The First Ambitious Card

I love magic history, and learning where things I did come from. I’m still working through the JP Vallarino book and got to Vallarino’s Ambitious Card routine.

JP Vallarino book

In it he mentions the first place that the Ambitious Card was publish. It was in a french book called Recueil de Tours de Physique Amusante. That title sounded familiar, so I went to my bookshelf and I have that book!

Recueil de Tours de Physique Amusante

Unfortunately I can’t read french, so I can’t confirm it’s in there. It was cool to be reminded of a bit of history that lived on my shelf!

-Louie

Gimmicking Post Cards

I do a card trick that I call “choices” where the audience narrows down cards by eliminating them until there is one card left and that matched a prediction that I have made. The overall presentation is about me making bad choices in life, and honestly from a presentation standpoint doesn’t need to be a card trick, it could literally be anything that’s narrowed down.

Since it doesn’t need to be playing cards, I was trying to think of what I could replace them with and decided to use postcards.

You can read more about the postcards on a previous blog post here.

By switching props from jumbo cards to slightly smaller postcards I can add an additional way to show the postcards all to be different. I should note this routine at its bones is essentially Al Koran’s 5 Star Miracle. One of the things that I added to the postcards was to cut them short, so I can do a riffle display to show them all different.

postcard magic trick

This little bit allows me to show them a bit more freely. The postcards are soo visually different that if I spread them all in a face, I think the repeating pattern would be more obvious than with playing cards.

Now I need to make a choice and figure out if I want to keep the presentation as is, or try to write something new.

-Louie

Placeholder Card Trick

Inspiration comes in some strange places. I was cleaning out my storage closet in the office and found a gimmick that was for an ACAAN that was marketed in the late 1990’s. The trick was garbage, and was about to throw it away when I realized part of the gimmick had potential for a different trick.

Here’s the video I sent to my brainstorming group a while ago:

I like the concept of the card turning blank from a deck that’s in order. It makes it very easy to determine that the selected card is the one that’s blank. I don’t think I’ve seen a trick like this before, where a card turns blank in a deck that’s in order. Usually trick where the selected card turns blank, it’s away from the deck or it happens from a packet, like Gordon Beam’s Limited Edition trick.

I’ve been having fun doing this trick which I call Placeholder.

-Louie

Demi Deck – Review

I bought into the hype and picked up a Demi Deck while I was at Hocus-Pocus in Fresno.  Here’s a quick review of it. 



First of all, it works exactly how I thought it would work. If you think about it, there’s really only one way it can work.  I wasn’t buying it to figure out how it works, but it’s an interesting prop. 

Let’s get into actually doing the trick.  I was doing it for the groups of people who showed up as I was packing up the show.  I would tell them when my next show is and then offer to show them a quick trick and would do the Demi Deck.  It got good reactions from the people. 

Next there’s the angle issues.  It’s pretty solid from the front, I probably personally wouldn’t take this out for a roving gig where I’m going to be surrounded. But for a group of 4 or so people in front of me, the angles are pretty solid.

Now here’s what I like and why I bought this trick.  This reminds me of old school Tenyo tricks where the method is frequently more interesting than the trick. It’s just a gimmicky trick that’s fun to do!

Personally this will probably never be in my “paid” close up work. Is it something that I’ll show people who are at my house…yes!

-Louie

Giant Dice Hat Load

A couple weeks ago when I was roving I threw a giant die into my bag. I was going to play with a hat load to produce it. I’ve done hat loads in the past and familiar with many techniques to get the giant die into my hat. I didn’t have a plan for the load, I just used the appropriate technique at the right time and if that opportunity didn’t present itself.

Here’s a highlight reel of some close up and the giant die production is in it:

I don’t know if this is something that I’ll actually add to my show, but it was fun to play with for a few days!

-Louie

Liar’s Blackjack by Bob King

Here’s another packet trick I picked up from a magic shop’s junk bin. It’s called Liar’s Blackjack by Bob King. It’s sorta an all backs routine, but not really. You have five cards that have backs on both sides, then a few faces appear and one of them changes.

Here’s what it looks like with when the original instructions are followed and my update on the trick:

The big change is that I got rid of the cards with backs on both sides. That’s such a strange object that the routine really glosses over and I think detracts from the routine. Using blank face cards keeps the focus on the effect and presentation. Then a little change in the count as the Kiss Elmsley doesn’t really work with the blank face cards, so I used the Hypnotic Rumba Count.

This isn’t a routine that I would ever do, but I think that getting rid of the cards with backs on both sides is a HUGE improvment!

-Louie

Three Card Reveal Sequence

The other day I wrote about working on a variation of Alan Wakeling‘s trick Aces Front. Here’s the rough outline of the sequence of events:

I think the sequence is good, where I think there’s a sense of progression. For the first card, I do touch the deck before it goes into the glass. For the second card, it happens with the deck in the glass the whole time and then the card rise for the final card.

What’s fun is my starting point was something like Aces Front, but my end point is something completely different than Aces Front. I always love it when there are a couple of twists in working on a variation of an existing trick that leads you to something completely new.

-Louie

Aces Front Variation

Many, many years ago when I was a teenager, I remember a trick if Tarbell that used a wine glass and a deck of cards. The deck was in the wine glass and the card at the front of the deck changed. Then a few years later Lance Burton did it on TV and the version he did was basically Alan Wakeling’s Aces Front.

I’ve liked this idea and for a long time wanted to do a version with three selected cards. The first two appear at the front of the deck and the third one rises out of the top of the pack. I’ve had all the stuff I need to try to figure out the trick, however just lacked time/motivation to start playing with it.

I’m coming up with a lot of challenges for the trick. The main one is that with only a couple of cards, the deck will be in a crazy face up and face down condition for what I’m envisioning. Then it hit me, what if I revealed the a card this way:

This was a situation where playing with the cards ended up coming up with a solution for changing a card inside of a wine glass, and one that I don’t think has really been done before.

Now to work out a sequence…
-Louie

The Phoenix Ace Move

I don’t know why, but I’ve been fascinated by the Phoenix Ace move. I don’t know the official name of the move but this is the one where you have a multiple cards held as one and you palm off the stack leaving one card visible. I think it’s really more of a stage more, but I’m trying to come up with uses for it where you’re palming off of the deck.

One I’m playing with uses an outjogged double card that’s in the middle of the deck. Another one is this one below:

@louiefoxx Waiting for the post office to open, so heres a card trick! #cardtrick #magictrick #postoffice #waiting #sleightofhand #kingofhearts #car #bored #louiefoxx ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

I don’t think this is something I’d ever really do, but it’s fun to play with. I think that maybe if I keep playing, something useful will happen with the move.

-Louie

Kings to Jokers to Kings

After playing with the Hypnotic Rumba Count yesterday from the book Vallarino yesterday, and coming up with simple Jokers to Kings effect, I found a natural extension of that trick. I took it a step further (backwards?) and the trick has four kings that turn to jokers, then back to kings.

Like jokers to kings from yesterday, I should say that this routine is super obvious with the move and I’d be shocked if it hasn’t been done before. The important thing about creating is that you play with every idea. For me it’s about flexing my brain’s creativity muscles, not necessarily creating something that’s never been done before.

-Louie