I'm studying the royal road to magic and attempting the first card routine, which is as follows:
1. topsy turvy
2. Now you see it
3. Obliging Aces
4. Do as I do
5. card in pocket
6. Three across


I'm looking for advice on how to "arrange" the pack for the routine? Obliging Aces require a Nine and 4 aces on top. Three across requires at least one three on the top and one three on the bottom. How do you arrange the deck mid-routine? I created a bit of a twist to Now You See It by pulling out two piles-- one pile has the nine and four aces and the other the four cards used in the trick. I tell the spectator to choose a pile and no matter which pile they choose, I use the trick with their selected card. Afterwards, I drop the pack with the nine and four aces on top for the obliging Aces routine. The problem... takes a while to pull out four aces, a nine, the selected card, and three other cards...plus one pile has five cards and another has four... a bit awkard? How do you do it? Any advice on how to change it so I can arrange the deck during the routine to set up Three across? How do you arrange cards mid-routine?

THanks!

Your first option is to fully stack the deck with the cards you need in the order you need them. The problem with this is you will have to get really good at your false shuffles and your false cuts, since you will have to do your entire set without actually changing the order of your cards.

Option two is learn some good palming. You can then stack the deck for the first trick and then add in the palmed cards as needed for the following tricks.

Option three is learn to cull like a master. Between tricks you can cull out the cards needed for the next effect.

Realisticlly, all three options, or a blend of these options, will require a great deal of skill with, false shuffles, false cuts, palming, culling, and add in a dynamite pass for good measure. Please don't take offence but considering you are still working on the Royal Road I would gather your new to card magic. I would recomend you change up your routine. Perhaps start with a trick that requires preplaced cards and then go into an ACR.

At your level I would definatly recomend exploring an Ambitious Card Routine. The ACR can be a building block for all of your sleights. It can be as long or as short as you like and can be done with nothing more than a DL or it can include just about every card sleight in your repertoire. As your skill improves you can add newly mastered moves and phase out your less convincing moves. Its good Performance /Practice and when you have the skills needed then you can build the routine you really want.

Good luck, your routine sounds pretty interesting.

or you can switch the decks.

I was just going to add that when I read you post. Find some stacks that work for a few tricks in a row and thow in a deck switch to finish off the last