The Damsel Cull Force

Here is a card force I’ve found to be very convincing as I’ve been testing it out this past month. It combines a cull force with a clean and fair, free choice. I haven’t seen this handling before, but if it exists somewhere, please let me know. [Update: Spidey teaches the same force in this video.]

The opposite of a force is a free choice. So the more legitimately free choices you can include in your force, the less likely the spectator will think, “He must have made me pick that card.”

Some forces, like the Riffle Force, have no free choices in them. “Say stop as I riffle my thumb along the edge of the deck.” Well, “saying stop” is not a choice of a card any more than pulling a slot machine handle is a choice of what will show up on the slot machine. The cards are flipping by so quickly that there’s no sense of agency with the person “picking” a card.

The standard Cull Force has one free choice. The choice of which card to touch. There’s no more important a choice than that, of course. But there is often a moment that feels a little awkward to me. The moment where they touch a card and then instead of letting them directly pull that card out, you square the cards and show them the card at the bottom of the right hand’s packet. There’s something about pulling the cards away from their hand after they’ve made their selection that doesn’t feel quite right. And I think some spectators sense that.

The Damsel Cull Force solves this issue in a couple of ways. First, the person is not touching a card directly, so you’re not pulling the deck away from their hand. Second, there is an additional free choice that further justifies the way the spread is handled after the initial selection.

Method

Have a deck shuffled by your friend.

Turn it over and spread it face up and remove either the Joker (or the Ace of Spades if there is no joker).

As you do this, note the fourth card from the back of the deck (the fourth card from the top if it were face-down). Or, if you need to force a specific card, then get that card into the fourth position by culling or cutting as you “search” for the Joker.

Give the Joker to your friend and turn the deck face-down.

Spread the deck between your hands, culling out the fourth card (your force card) and ask them to slide the Joker anywhere they want, part-way into the deck.

When they do that, give them the chance to change their mind and move it somewhere else.

When they’re happy with where they put it, say something like, “Okay, you’re happy where it is? Great. You’ve placed the joker next to one card—well, actually, it’s next to two cards. So, one final choice… Do you want the card right above the joker or right below it?”

If they say “above”:

Very cleanly, take all the cards off above the joker and hand them to your friend. As they take them, you will square the spread somewhat in their hands. The cards don’t need to be perfectly square, just close enough. They will do the rest of the squaring automatically.

“If you had said below, you would have ended up with…,” here you show the card directly below the joker.

Then direct them to look at the card on the bottom of their pile and shuffle their cards, or remove it and show it to everyone, depending on the trick you’re doing.

If they say “below”:

Close the spread, inserting the force card below the joker as you do and, in a continuing action, lift up the cards above the protruding joker and hand them the joker and everything below it. Show them the card they would have had if they said above. Then allow them to look at the card below the joker.

That’s it.

This solves some minor issues I’ve had with the cull force where they touch a card, you square up the cards, and then show them the card they (supposedly) touched.

Here, since they’re not touching a card, there’s no question of why they’re not simply pulling it out with their fingers.

The squaring action happens naturally in the course of giving them the card they chose and showing them what they could have had.

And the fair choice of “above or below” provides a nice last moment of freedom before the force card is revealed.