For those of you who enjoy watching good card magic performed with exceptional skill -
Part 1
Part 2
Roger’s second deal used in Elmsleys “Diamond Cut Diamond” is amazing.
This is a great Vernon move and is good if you need to supposedly select a random card from the middle but in fact need to take the top card. It appears that you do a kind of fancy strip out cut and then cut the deck into three piles – the centre pile is actually the top half of the deck and so the top card can be produced.
This minor variation uses the same action but produces the bottom card instead.
Cards are in riffle shuffle position with a right thumb break below the bottom card. If you now carry out the actions of Vernon’s cold deck cut just prior to the three packet table cut you’ll find that the card below the break is automatically transferred to the centre pile. If you now make the three packet table cut the original bottom card is now on the top of the middle section. Undoubtedly thought of by many but I thought it was worth mentioning.
Once in a while we stumble across something which reminds us of how respected and noble the art of magic really is.
Forget all the ridiculous ellusionist negative playing cards and massively overly hyped rubbish. That’s not cool – these guys are the cool ones.
For those of you that haven’t already seen The MWF’s most recent post – click here. I haven’t laughed so much in ages. Thanks!
I did earmark this for a Walton Trick of the Month but I can’t wait that long. I have a terrible habit of glazing over effects which require anything other than an ordinary pack of cards and am ashamed to say I did this when I read this trick in Walton Vol 1. I skim read but never bothered to try it out – boy I made a big mistake.
On a recent visit to the Magick Lounge in Sheffield my friend Vincent O’Brien had not committed such a sin and showed me the trick – a selected card vanishes from inside a small transparent envelope just big enough to accommodate the card. The card is inside the envelope and sandwiched between two red aces – the aces are spread and the envelope is now empty. The only drawback is that in the original description you have to make an excuse to tap the sandwiched packet onto the deck – however with lapping this doesn’t need to happen and I think this makes the trick a lot stronger.
Thank you Vince for putting me onto a winner.
Found in the Complete Walton Volume 1 page 75.
Firstly I must apologise for the lack of posts recently, I have no excuse. Consider this post a sneak peak into the card wizardry of Roger Curzon, a Sheffield Cardician of exceptional skill. Those of you who have visited The Magick Lounge in Sheffield will almost certainly have seen Roger perform at the weekly Saturday gathering of magicians.
Roger has contributed to numerous magazines (Stephen Tucker’s Spellbinder and Steve Hamilton’s Profile Magazine) and written several books and booklets on card magic and more recently on mentalism (Sublimations and Theomancy).
The routine below is one of my favourites and uses an incredibly clever method which Roger orignally published in Profile Magazine. This has more recently been ripped off by David Regal, who conveniently duplicated the method after it was shown to him by a friend of Rogers.
The illusion of the card being removed from the envelope is perfect. The trick is a stunner and I’ve never seen is performed with out the audience bursting into applause afterwards.
Thank you Roger.
For those of you who want to buy the booklet (containing several routines) – it’s available direct from the Magick Lounge in Sheffield
Don’t know the name of this but it’s a nice control I sometimes use. If anyone can tell me the original source I’d be eternally grateful. Deck is spread face up for spectator to touch a card – cards are squared but a break is held below the card. Execute a T.O pass as you ask the spectator how far down they think their card is. Card is now on top (or second/third/or bottom depending on where you took the break. The misdirection here is brilliant as you are asking a question which will inevitable cause them to look at you while you do the pass.
It fits nicely with an ambitious card routine as the card can be controlled to say third from top so you’re several steps ahead. This is probably not new to most of you but I hope some of you find a use for it.
