Author: Roberto Giobbi

Hi everyone!

Here we are with another edition of The Magic Memories, namely number 40, gone online on SUN, 3rd October 2021, at 00:07 o’clock – and as I’m writing this it is the premiere of the latest James Bond movie “No Time to Die”, what a coincidence…

The Program is Wild – Discussion

Thank you for all the nice comments I received on last weeks contribution, “The Program is Wild”. This encourages me to publish the sequel to it, i.e. the discussion and explanation of the performance you saw. There are really a lot of ideas in this clip, which is the beginning section of my Magic Apple Zoom Lecture (June 2021). The idea with the double-deck case has quite a bit of potential, especially the one with the “invisible/imaginary” deck next to the real performance deck.

To make things easier, I’ll report my drawings below, which you may use, or take as a point of departure for your own creations:

And here is how the box looks that I’m using for the program, with the “instruments” in the “false bottom” (maybe another presentational idea?):

Idea for a Short Act

As for the “Wild Program”, using just four apparently double blank cards, drawing a magic wand on one, and then making three “instruments” appear on each of the other three cards, makes for a lovely overture to a short (or long) little act. This obviously has a very open architecture, leaving space for all kinds of interpretations. But if you ask me for an opinion, I would go with “coins” (representing money), “rope” and “cards”. I would then open with “Paper to Money” and follow with “Gipsy Thread”, both are explained with all the details of handling and performance I gathered after 30 years (at least) of professional experience almost all over the world in my third Penguin video “The Act”. Close this little act with a third trick using playing cards. This will give you a nice compact “impromptu” close-up show of ca. 15 minutes (depending on the card trick). If you have more time, the first two trick, being visual in nature, will allow you to now continue with a solid card act. Card tricks, being mostly conceptual in nature, are best performed after the attention has been caught with shorter and more visual pieces – this is rule that has its exceptions… My choice for a lengthier card section would be “The Color-changing Deck” (Card College 5, p. 1333), followed by Williamson’s “Torn and Restored Transposition”, p. 72 in his Williamson’s Wonders (you can place the duplicate cards necessary immediately under the double-back thick card needed in the “Cold-changing Deck”), finally closing with “The Joker Folds up” (Card College 5, p. 1349. This would make quite an act 🙂

To watch the video CLICK HERE.

Have an enjoyable week!

Roberto Giobbi

Hi everyone!

This is #39 of Roberto Giobbi’s The Magic Memories, gone online SUN, 26th September 2021, at 0:07 o’clock.

Elmsley Gag Photo

I had a few inquiries about last post’s photo, which was obviously an allusion at Elmsley’s “Four-as-four Count” aka “Elmsley Count”, where you don’t see the third person, but you see the first twice. Sort of a visualization of the joke that was making the rounds as the four Elmsley videos by L&L Publishing saw the light of day. The joke went like this: A magician asks another, “Did you already see the four Elmsley videos?” “Yes, however, I did not see the third one, but I saw the first twice.” Verrrrry funny.

Anyway, below is the real photo, showing the “hidden” subjects, Italy’s Aurelio Paviato and Swiss-American Ron A. Wohl. This was taken on the occasion of the Jornadas Cartomagicas of the Escuela Magica de Madrid, the legendary yearly card convention held in San Lorenzo de El Escorial (near Madrid), this one being dedicated to the work of Alex Elmsley, who honored all of us with his presence. The photo was taken with the camera of my friend Aurelio, if my memory serves me right, and we were dining at “La Cueva”, a favorite restaurant we often went to with Ascanio, Tamariz and many other luminaries of the card universe.

Opener for a Close-up Performance

I’m finally back from a lengthy travel to the Magialdia Magic Convention in Vitoria, which due to Corona restrictions was a bit different than usual, but as wonderful as ever – I will tell you about it and the trip in an upcoming post. Today, however, I will leave you with a “teaser”, in the sense that it will be a performance only video clip from my Magic Apple Lecture. It is an idea of how to open a little or even bigger close-up performance or act. I already described the original idea of it in my Secret Agenda, and for the convenience of those among you who are still resisting buying it 🙂 , here is the link to the entry in form of a PDF, CLICK HERE, please, to see how this all started (it is a very quick one-page read).

In the video you’ll see the opening sequence and the first performance piece from my Magic Apple Zoom Lecture. It is a personal interpretation of a Wild Card idea used by both Japan’s Shigeo Takagi and Holland’s Fred Kaps. A first version can be found in my book Secret Agenda, entry of AUG 29 (see above). The discussion and explanation of it will be found in my upcoming The Magic Memories (40), in the non-public section of my YouTube channel.

To watch the video clip of “The Program is Wild” CLICK HERE.

I’m off to the Youth Convention sponsored by the Magischer Ring der Schweiz, this time only at one hour card drive away, where I’ll be the keynote speaker, and look very much forward to meeting people aged 13 to 20 who are relatively new to magic, and to enjoy their talent (some of them already do amazing things).

Have an excellent week!

Roberto Giobbi

Hi everyone!

It is SUN, 19th September 2021, as the 38th edition of The Magic Memories goes online at 0:07…

Like the previous post (37), you are receiving this one thanks to the automation function of WordPress. Because, yes, I am right now on the road back from the Magialdia Magic Festival in Vitoria, another 1’200 kilometers, about 750 miles, in two days. On the way back I plan on visiting my good friend Marc Serin, an ophthalmologist by profession, but also an inspired amateur magician, living in Carcassone, in the midst of beautiful South of France.

The plan is for me to tell you a few things about the convention, which is possibly Europe’s (the world’s ?) oldest magic festival, and my travels and the people I met, in the next post, ie., The Magic Memories (39). Nowadays they do this real-time with all those fantastic (?) “social media”, and they do it at the same time they are watching a magic lecture or performance, or while they are eating or even talking to someone. Since I’m still “old school” I do all the aforementioned individually , enjoying them fully, and later I’ll let you know about it. Hope that’s OK 🙂

As for this week’s little gift to you, I just decided to take it “light”, as in the Card College Light series, and make it “just” a photo. Obviously, being a person who loves sophistication, like yourself, my dear reader, it won’t be just any photo, but a “special” one. For those who know, no explanation is necessary, for those who don’t, no explanation will suffice.

Hope to meet you back here next Sunday – and meanwhile have a great week!

Roberto Giobbi

Hello everyone!

Recently someone on the Internet posted this quote of mine, which I had completely forgotten about, but thought it would make a nice intro to today’s The Magic Memories #37, gone online on SUN, 12th September 2021, as always at exactly 0:07 o’clock. And here’s the quote:

“An artist is an inspired individual who has found his vocation. Through his work he not only gives a meaning to his own life, growing as he practices his art, but he also contributes to the world and the life of others. Art is passion communicated with inspired talent.” (Roberto Giobbi)

Hi everyone!

Here we go with nr. 36 of The Magic Memories, gone online on SUN, 5th September 2021, at, yes, of course, 0:07!

This week’s offering is another excerpt from the Zoom-lecture I did for The Magic Apple on SUN, 18th July 2021, and it features “The Guarantee Joker”, that albeit a minor trick, harbors some interesting technical, presentational and conceptional ideas useable in many other tricks. This polyvalence is in my opinion the true value of this and similar tricks. In all of my books and lectures I aspire to these qualities. Because then you do not just get a “new trick”, which you might or might not like, and even if you like it, you might not do, but you get to know new tools that you can use to shape your own creations, or reshape and improve your old ones. That’s the idea.

As most of the other clips from the lecture I’ve uploaded up to now, this one deals with a particular characteristic of my Card College Playing Cards, namely the Joker. The deck has two Jokers, a “big Joker” and a “small Joker”, the latter being at the same time the “Guarantee Card”. Years ago it occurred to me to use Bicycle’s “small Joker”, which also has a guarantee text from the manufacturer on it, as a presentational idea: I would misread (artistic license) the text as saying the manufacturer guarantees that all magicians using their decks would never miss a trick performed with them. This led to a few interesting pieces that I’m using to this day, e.g., “Card Call” from Stand-up Card Magic.

In the Card College Playing Cards deck, though, I’ve created a specific text that you can see in the illustration of the Joker below. This allows for some novel presentations, or just as a gag. As I’ve mentioned in my previous blogs that dealt with the characteristics of my deck, you can of course do almost all with other decks, too, just “use your head”, to quote Dai Vernon, and you’ll find how.

And before we leave, here is a little bonus idea: Place a second “big Joker” in the deck you use. You will hen have three Jokers, two identical ones and one Guarantee Joker. With the two identical Jokers you ca do some veeeery interesting things, but we’ll leave that as a koan (and a new note in your notebook that might read: “Duplicate Joker – Things to do with it…”).

To watch the video CLICK HERE. I hope you like it.

Wish you a healthy and inspired week!

Roberto Giobbi

Hi everyone!

As we go online with The Magic Memories #35, it is SUN, 29th August, 0:07 o’clock.

It is a hot day today, as it probably is in many parts of the world, the cards stick to the hands, the stacked pile of coins held in Classic Palm cannot be released reliably, therefore we need to cool down from inside. What better way of doing so than with an ice-cold soup. However, not any soup, of course, but a Watermelon Gazpacho. Anyone who will take 15 minutes of his or her time will be able to make this up and impress your partner, kids, guests, well, anyone whom you care to invite to your table.

Magic and Gastronomy have many things in common, last but by no means least, the moment when you sit with your guests and share a unique moment that will never come back in exactly this way, a moment where you present your passion, and then experience it together with your fellow human beings. The English, when they invite guests over for dinner, say, “We entertain them.” Very much like magic 🙂

To watch the video and start preparing the delicious Watermelon Gazpacho CLICK HERE.

Next week-end I’ll be back with some “real magic” :-), well, the way you probably expect it from me…

Have a great week!

Roberto Giobbi

Hi everyone!

As this goes online it is SUN, 22nd August 2021, 0:07 o’clock, and it is The Magic Memories #34.

Thanks to all who wrote in to say nice things about the last few posts, which featured clips from my Magic Apple Lecture and what you can do with the Card College Playing Cards, or with any other deck for that matter. Before I upload yet another episode of that epic talk to discuss more of the peculiarities of the deck, I thought we should take a break and look at some completely distinctive things. As probably many among you have done and are still doing – the pandemic is not over, yet, and forces most of us to stay home more than we would like to – I have been looking through my old notebooks. Needless to say that I’ve found hiundreds of ideas I had completely forgotten, but which should make an interesting little topic for today’s blog.

Buried Agenda, sort of…

Here they are, in no particular order, three items that will hopefully captivate your imagination, and if they do, keep you busy until next week’s meeting 🙂

Himber Napkin: In  Secret Agenda I published a first idea of how to convert an everyday wallet into a “Himber Wallet” (see the entry of September 5 – “Any Wallet a Himber Wallet”). Another method I’ve explained at many of my live lectures (at the times there was such a thing…), in the context of my TTTCBE. Here is yet another idea which occurred to me years ago: Take any paper or cloth napkin, fold it in half, and then fold it in three. In the photo below I’ve pulled the top layer a bit to the right, to expose the three-part partition. Open up the napkin from left to right and place any flat object in it, then close it again. A little later open the napkin from right to left – nobody except Monk will notice the discrepancy – and display the apparently same object (which you have obviously placed there beforehand). This is very practical and will fool anyone not in the know, and it can be used with a coin, a bill, a playing card, a small envelope (which might have various compartments itself…). Naturally, you will need to motivate the use and placement of the napkin, so you’ll nee to “do a little think”.  If performing after dinner, the napkin has a logical raison d’être, or you can use it to later wrap a deck which you then stab to find one or two cards, or you could write something on it (which can be switched!), etc. The sky is the limit.

Very Best of…: Using any scan app that can be downloaded on your smartphone, you can create a “Very-best-of-PDF” for your archive and later reference. When you read a book, a set of lecture notes, a magazine, or any printed publication for that matter, mark the items you like best, e.g., with those post-it-type self-sticking flags. Once you’ve read it all, go back and with the scan app take a photo of each item, one after the other. You will end up with a single PDF that contains all your favorite entries of that particular publication. I have an iPhone and use an app called “Scanner Pro” from Readdle, but any other app for any other type of smartphone will do. The important thing is NOT to make jpg-photos but scan-photos, as only this will yield a single document. You want to avoid having a folder with 35 individual photos, as this is of very limited use. Also, every good scan app has an OCR-function, i.e., the text will be transformed in searchable units, so later you can find whatever you’re looking for by simply entering a key word you remember. And if you transfer the PDF into an electronic note app, such as Evernote, well, you can also tag it, but that we leave for some other time (I know, I know…). And because it is a hot day today, and I had a wonderful Ossobuco with Porcini mushroom, and so many of you are so kind, I will make you a little gift in form of a little PDF that has a few of my own favorites from my Secret Agenda – to read and/or download it CLICK HERE. (And, yes, the Himber Wallet idea mentioned in the previous item is there, too 🙂

Although Hidden Agenda  is currently out of print and doesn’t even exist as an e-book (ask the guys at Vanishing Inc. why…), except for pirated versions on the Internet, Secret Agenda is back in print: You can order a signed copy from me, or get it from your favorite dealer, and for those who prefer, there is a low-budget e-version of the book, which you can get immediately by CLICKING HERE. Secret Agenda is just perfect to read on a tablet, and with a good PDF-app you can then extract your “favorites” (I use “PDF Expert”, again from Readdle).

BTW: This idea of a “Very-best-PDF” will save you a lot of money, because after doing this for ten years, you can stop spending money on buying new tricks, books, DVDs and what have you: Simply go back to your “archive” and you’ll have enough material to meaningfully spend your magic-time until the end of the world. Send 10% of what you saved to a good cause, me 🙂

Card on Umbrella: I can still remember how many years ago I looked at my library, which at that time was already well-fitted, and thought how strange it is that I only have three biographies (I believe these were the ones by Robert-Houdin, Fu Manchu – the two best biographies anyway – and possibly Busby’s book on Erdnase). Today I have almost two-hundred books, plus two dozen documentaries, on the lives of famous and not-so-famous magicians! All of them are of interest to me, although only a few have that introspective quality that I research in this type of book. One of them is by William Rauscher about Silent Mora, and it is still available. Here is an idea from Mora’s Notebooks, included in the biography, called “Card on Umbrella”. I’ve never done it, I must admit, but it went into my own notebook as an item to do… sometime.

The idea is simple: Have a card, e.g., the 2H in the folds of an automatic umbrella. From a deck of cards force its 2H, then spring the cards into the air, and at the same time, with the other hand, open the umbrella that hits against the cards cascading down. It only remains to show the 2H, which you then detach and hand to the spectator as a souvenir she can keep. If you get the book, you’ll find the idea on p. 192.

Well, that’s it folks for today. Wish all of you a great week!

Roberto Giobbi

Hi everyone!

Here we are, at the 33rd edition of The Magic Memories, gone online SUN, 15th AUG 2021, at exactly 0:07.

I had some nice feedback on last week’s post about the Card College Playing Cards and what you can do with them, so, thank you to all who sent comments! Please understand that I don’t answer, but rest assured that all incoming mail is read, and your friendly comments are greatly appreciated.  For those among you who have lengthy questions, or would like to discuss more complex issues, I remind you that you can take 75-minute long Coaching Sessions with me over Skype; in case you are interested, get in touch with me over the “Contact” function of the webshop, or simply CLICK HERE.

Penguin Podcast

Before we proceed to today’s topic, let me mention that Penguin’s Erik Tait did an interesting two-part interview with me for the Penguin Magic Podcast, and you get there by CLICKING HERE. In the first and this second “Years of the Pandemic” (I guess we need a name for these unique times), I have given quite a few interviews, video and audio, and you might already have seen or listened to one or two. Obviously, some topics keep coming up and are thus repeated, but some others are fresh and bring new information. So, it’s up to you to decide if you want to spend some time on it and deep-sea-fish 🙂

Introduction to Card Magic

For the benefit of the occasional beginner in magic, who joins us on these posts, but also for all of you who do a little (or big!) teaching of magic in magic clubs, schools etc., I remind you of a publication of mine that teaches the basics of card magic, sort of Pre-Card-College, called Introduction to Card Magic. The good thing is that it is a multi-media course, with text, photos and video clips, that is best studied on a tablet or a laptop (but I’m sure eagle-eyed youngsters can do so on their mobile, too). Some have expressed the wish of preferring a printed edition. You can easily make this yourself for little money: send the PDF you receive to a printer and have it spiral bound, the best binding for such a “work book”; this will cost you less than $ 20, and it will be cheaper than if I printed and shipped it to you, considering nowadays prohibitive shipping costs (and it will get worse…). The price of € 8.95 is of course a joke, as it is worth ten times as much, but I keep it at this low price because I wan’t everyone to be able to afford it, and it is less than a donation one should send if he or she got it for free! You find an excellent review of it by the enigmatic EndersGame if you CLICK HERE.

More Card College Playing Cards

On to today’s topic: Since so many seemed to like the excerpt from my Magic Apple Lecture,  well, here is the next sequel. In The Magic Memories (30), July 25th 2021, I gave you a PDF with the description of a trick using the Guarantee Joker of the Card College Playing Cards deck I named “TTT -Turn Over, Transform & Travel”. You might want to quickly refer back for context, or go to the PDF by CLICKING HERE (you may download it, but don’t send it around, send your friends to www.robertogiobbi.com).

And need I really mention that you can of course use any other deck and its Guarantee Joker, or if your deck hasn’t got one, take the Guarantee Card that comes with almost any deck, and if all this fails, simply take the normal Joker and adapt the presentation to that. As Garrick Spencer once told Dai Vernon, “Use your head.” This was what Vernon then kept repeating in his lectures and books, along with two other wisdoms by Dr. Elliott, i.e., “Be Natural” and “Be Yourself”. BTW: New York corporation attorney Garrick Spencer, a student and patron of Vernon’s, and a fanatical lover of magic, sponsored his famous Harlequin Act, among other things, and he also organized a small group consisting of some of the finest magicians of the day. He called them The Academy of the Art of Magic. Its 12 members were:

• Dai Vernon
• Nate Leipzig
• Cardini
• Al Baker
• Max Malini
• Charlie Miller
• Arthur Finley
• Paul Fox
• Sam Leo Horowitz
• G. W. Hunter
• J. Warren Keane
• Garrick Spencer

Back to the trick: Several asked about details of handling, so I decided that this week I would give you that part of the recording where I perform and discuss the trick. Actually, due to the situation, this being done via Zoom and without an audience or interaction, it is more of a demonstration than a performance, but it should do for teaching purposes – I hope you agree 🙂

For the benefit of those who haven’t got the Card College Playing Cards (why not?), the photo below shows it and the text: That’s the idea.

As always, to watch the video, CLICK HERE.

Enjoy – and have a successful week!

Roberto Giobbi

Hi everyone!

Welcome to The Magic Memories no. 32, gone online on SUN, 8th August 2021, at 0:07 o’clock.

Some of you have asked how I keep coming up with ideas and contents for this blog. Well, this is not so difficult if you consider that magic has been with me sind 1973, when I began practicing magic as a 14-year-old teenager. Yes, that was a bit late in life, or as Vernon would have put it, “I wasted the first fourteen years of my life!” But I believe I have compensated for the late start by dedicating every free minute to studying magic, and that were many hours each day! And then, in 1988, I decided to devote my life to the study, performing and teaching of magic, almost religiously, which means that I think, drink, eat, love and live magic all day, every day. As a result I find and come up with so many ideas that I could do such  a blog every day, and still would need to discard a lot 🙂 One day, which I’ll probably not live to see, there will be a University or a Foundation, or similar institution, that hires people like me to do just that in a systematic and detailed manner. And that brings us to today’s offering.

The Magic Apple Zoom Lecture – Episode I

As I have mentioned in the last edition of The Magic Memories,  I recently gave a 3-hour lecture over Zoom for Brent Geris’ Magic Apple in Hollywood, California. All participants had received a deck of my Card College Playing Cards, and in the second part of the lecture – almost 2 hours long – I discuss how my Chinese publisher TCC and I created them, several applications of the deck’s visible and hidden features, such as the one-way back design, the use of the included double-backed card, the various prints on the box, the Special Guarantee Joker, and as an added bonus several tricks, of course. In this clip you’ll see Dai Vernon’s “Staring him in the Face”. There is lots of information here that should make your day 🙂

As for “Staring Him in the Face” demonstrated and explained in the video , I remind you that in The Art of Switching Decks, my book on deck switches, on page 146, you’ll find my idea of how to imperceptibly switch the deck in use for a cold deck at the end of the trick. The chapter, in which this is described, titled “It’s Not a Deck Switch, But…” contains a lot of food for thought. If you don’t have that book you can get it from penguinmagic.com, and if you care for a personal dedication and my signature, you can get it directly from me by CLICKING HERE (I have a promotion on it until TUE, 10th AUG, 2021, midnight CET).

Although in my discussions I refer to the Card College Playing Cards, you can do almost all of the items I mention with any other deck. Should you now feel the urge to get at least a set of these decks, you should be able to get them through your favorite dealer (if they don’t carry them, ask them to do so), or you can as always decide to support your favorite, altruistic and friendly author (me!) and buy them from his webshop www.robertogiobbi.com.

As a thank you for your loyalty I just decided to have a special promotion on one brick (contains 6 red and 6 blue decks), to take advantage of it, CLICK HERE. Again, this will only be until TUE, 10th AUG, 2021, midnight CET and only valid for ONE BRICK. You may order more bricks at the same promotional price, but I will then send you an email and ask you to pay something extra for additional shipping (unfortunately, as a very small business, I do not have the shipping rates like Amazon and the big magic dealers have – I appreciate your understanding).

Coming to a close of today’s ramblings, I should mention that at the end of the video sequence you’ll see, I briefly discuss what in my opinion and in my professional experience of many decades is perhaps the most practical and safest control of a selected card to the bottom of the deck; I won’t say more 🙂 To watch the video CLICK HERE.

Enjoy, and have a good week!

Roberto Giobbi

Hi everyone!

Today is the 1st of August, 2021, and these thirty-first The Magic Memories are going online at exactly 0:07, as usual.

Again, I should take off and leave my ramblings out for a week, for today is Switzerland’s National Day: The date is inspired by the date of the Federal Charter of 1291, Pacte du Rütli, placed in “early August”, when “three Alpine cantons swore the oath of confederation” (Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden), an action which later came to be regarded as the founding of Switzerland. Today, Switzerland has 26 cantons and a population of about 8 million. In a recent statistic Switzerland was listed as number 2 of the world’s richest nations, based on the GDP per capita, and number 3 in the list of the World Happiness Report. Unfortunately, the Corona virus doesn’t care about this, as the situation here is similar to most other countries. And whenever I think of statistics my dear friend Lennart Green comes to mind, who has some hilarious examples to make fun of statistics. A short one is this: if you put your head in the hot oven and your feet in the deep-freezer, in the statistical average you feel very good! Ah, Lennart, he deserves a book, a huge book…

Green teaches Giobbi a natural card move

Interdisciplinarity

The other day I watched, for the n-th time, the movie Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe, a comedy inspired by the screwball comedies of the Forties, with Jacqueline Bisset, George Segal and Robert Morley. In Secret Agenda, entry for SEP 2, I briefly describe my five favorite films, and there I wrote about the plot: “Europe’s most famous chefs are killed in ways that parallel how they prepare their own specialties. Crime fiction and black humor work here in a delicious combination. The main theme of this film, gastronomy, is the basis of all art. Why? Gastronomy is about eating. If you don’t eat you die. And if you’re dead you can’t be an artist. Therefore, gastronomy is the basis of all art. Any questions?”

The DVD I have, contains among the extras a superb interview with director Ted Kotcheff (*1931), made 30 years after the film’s release (1979)! In this candid conversation it becomes clear how many things filming and magic, but also gastronomy, have in common. Briefly: You are sharing a passion in real-time with other people you like. Kotcheff, who directed and produced hundreds of films/series for film/TV, when asked what he thought is the most difficult genre in movies, responded, “Action movies are easiest,” – he directed Rambo First Blood – “comedy is the most difficult.” I believe this is very similar to magic, where comedy magic acts are indeed very difficult. I remember I noticed this already in 1979, when I went to my very first FISM convention mIn Brussels and watched the World Championship Competition: the acts in the “Comedy” section were the worst, and only very few managed to walk the fine line between comedy and magic, without destroying one, the other or both. BTW: Swiss comedy magician “Erino” came second in “Comedy”, a very funny act… and man.

To come back to the movie: Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe masterfully manages to balance the crime fiction plot with the comedy, so that they complement each other, and the result is truly more than the sum of its parts. When asked how to do a good movie, Kotcheff pragmatically answers, “Oh, that’s easy. All you need is an excellent story, excellent script, excellent crew and excellent cast!” This reminds me of star chef Thomas Keller, who in the preface of his book Bouchon writes about the secret of great cuisine: “Excellent products, plus excellent preparation, equals excellent meals!” And in magic? Well, excellent trick, plus excellent execution, equals excellent performance! As you can see, the world’s a Chaos, and like fractals one discipline reflects the other, with small differences in content.

Speaking of interdisciplinarity, and how to apply the insights gained from one to another, Dai Vernon was a great model. He keenly studied other fields of interest, chief among them the techniques and strategies of the cheats, and applied what he saw and heard to magic. If I was a Professor at a University of Magic, I would conduct a study on the subject of which operational concepts in magic, specifically card magic, have been influenced and in which way by gambling and cheating at gambling. I’m convinced this would lead to a better understanding and interpretation of many sleights we are using nowadays, and to the invention of new and better ones.

To come back to Vernon: He also very intelligently cross-bred concepts within magic. As an example he was very fond of Jack McMillan’s finding of the “Plunger Principle”. The fact that cards, which were interlaced and jogged one towards the other, could produce unseen movements, fascinate him. At least two major inventions were the result of it. One, his “Triumph Shuffle”, which was the operational basis of what to me is without doubt one of the Top Ten card tricks, “Triumph”, as described in Stars of Magic. You find a detailed description in Card College Volume 3, pp. 642, “The Triumph Shuffle”, and if you’re a visual person, you should go to my Card Magic Masterclass video series, and there on Disc Three – False Shuffles and Cuts you’ll find a very detailed discussion of the technique at 1:22:40, which will enable you to learn it in a few minutes, provided you can already do a proper normal Riffle Shuffle.  (Card Magic Masterclass is no longer available as a DVD set, but you can download the five lessons individually or as a package deal from vanishingincmagic.com.)

The second thing that the Plunger Move inspired in Vernon was his Multiple Shift – one of the first descriptions, if not the first, can be found in The Tarbell Course of Magic, but I also discuss it on Disc One – Controls of the above-mentioned Card Magic Masterclass, with ideas that have never been published before (you’ll find it at 1:18:55).

So, my friends, that’s it for today. As always I hope that something has caught your fancy and triggered your imagination.

Have an excellent week!

Roberto Giobbi