Quickest way to set a deck up?

[Karlabos]

There are some tricks which require the deck to be on a certain order, so I was wondering... Is there an optimal way to arrange a deck which can be done on a short time, without making it blatant obvious you are setting the cards up?

Notice I'm not speaking necessarily about doing it on stage while everyone is paying attention to you, I don't believe there would be a chance in that situation... But like on a friendly reunion while you are playing cards with your friends and want to arrange the deck below the table on the pretext of handling the deck unconsciously while you wait for that other friend to pick his beer or something and return to the table... Would there be a way of arranging the deck on that situation rather quickly?

So basically... What's the quickest way you know to put the deck on a specific order (not necessarily original order, but say... a random order which you have memorized)?

 

[RealityOne]

Absent getting into a stack through a series of faro shuffles from new deck order, it is impossible to get into a full deck stack in a performance. In that case, the best method is a deck switch.

For getting a couple of cards positioned, you can use a cull. It is possible to do this under the guise of looking at the deck to make sure all the cards are there

One of my favorite ways is John Gustafero's "Either Or" which is in his book One Degree.

 

[ChrisJGJ]

To put a full deck into a memorized stack, from a random order, would take you a considerable amount of time. Perhaps you can practice this and show us your results. I think if you can get a random deck in stack in under a minute that would be pretty good. You would probably have to know the stack better than you know the alphabet. You would probably need to know the stack forwards and backwards, and be able to recall a cards position on the fly by either the card name itself, or the position.

For example what is the 18th letter of the alphabet? What position in the alphabet is the letter "V"?

Once you can answer questions like that about your memorized stack, you could probably put a random deck into stack order rather quickly.

You could also just do what RealityOne said, but what is the fun in that?

 

[DavidL11229]

Probably the closest practical method for what you ask can be found in the Secrets of Brother John Hamman, but you wouldn't be done before they were back with their drink. If they are off getting a beer it's hard to ignore the advice above and just do a deck switch.