ever increasing freedom) which cards each of you are to play with. Of course, this would seem to make it almost impossible for your opponent to lose, yet somehow you are able to psych him into giving you the winning hand – each and every time! Each phase builds in impossibility until, in the final phase, your opponent gets to deal both hands himself, in any order he wishes, from cards he himself just shuffled. In spite of this, you still win – then you prove you knew you would, by predicting the winning combination of cards he just dealt you, although hidden out of sight and never seen by you or anyone else.

Highly entertaining, this routine is easy to do, no sleight of hand is needed. There are no magicians’s choices, and it may be repeated for the same audiences because the routine plays differently each time it is performed.