Tetradistic Features

The word “tetra” in Greek means four

1. Tetra-Red is both a memorized deck as well as tetradistic stack. Other examples of tetradistic stacks include Si Stebbins, 8 Kings, QuickStack 3.0, the stacks described by S.W.E. in Expert At The Card Table, the stacks described in Peter Kane’s routine Tetradism, etc..
2. A tetradistic stack has four repeating banks of the same value sequence.  This means that for any given card, the other three cards of the same value are 13, 26, and 39 cards away — no matter where you cut.  Tetra-Red is a memorized tetradistic stack.  Additionally, no matter where you cut, the top 26 cards are soulmates for the bottom 26 cards.  This means Tetra-Red is also a memorized parallel stack or Power Stack as well.
3. Since Tetra-Red is a random looking tetradistic stack, you can perform any tetradistic routine. See Allan Ackerman’s publications for many great routines/tips/ideas/sleights using a tetradistic stack, along with later chapters in this book.
4. Reversing top 26 cards puts the deck into a memorized stay-stack. Reversing the bottom 26 cards puts the deck into a memorized stay-stack as well.  A Weighing of Cards routine works well for reversing cards — a tip Allan Ackerman shared with me.  (A stop trick or second deal demonstration, etc. also works well for reversing the cards.) You can also cut anywhere and reverse the top 26 cards and it will be in a Stay-Stack, although not a memorized Stay-Stack.
5. This stack, since it is tetradistic, has a pair of stay-stacks. Tetra-Red can be easily transformed into a memorized dual stay-stack — see Tetradistic Dual Stay-Stack Principle under Tetradistic Routines chapter. So you could do a matching routine with two players if you wanted.  See my Soulmates by Coincidence routine under the Tetradistic Routines chapter in this book.
6. One perfect out faro of this stack results in a memorized stack of soulmate pairs.
7. Two perfect out faros of this stack results in a memorized stack of four-of-a-kinds.  This allows for some pretty nifty effects, such as Fourgathering in the Tetradistic Routines chapter in this book.
8. Many “four ace” routines can become “any named four of a kind” routines with just two perfect faros.  E.g. see Acrobatic Anything under Tetradistic Routines. Alternatively, instead of two faros you can cull the four of a kind w/ quartets — see “Easy quartets” below.
9. Even though the cards in each of the four banks of 13 cards are not in CHaSeD order,  the CHaSeD order is preserved at the four-of-a-kind level. This makes Tetra-Red compatible with Allan Ackerman’s color wheel in his 30 Minute Memorized Deck & Bonus Cull — which has been updated and reprinted in his new book set: All-In Volumes I & II.  With Allan’s method, you can just memorize the first 13 values Tetra-Red stack.  Then execute a shift of between 1 and 12 cards from the top of the deck to the bottom, all while making it look like all you are doing is simply removing a joker.  Then by utilizing the color wheel formula, you can bring the spectator’s named card to the top of the deck, by executing a combination of two in and/or out faros. By doing this, the spectator’s named card is at the top of the deck followed by 3 cards of the same value — a full deck of four-of-a-kinds.  See Acrobatic Anything in the Tetradistic Routines chapter.
10. Since this stack is tetradistic, this allows for easy dealing of any named three-of-a-kind, full house, four-of-a-kind, for either Hold’em or poker.  Also, the tetradistic nature of the stack — along with the color wheel preservation — is what allows for the easy dealing of any named straight flushes as well as royal flushes in any suit desired. See the Poker  chapter as well as Appendix A.
11. Gilbreath Principle. Since a tetradistic stack has a four bank cyclical value order this allows for interesting applications of the Gilbreath Principle, which you cannot do with non-tetradistic stacks.  For example, have a spectator cut off a packet from the top of a deck in Tetra-Red order — let’s say for example a packet of 20 to 35 cards. Then have the spectator reverse all the cards in the cut off packet — e.g. counting the cards in a weighing of cards routine. Ultimately have the spectator riffle shuffle the reversed cards with the non-reversed cards.  The result is four banks each with unique card values A-K, in random suits and random order — very chaotic looking.  It doesn’t matter how well the spectator can riffle shuffle, it will always work.
12. Easy quartets. In Handcrafted Card Magic Volume I Denis Behr in the Plop! routine discusses how you can easily spread cull face down — using the Elmsley 3-3-2-2 spread count — any four of a kind by memorizing and recalling the distances between each card of the same value. Pit Hartling calls these Quartets in his In Order to Amaze book and gives several routines utilizing this excellent technique.  Since this stack is tetradistic, the quartets are automatic with no need to memorize; the distances between every card of the same value is always 13.  Therefore all the quartets are (13, 13, 13).
13. It’s easy to quickly check that the deck is in order since the sequence of values repeat, four times, over the four banks of this tetradistic stack. That sequence is <see book>. Using this method to remember the pattern, I can quickly verify the entire order of this memorized deck, in the hands, in around 8 seconds.
    
    Allan Ackerman pointed out to me that it is important to memorize the reverse sequence as well so you can spread the deck the other direction to verify the order, for certain routines.  So this would result in <see book>.  I don’t have a clever mnemonic to remember this in the reverse order, but with a few repetitions it should be imprinted into the mind.
14. You can easily Chinese Shuffle directly into Tetra-Red because it’s a tetradistic stack.