He uses a double-faced jack, flips the deck over (watch closely), and does just what he said he didn't do -- peeks at the selected card when he holds the jack up to his ear to "listen." (It's under the JD, so he does a glide/glimpse -- camera doesn't focus on him so u can't see it. So when he spreads the cards in the spec's hand, when he comes to the jack, the card under the jack is the selected card. (He's careful not to spread past the jack, else the spec would see his selected card.) He drops the "spec's" card, which is the blank-faced card, in the specs hand. Setup: from face of deck: double-faced JD, blank-face card, regular JD. The rest is acting and kibbitzing. He ditches the double-face JD and the real JD into his left pocket -- watch closely. The performance is everything here to make it work, since it is basically self-working, except for ditching the 2 cards in your pocket, and glimpsing the card under the JD. For the latter, since you are lifting the deck up to ur ears, and the fact that people think the selected card is in the spec's hands, it's child's play to peek at the card under the jack.
And BTW, i figured this out just by watching the video a few times, with a deck of cards in my hands. I couldn't work it out at first, then it dawned on me that instead of using 2 JDs, I glued them together to make a double-facer, and everything worked out.
It’s so nice to find this here. I was the one who sent in the question at 5:23 during that year’s EMC. A great answer from Max who we all miss very much.
