USING ESTIMATION
The working repertoires of many of the worlds top cardmen include demonstrations of estimation abilities. What's interesting is that many of those demonstrations don't use any estimation at all, and involve all manner of other techniques to create the appearance of estimation skill. Whilst I admire many of the routines and occasionally perform some of them, I have always been a little amused by the irony that we sometimes over-complicate things, when the best solutions are staring us in the face. Why not use actual estimation to demonstrate estimation?
Good question. Although a common response might suggest that it's because it is too difficult, I don't think that is the main reason. I think it is because of the risk of failure. I suspect this is the primary reason that many shy away from practicing estimation and using it in their repertoires. In fact, estimation is much less difficult to use that some may expect, but it requires work, and needs to be managed to reduce or eliminate the risk of failure.
With a little thought, there are solutions to the risk element. I began to incorporate estimation into my work after developing many approaches to make it more reliable for me, and I addressed the concern of failure by initially using estimation secretly during routines, not openly as a demonstration of skill. This approach, combined with having strategies ready to cope with instances of failure, enabled me to develop the necessary familiarity and confidence to use it in real situations.
It was only after writing a lot of my ideas down regarding estimation and sharing them with a few people that I realised that there was previously not a great deal of published material on the subject. I subsequently published them in my book, and have received many nice comments from people who've read the section, and are discovering these ideas for the first time.
I now consider estimation one of my key tools and I use it in many different situations, mostly as a secret tool, but I also have a routine that uses it as a demonstration of skill. In part of the routine, I announce several cards and cut to them, and then ask an audience member to suggest a card, and I cut to it. It's somewhat of a jazz sequence in that both the audience and I can take the sequence in different directions.
The clip below is a short part of a longer sequence. It will make more sense to those who've read the routine, but even if you haven't, the partial sequence is self-explanatory. To make things clear on the video, I have used a written card to indicate the outcomes, before the cuts are made. Remember that there is no work in the cards, I do not use counts, crimps, jogs etc. .. just plain old estimation to cut to specific positions in the deck. I use this routine often, and with the right approach to using estimation, I find that it is unnecessary to have prepared outs, and that the technique can be as surefire as many others we are happy to put to work.
Email me at moveunderfire @gmail.com if you don't have the password and want to view this clip.
It may be interesting to note that I was going to add text to the video to explain the intended outcomes but realised that some skeptical viewers may think it was simply added after the sequence was filmed to match cards I'd simply cut to randomly. I decided to use the index card here for that reason but in performance I don't actually have any cards written down.
"There are many routines out there that use estimation, but The Devil’s Staircase goes into more detail than any other source I have seen regarding how to get an accurate estimate on a packet of cards." - Sal Piacente
