Name, origin and author of this effect?

[joepc]

Does anyone know the name, origin and author of the following effect?

To perform this trick, you need the help of four spectators. All five of you should be seated around a table. Deal five hands of five cards each, starting with the person to your left and dealing clockwise. Ask each of the spectators to look at the hand in front of him (or her), mentally pick a card and then place the hand back on the table. He should remember the card he picked but not show it to you.

You gather up the hands. Start with the hand on your left and pick up the hands in a clockwise fashion, so that you pick up your hand last. As you pick up each hand, place it on top of your pile. Deal the cards again in the same way so that each person has five cards in front of him. You pick up each pile, one at a time, and fan it so that all four spectators can see its face. Each time, ask if anyone sees their card. If they do, place the fan on the table (without looking at the cards), pull their card from the pile and place it face down in front of them. In some hands there may be two or more participants' card, in others there may not be anyone who sees his card in that pile. Once you have picked out the cards for each spectator, go around the table turning over the four chosen cards and asking them if that is their card. Everyone will be amazed when you get all four right!

Thanks.

[Philippe Billot]

See Mathematics, Magic and Mystery (1956) by Martin Gardner, page 3, but the idea was also in Mathematical Recreations by W.W. Rouse Ball published in 1892.

[David Ben]

I believe that the routine - rather than the principle - that you are looking for is by John Mendoza and appeared in the Book of John. It was also recently reprinted in the revised edition of The Impossible Princess by Peter Tapan. Mendoza's routine, which is superb, is called - if memory serves me correctly - "Routined Mental Poker"

[Q. Kumber]

The trick is quite old and John Mendoza did publsih his routine in The Book Of John (1978), and I have been performing it ever since first reading it. What John added, as Mr Ben pointed out, was a first class routine. In his Abra review of the book (which is what made me buy it) Goodliffe singled out Routined Poker Mental as one of its gems.

Darwin Ortiz has his version of the Mendoza routine called Liar's Poker published in Scams and Fantasies with Cards.

in 1931 Victor Farelli published a routine called Controlled Coincidence. A few years later he published an impromptu version of that trick using the same principle cited above but for a completely different effect in Lend Me Your Pack.

[Richard Kaufman]

You can find Farelli's Controlled Coincidence, with previously unpublished material by him, in my edition of Greater Magic since the item was supposed to be included in the book.