Here Ken de Courcy took a clever cut effect by Gerald Kosky, changed it, and altered it to make it completely self-contained and also impromptu. Whilst doing this, Ken hit on another use and here you are getting two for the price of one.
EFFECT:
A borrowed pack is shuffled by the owner, then the magician extracts two cards from it, hands the cards to the spectator and asks him to place them into a convenient pocket. The deck is placed on the table and the spectator is requested to cut off about two-thirds and lay it face-up alongside the remainder. He now cuts the larger packet roughly in half and lays the cut-off portion down beside the face-up packet. Picking up the left-hand packet A, the performer removes the top and bottom cards and lays both aside. He then replaces packet A where it was. The same process is now repeated with packets B and C, the top and bottom cards of each being discarded. This is to ensure that, with ‘the exception of packet B (which is face-up) no one can know the top and bottom cards of any pile.
Packet A is now placed on B, then both go on to C, which means the pack is re-assembled. The performer picks it up, turns it over and spreads it slightly. The centre block of cards is now face-down. The face-up cards above and below it are discarded and the face-down block is replaced on the table. "Cut that packet," says the magician, "Wherever you like." The spectator freely cuts the packet.
Then the spectator is asked to take the two cards out of his pocket and lay them face up on the table. As an example, we'll assume they're the Two of Hearts and the Ten of Spades. "As you'll appreciate," says the magician, "a pack consists of fifty-two cards, all different, so these two cannot be the same as the ones to which you've cut. Unless that is, you regard them as a Red Two and a Black Ten. If you'll accept that, I'll show you something rather strange.
"Notwithstanding your thorough shuffle and all the cutting you did, look at this." He lifts off the top portion of the cut packet to show the face card is the Two of Diamonds (a Red Two), then he turns the top card of the lower portion. It is a Black Ten, the Ten of Clubs!
1s edition 1985, PDF 4 pages.
word count: 1281 which is equivalent to 5 standard pages of text