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.
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!
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!
It feels like it’s taking me for ever to get through the Vallarino book!
One of the tricks in the transposition section is an Queen / Ace Transposition. I think JP Vallarino made it a little too complex. Here’s my streamlined version of it:
It’s taking some time go get through the JP Vallarino book, but I’m still working on it. I finished the card sandwich section last night and there’s one thing that really stuck out to me. I think it was called the “automatic sandwich“, it’s a very hands off way to get the selected card in between the two other cards.
Before you watch the video, while you can’t see the cards, I never touch the pair of cards, the selection or any of the cards and there are no gimmicks.
And here’s how it works:
I feel OK showing this as the routine makes it happen openly, so I’m not giving away anything secret that wouldn’t be shown if I did the trick as written. In the video above I’m blowing on it, in the book Vallarino uses a riffle to create the air force to blow the card.
This would make an interesting bar bet OR as a paper balls over head sort of trick where everyone sees how it works except for the person who selected the card. It’s a fun little bit for a card sandwich routine, I don’t really do any card sandwich routines, but might start just to use this bit!
I’m still going through the JP Vallarino book and I hit this description of a card move. The only part I’m talking about is the paragraph that mentions fig 1 and fig 2 along with those pics:
Figure one doesn’t show the set up that’s mentioned in fig 1. Those aces shouldn’t be visible, as they should be on the bottom of the deck and it doesn’t show the indifferent cards. Figure two should show a pinkie break, not a thumb break.
Things like this make learning from the book difficult. I’m really surprised that no one noticed that there were wrong. If this book was a self published thing I’d expect small errors, but from a big magic company like Vanishing Inc, I’m amazed that got by them.
Now I’ll say something positive about the book. I just started the Ace Assemblies section of the book. The first one is called Ultimate MacDonald’s Aces and is pretty good! It’s very heavily gimmicked, but not really in the tradition sense for the MacDonald’s Aces.
I personally don’t really do ace assemblies, however if I did, I would probably do this one!
I’m still working through the JP Vallarino book. It’s all card magic, which I’m fine with. The book for me had an early hit with his Hypnotic Rumba Count, which I really liked, but then the next few things were pretty redundant and just variations on things. For example his take on the Elmsley Count was basically a style thing and while style is important and important to how he performs, it’s not really actionable information for me.
In the book, the Optical Center Steal is something I’ve done since I was a teenager, and while I came up with it on my own, it’s something that I just assumed was common knowledge. I guess it’s not.
The Revolutionary Control I think gets its name from the rolling action the cards make, and not that it’s a “game changer”. This is another example of a variation, I think Harry Lorayne had a control that was very similar to this.
I’m just wrapping up the section on card sleights, and getting into the tricks. I’m hoping that there will be some more stuff that interests me in it!
Sometimes the universe hands you something fun. I was cleaning the office and found a set of Gary Freed’s NFW card trick. This is a great trick where four jokers turn into four aces. The provided routine is alright, and when I was younger and working at Market Magic Shop in Seattle I developed a better handling for it that was much better looking than what was in the instructions.
When I found the NFW set last night I immediately recognized that JP Vallarino’s Hypnotic Rumba Count would work really well with the NFW card set!
Using the rumba count makes this a very direct change of four jokers to four aces! I think this would make a great trick for a preshow video as it’s simple, direct and a good trick!
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.
I just stared reading the JP Vallarino book that was put out by Vanishing Inc. It’s all cards, which I’m not opposed to, as I enjoy playing with deck of cards.
The first thing in the book is the Rumba Count. This is a way to show four cards as the same card. The second thing in the book is the Hypnotic Rumba Count, which is a variation of the Rumba count and something that I don’t think I had ever learned in the past.
When I learn a new move, I try to figure out what I can do with that move before I explore what other people have done with it. It’s just a fun creative exercise. Sometimes it leads to new things, but usually I end up recreating the obvious thing with it.
The first thing I came up with is a change of 4 jokers to 4 kings
