Destiny By Tommaso Guglielmi

Any Card At Any Number, and especially the version known as "The Berglas Effect", has always fascinated me for its simplicity. It is literally an unbelievable effect, still considered by some to be a myth or a legend, because:

A common deck of cards is used, and is always on view on the table.
Spectator "A" names a card and Spectator "B" chooses a number.
A third person deals down through the cards to that chosen number, and
at that position finds the card named by Spectator "A".
The conjurer never touches the deck.
No hidden assistants or stooges -- no pre-show.
Giving serious consideration to the conditions above, I have experimented with various solutions to the effect. When a stacked deck of cards is used, and the conjurer knows the position of each card (either through memorizing the deck or by utilizing a mathematic principle), if the Spectator "A" names a card and then Spectator "B" happens by pure chance to name the right number, the effect continues with no contact necessary between conjurer and cards. However, this is highly unlikely to happen in performance and certainly can't be relied upon as a method. In other cases the conjurer could move the named card to the right position while taking the deck back into his hands, with the excuse to give it to the third person to begin the deal. This negates the fourth condition, above, unfortunately. In any event, by knowing the number and the card before the third person starts dealing the cards, the conjurer would have a wider range of possibilities available to find a solution. My goal was to make that effect more impossible to believe by giving the conjurer no freedom at all. The effect I've created is no longer an ACAAN, and instead has morphed into a type of Open Prediction (without the prediction being shown at the beginning).