Ricky Jay - Alaskan Poker

Ricky Jay beautifully performing a seemingly odd 'Alaskan' poker demonstration.

To all people pondering about method: this can be done with "an ordinary pack of playing cards"; no editing, swaps, hidden drawers, strippers, smoke, mirrors, or monkeys coming out of sleeves. Jay's style is a purist's one - know your classics.

• Category

  Entertainment

[bigbruthaman]

Ricky Jay is incredible.

[BggProductions]

Genius

[TheRikAllen]

Let them win often - but never big. They take $300 dollars off of you over 4 hands you can 'get lucky' in the big pot and end up taking much more than you've lost.

[Andy Pierson]

Was that the Magic Castle?

[Joni Hanski]

If you were to cheat, you'd have to do the exact opposite, avoid attention at all costs. Appear no less and no more able or lucky than anyone else. Win maybe two or three times a night by cheating, plan it ahead so it appears natural, they just had an awful luck those particular times, that happens. Maybe have an awful luck yourself once or twice. Reel them in, so they won't start suspecting anything even after you have taken all their money.

[Joni Hanski]

What Ricky Jay does here is play a magician, a conjurer, an entertainer. He has to be flashy, because that's what entertaining is at its core, you do something worth of being the center of everyone's attention. He addresses the difference between a gambling cheater and a magician several times, and points out that if you were to actually cheat, you'd have to be very subtle about it, so no one would suspect anything.

[supahsekzy]

All the talk about "Cheating" is simply patter. I actually think that gambling technique patter is some of the most effective, for two reasons - one, people have a natural interest in the subject (I think due to the same romanticized ideal that gangsters and crime in general gets) and two, it assumes that your audience is too intelligent to be trying to pass any of your stuff off as "real" magic.

[Kevin Gabrielsen]

When I was young my parents owned a restaurant where Ricky Jay showed up at one evening. He asked me if I wanted to see some magic, I said yes. Ricky then took me into the bathroom and removed both of my hands (midway up the forearm) with a cleaver. My dad heard the screams coming from the bathroom and tried to break down the door but Ricky had deadbolted it . Ricky then pulled out a deck of cards and said, "Pick a card, any card." I'll never forget that day, Ricky is hilarious.

[bones343]

If he doesn't do flip cards at around 27-30 seconds when the camera isn't on the cards I have no idea where he does it.

[Darkeydance]

Mostly cus he admits that what he does, is NOT magic, but lots of very good sleight of hand..

[Brian Hastings]

Much of Ricky Jay's work is often erroneously considered to be genuine card cheating. He does employ methods of card cheaters (and does them exceptionally well), but his routines themselves don't possess much merit as far as cheating at poker goes, though they are modeled in a way that might lead someone to surmise that if they've been around for long enough just to see the routine once.

[Brucy6666]

Nice trick... But if you're the mechanic, you're gunna want to have a partner you can deal to to win the money then split the winning. Else people get too suspicious that every time you deal.... you win with a stonking hand.