Category: Magic - Page 4 - Robert J Wallace

August 20, 2025January 11, 2026

My Streamlined Handling of Larry Jennings’s “Larry’s Favorite”

This routine is a simplified adaptation of a classic effect by the legendary Larry Jennings, originally published in his book, The Cardwright. While Jennings’s method was a masterpiece of impromptu magic, this version uses a single, pre-set breather crimp card to make the performance smooth, reliable, and completely baffling to an audience.

The Effect

The performer asks a spectator to freely select a card from a deck and remember it. The card is returned and appears to be genuinely lost. The performer then asks the spectator to think of a number between ten and twenty. With a magical flourish, the magician cuts off a packet of cards from the deck, proving that they have cut to the exact number the spectator was thinking of. The final card in that packet is, impossibly, the spectator’s selected card.

August 19, 2025January 11, 2026

Stacking a Royal Flush for a five handed game.

I just finished writing up the trick “Just Lucky“, which ends with you having found a Royal Flush. So I thought a good follow up trick would be to demonstrate how a card cheat could take those cards and stack them to be dealt to the dealer in a five handed game of draw poker.

August 19, 2025October 22, 2025

Just Lucky

This trick, attributed to Roy Walton, is a variation of a routine by Howard Adams that was featured in Genii magazine. It’s a self-working card trick, meaning it relies on a specific setup and mathematical principle rather than sleight of hand.

August 3, 2025September 9, 2025

Free cut poker deal

This is not for everyone, but it is something I have been playing with. It is based on the “Free Cut Principle”, and sets up the deck for a five handed poker game, with the four aces going to the dealer. For more on the “Free Cut Principle” see:

Finnell, Gene. Free Cut Principle. Self-published, 1967.

This booklet is a landmark publication. Gene Finnell independently rediscovered the principle and published several applications, including one titled “Aces at Random,” which is a direct application of the principle to find the four aces.

August 1, 2025August 7, 2025

Marlo’s Stacking Two Sets of Three

This is from “Riffle Shuffle Systems”. I found it easier to do by swapping the right hand and left hand actions, so this is that description. This method sets up the deck so that in a five-handed poker game, the first player receives all three Kings and the dealer receives all three Aces. The instructions below have been rewritten to reverse the left and right hand actions from the original text.

August 1, 2025August 1, 2025

Marlo’s Two-and-Two Combination riffle stack

Ed Marlo was a prolific and brilliant creator, but his writing style was dense, technical, and often difficult to follow. He wrote for experienced magicians, using highly specific terminology and offering exhaustive variations without always clarifying the core method. As a result, powerful ideas—like his two-and-two combination riffle stack—can be buried beneath layers of complexity.

What follows is a clearer, more accessible explanation of Marlo’s two-and-two combination stack. I’ve aimed to preserve the mechanics and intent while making the method easier to understand and apply.

July 24, 2025July 24, 2025

Prediction Effect

This is my handling of a “self” working effect from one of Bob Longe’s books. He’s written many well‐regarded card‑trick books—notably Mystifying Card Tricks, World’s Best Card Tricks, and 101 Amazing Card Tricks—which offer a mix of sleights and self‐working effects.

July 23, 2025January 11, 2026

Impossible

This is another Larry Jennings trick, which was written up by Harry Lorayne in his magazine, Apocalypse V9.

June 30, 2025July 1, 2025

The Holmes Deduction

A Mathematical Card Mystery

Adapted from Richard Vollmer’s “Einstein’s Favorite Trick”

Opening Quote

“Just as detectives have their methods of deduction, magicians have their own theory of elimination. It states: ‘When you run out of friends to show card tricks to, the only people left are relatives… and they’re the hardest cases to solve.'”

June 29, 2025June 30, 2025

Larry Jennings’ Key Card Location Trick

Based on Henry Christ’s “Dealing Trick Procedure” and from “The Classic Magic of Larry Jennings”

Effect

A spectator selects a card, which is then lost in the deck. The performer removes several cards from the deck, calling them “key cards.” The values of these key cards are totaled to arrive at a number. When that number is counted down from the top of the deck, the selected card is found at that exact position.