Dear Reader -

I’m working on a little pamphlet to publish soon. It’s called the “Lil Book of Magic Hacks” and it’s going to be super cute. They’re all just small snippets of ideas I’ve encountered in magic research that parlay quite nicely into other situations. I figured I’d share with you one of the hacks in advance:

Hack #7
Counting Cards
Counting cards (w/ a Hi-Lo count) in BlackJack is predicated on Aces, Faces and Tens counting as High Cards, Twos thru Sixes as Low Cards, and Sevens thru Nines as null cards. If you’re able to track the cards that have come out of the deck, you’re more likely to predict the upcoming cards. This kind of pattern isn’t only present in card games, it’s present in any defined set of values. If you’re paying attention to what’s come before, you may be more likely to predict what shall come to be. Always be counting.

— J.R.