The great sleight-of-hand artist John Scarne did something that I read about once which almost cost him his life. Scarne, after thousands of hours of practice, had taught himself to cut to the ace of spades at will. He pretended it was a trick but all he did was riffle the cards, spot where the spade ace was, and instantly count how many cards into the deck it was and then cut to it. Just writing that seems amazing. Scarne almost got killed when he pissed off a major Prohibition-era gangster who saw him cut the ace and wanted to know the trick. He wanted to be able to do it too. And he thought
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