Old man, old cars, and old whisky
Here is where I have my thoughts and techniques on performing magic.  You must  log into this site in order to read the posts. If your don’t have an account you may register here. After you register the site admin will have to approve the registration before you can login.
The performer makes a prediction and writes a number on a piece of paper, which is given to an audience member for safekeeping. A deck of cards is shuffled, and a volunteer assists in the experiment. After some seemingly random card reversals, the number of reversed cards in the deck matches the prediction exactly. This is a Bob Hummer effect and is self working.
Continue reading “Predicting the Reversed Cards”Nick Trost’s Subtle Card Creations Vol. 2 has a trick called the Magnetic Cards. It basically is a four ace trick that is similar to the Gemini Twins. His description of the effect: The performer and a spectator each hold a shuffled half-deck. The spectator follows the performer’s actions. They each remove a card from their half-deck. They rub it on their sleeve to “magnetize” it. Then, they replace it face up into their respective half’-decks. Each half-deck is spread to show that each “magnetic” card has attracted two aces.
Continue reading “Magnetic cards”I was experimenting with the “cut deeper” method that I wrote about here and came up with a variation. This version has a cleaner ending but requires a bit more effort.
Continue reading “Variation on Spectator Cuts to the Aces”This is one of the classic card magic plots. There are a lot of variations to it, the Conjuring Archive lists over 100 entries when searching for the title. The basic plot is the spectator is invited to cut the deck, and—through a cleverly designed plot—the aces end up being revealed at the cut. One of the earliest versions was published in The Royal Road to Card Magic, titled “Poker Player’s Picnic.” This version sets the template for many of the ones that followed, namely having the deck cut into four piles on the table.
Continue reading “Spectator cuts the aces”There are probably hundreds of methods for achieving the “Sandwich” effect, where the selected card is found between two face up court cards. Here are some that I have learned over the years.
All of these, unless otherwise noted, start with the court cards removed and face up on the table. In the descriptions below I use the red kings.
Continue reading “A few Sandwiches”Boy the world has changed! When I was young if you wanted to learn magic you had to hang out at a magic store. A real brick and mortar building. To get to the real good stuff you had to make friends with the magician behind the counter and prove your worth. If you were lucky they might show you something more than “Scotch and Soda”. They might recommend a really good hardback book on magic, but those books weren’t cheap. You had to pay your dues, so to speak.
Today you have the Internet. The brick and mortar stores are almost completely gone. I miss them.
Anyway, while I was surfing the web I found this self-working coincidence trick that looked interesting. Now like a lot of these tricks on the Internet, this one had several “kickers” to the coincidence effect. Go ahead and take a moment to look at it. It is at https://youtu.be/9KhQrR5uqN8?si=2rnxeBWteVBaXC7m .
Continue reading “Faro coincidence”This is another lie detector plot. I have another that I also perform which you can read about at https://robertjwallace.com/lie-detector/. This one is easier.
Continue reading “Another Lie Detector”The one aspect of the Erdnase Stack that I have never liked is the undercut and throw during the second part of the stack. Below is the description of the four card stack for a five handed game with that step in bold:
FOR any game in which cards are dealt singly. Three of the desired cards are placed on top, one on bottom. Under-cut about one-third deck, injog top card, run two less than twice number players, out-jog and shuffle off to last card, so that it will be left on top. Under-cut to out-jog, forming break at in-jog, run one less than number players, throw to break, run one, in-jog running one less than twice number players, out-jog and shuffle off. Under-cut to in-jog and throw on top. Under-cut to out-jog, run one less than number players and throw balance on top. This gives the four desired cards to the dealer in four rounds.
Erdnase, Expert at the card table
Normally during an overhand shuffle you don’t simply cut a block off and throw it to the top. Instead, what I do is what was done in the first halve of the stack, namely, undercut to the out-jog and form a break at the in-jog. Then as I start the second part of the shuffle, I let the cards below the in-jog drop onto the top of the deck as I run one less than the number of players. This effectively hides the throw and reduces the right hands shuffling motion.
I think it makes the shuffle more deceptive.
This is a mathematical based trick that is explained at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI7o95rGT9c. It is the revelation of two chosen cards using Jokers that were pre-set in the deck. I like good self working tricks and this is a good one. However I wanted to be able to perform it without having to use Jokers.
Continue reading “Variation on trick that fooled Pen and Teller”In playing around with the faro stack I started to set the five handed stack up with a cull, instead of “losing” the aces.
Continue reading “Faro stack from a cull”