The Magic Memories (206)

Hello everyone!

Today’s topics are: Update & Comment on Unexpected Agenda; Advent Calendars; On “The Lucky Coin” from Card College Volume 1

These are The Magic Memories 206, gone online Sunday, December 8, 2024, at 0:07h sharp.

All The Magic Memories from 2021, 2022, and 2023, including the Magic Advent Calendar from 2020, can be found HERE.

Update & Comment on Unexpected Agenda

All of you who are in Europe should have received Unexpected Agenda by now. I hope you like it 🙂

Most of you will start reading through it, but I encourage you to focus on the current day at the end of each reading to fully take advantage of the “trigger function” Unexpected Agenda and the other agendas have.

And don’t forget to flag your favorite days, in order to make a personal PDF at the end of the year (call it: My Personal Unexpected Agenda).

Those with an address in USA, Canada, or other countries outside of Europe, should receive it by the end of the next week.

If you do not receive the book by then, please send me a short email, and I’ll check the tracking (all books outside of Europe are tracked and insured, although I really hope not to have to use this feature, as it is time-consuming and laborious to go through all the forms necessary for the complaint process…).

One last thing: Several wrote in complimenting me on the production (Thank you!), saying that they look forward to start reading the book on January 1st.

Sure, you may do that, but who says you cannot start the very day you receive the agenda?

After all the term “agenda” has to be understood in a metaphorical sense: It is not a paper day planner”, or “calendar” as its virtual counterpart in form of apps are called, it is just what I hope is an attractive “dressing” for many good ideas.

So, if you have the book, by all means start reading it NOW!

…and make sure not to miss the item on December 24th, a recipe for a delicious starter at Xmas, and easy to do – even easier than the tricks in the Card College Light books 🙂

Talking of recipes: I’ll remind those of my readers who are new to the Magic Memories, that you can find two more tasty recipes on my YouTube channel, one is a watermelon gazpacho, the other a graved lax. As for the latter, I positively know that for some readers it has become a go-to recipe for the Holidays (thank you, JR, for reminding me of my own recipe!).

Advent Calendars

You will have noticed that there is no Advent Calendar this year. It is by no means that I’m out of ideas, quite the contrary is true, but believe me that writing, publishing and now signing and shipping Unexpected Agenda has taken an unproportional amount of my time, so…

BUT – and especially if you are new to the Magic Memories or have a bad memory (what of the two things is worse?) – you can go back to past Advent Calendars, of which there are at least two.

First, the Magic Calendar 2020, created in the First Pandemic Year, with a copious amount of material, ranging from free PDFs, audios, video clips, etc. To savor those, CLICK HERE.

Second, last year I created what I called The Advent Calendar of Good Ideas, which was sent out on every day of the Advent.

To get the complete PDF CLICK HERE. (Disclaimer: Similar to the Unexpected Agenda, it will not be the same thing to read the entries one after the other in one reading session, rather than receiving one every day, but you may still find two or three ideas that could influence your life – nothing less…).

On “The Lucky Coin” from Card College Volume 1

“The Lucky Coin” from Card College Volume 1 (p. 241), along with “The Homing Card Plus” from Volume 2, are possibly the two tricks from the Card College books that are most performed by those who work in front of real audiences.

“The Lucky Coin” has been extensively discussed and varied since it was first published in 1992 (first edition in German language!), and I know of at least three commercial versions that have been inspired by it, not all of them giving the proper credit…

Recently my friend by correspondence Kevin Shepherd from Washington DC wrote in – in the middle of the night as he usually does (he’s obviously six hours behind my time) – saying how much he liked the trick, and how effective it is at each performance.

However, he also remarked, “Let’s figure out the absolute BEST working for that jaw dropping trick. The spread cull HAS to go.”

I agree 🙂

Let me repeat something I have said several times before, but warrants repetition: The Card College books are conceived as a didactical work, call it even a “course” in card magic. Although some also use it as a reference work, it is not comprehensive, since it is not an encyclopedia (obvious, Watson, obvious).

Only very few card books in the history of magic have been conceived with that purpose of a course in mind, i.e., one that organizes the existing knowledge there is about a specific topic – in our case the infinite universe of Card Magic (capitalized on purpose) –  by identifying and naming the basic concepts (techniques, tricks, presentations and theories) and ordering them with the intention of taking someone, who has never done card magic before, by the hand, and walking him or her along the royal road to card magic (I write this with a tip of the hat to that great classic, which inspired me, but which is now mostly outdated, but not obsolete, of course, remaining a Classic).

With that philosophy in  mind, the tricks I chose to put in the books had to illustrate the use of the techniques described in the chapter itself, and had to use techniques taught in previous chapters, items that were taught later were not allowed. This did of course limit the methods described.

With “The Lucky Coin” the operational problem is that the same card must be forced and then controlled to the top of the deck.

To do so, in the book, I suggest the Classic Force to force the card, as this is described in a previous chapter (Chapter 15) and is a way of practicing the sleigt here, and then the Cull – also described in a previous chapter – to control it to the top of the deck, in readiness for the Top Change later on in the trick (the Top Change is the actual technical subject of that Chapter 16).

Obviously, once you know and master advanced methods, you may change the way of forcing and controlling the “selection”. One way of doing it, that comes to my mind as I’m writing this, is the Hindu Shuffle Force, as it will allow the card to be immediately controlled to the bottom, which can then be shuffled to the top with an Overhand Shuffle, and then retained there with a final Riffle Shuffle; you have thus used three different shuffles, which is not only quite convincing and will fool even the initiated, but could also be implemented into the presentation.

And there are so many more ways of achieving the same goal in a deceptive and elegant manner. In my video Card College 1&2 – Personal Instruction, “Lesson 20 – Top Change” I use two different techniques.

For the benefit of those who do not have the video course Card College 1&2 – Personal Instruction, and as a little gift, below is the clip I extracted from the eight-hour download (you can still purchase the complete Card College 1&2 – Personal Instruction legally and honestly at a very fait price, thus supporting and thanking the author, me, by CLICKING HERE – Thank you for not going to the pirated versions).

Comment on the video clip: As you can see, in the video performance I use two completely different methods: The Crisscross Force from Card College Volume 1 (p. 85) to force the target card – here the Five of Diamonds (take an easily recognizable card!) – and then the “Double Undercut Control” from Secret Agenda (p. 95).

As a further little gift to you in this Advent time, you can access for free the one-page explanation of the “Double Undercut Control” by CLICKING HERE.

All this said, it is clear that there are many ways of doing the same trick, from a technical and presentational point of view, which is why you always have to use your head, as Dai Vernon kept reminding us.

However, before “using your head” and “improving” a good trick, do it the original way, understand it, think about it, and only then change it, if necessary.

For this you must ask the correct questions, and this is what Kevin Shepherd did. I hope I have been abel to give a satisfactory answer, which is not the last word, not at all.

Speaking about “last words”: Here is a different presentational solution that you could use for “The Lucky Coin”. It simply used to be an old gag, but fits our problem like a glove.

Instead of using a coin, cut out the index of an old card, e.g., the Two of Diamonds, as depicted in the photo below. Apply some sticky substance to the backside of the cut-out piece and carry it in a convenient place, so that when ready to perform “The Lucky Coin” you surreptitiously stick it to the middle phalanx of your forefinger.

Now, instead of moving the coin over the card spread, you move your finger over it, back of the hand upward, si capisce, eh.

Eventually you ask, “Do you believe that your card is under my finger?” Show the cut-out index on your fingers, and as they react top change the x-card for the selection on top of the deck, all exactly as in the original description.

The effect might even be stronger than if you used a coin – you’ll have to do it at least once in order to know…

If you give this a try, you might be surprised to notice that you can execute the Top Change and most other handlings without difficulties and fear of being detected.

This means that you can “load” your finger even during a previous trick, and can then go “clean” into “The Lucky Coin”, which is now, of course a “Lucky Finger” (make up your own presentation).

Next week I plan to give you the genesis of “The Lucky Coin”, and I hope you’ll find that interesting, because if you don’t, there is hardly something I can do about it… (with apologies to Victor Borge, and thanks to Pit Hartling).

Wish you all a successful and happy week,

Roberto Giobbi