More Vallarino Book Stuff

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.

JP Vallarino magic book by vanishing inc

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!

-Louie

Hypnotic Rumba Count

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

@louiefoxx Four Jokers Card Trick! From the new JP Vallarino book by Vanishing Inc #cardtrick #magic #sleightofhand #vanishinginc #louiefoxx #cardmagic #jpvallarino #playingcards ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

This is definitely the obvious thing to do with this move and probably the first thing that JP Vallarino did with it.

-Louie

Twisting the Aces…

A couple of weeks ago I posted a method for doing an Elmsley style false count that hid the second card from the top (you can learn this false count here) that I came up with on a long flight. Unfortunately, this count isn’t particularly useful and doesn’t have much of an advantage over a normal Elmsley Count.

Well, last week I was on another long flight from New York to Seattle and I was playing with the false count that hides the second card and I came up with a trick with it. It’s Twisting the Aces, but it has one advantage over the original Dai Vernon version and that’s that it all four counts look the same, so you don’t have to openly turn over the ace of clubs or do that weird strip out of one of the red aces and then flip over a few cards.


You start with the four aces (could be any order) face down in your left hand.

  1. Triple turn over to show the “top card”.
  2. Kill your wrist and turn just the top card over.
    -The position of the cards are: face down – face up – face up – face down
  3. Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, but don’t flip over the packet.
  4. Do the Second From the Top Elmsley and this will show the first face up ace.
  5. Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, but don’t flip over the packet.
  6. Do a regular Elmsley and this will show the second face up ace.
    -The position of the cards are: face down – face up – face down – face up
  7. Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, and secretly flip over the packet.
  8. Do the Second From the Top Elmsley and this will show the third face up ace.
  9. Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, but don’t flip over the packet.
  10. Do the Second From the Top Elmsley and this will show the fourth face up ace. As you do the count, leave the final ace out jogged.
  11. Strip out the final ace and put it on top of the packet face up
  12. Half pass the bottom card as you spread out the packet to show the three face down bottom cards (this is the Asher Twist move)

The main problem with the above version of Twisting the Aces is that it’s soo much harder than doing the Vernon version. Honestly, I don’t know if this is better than the original Twisting the Aces, maybe the variation in procedure makes that trick more watchable from the audience perspective?

-Louie

Hiding The Second Card…

A couple of weeks ago I was on an airplane and messing around with some cards. I was thinking that there wasn’t (that I was aware of) a false count like an Elmsley Count or Jordan Count that hid the second from the top card of a face down pile. After playing around a little bit I came up with a count to do hide the second from the top:

Count 1: Push off a double

Count 2: push off a single with the left hand. The right hand buckles the bottom card and when the card from the left hand covers the right hands cards, the the left hand steals the top card of the right hand’s pile.

Count 3: deal one card

Count 4: deal one card

That’s it, pretty simple. There’s not much to it. I think the reason not many people have explored a count that hides the second from the top card is that you have pretty much have to start with a double push off. This isn’t the easiest thing to do…it’s not crazy hard, but hard enough to scare away people.

I will say there are probably better ways to hide the card second from the top of the deck. I will also say it was a fun way to spend some time on a plane!

-Louie

Sequential Twisting…

Well, I was just on another long flight and I was playing with the Twisting the Aces that uses the false count of four cards that hides the card that is second from the top. I’ve been calling the count the Second From the Top Elmsley Count, but I think I’m going to call it the Runner Up Count as it deals with the “second place”

Click here for the routine for Twisting the Aces

While I was on the flight, I got to thinking about how I bet the spectator doesn’t really remember which aces have flipped over and which haven’t. What I mean by that is if you stopped in the middle of the trick and asked which two aces haven’t flipped over, I think most people couldn’t tell you. That’s a problem with the Twisting the Aces premise, the audience is taking your word at what’s flipped or hasn’t flipped.

While I was on the plane I started to play around with the handling to be able to do it with an Ace – 2 – 3 -4 instead of four aces. Luckily I was able to do that with pretty minimal changes to the handling.

Here’s the handling, and the changes have been added in bold:


You start with an Ace, Two, Three and Four in that order face down in your left hand.

GET READY: Have the cards in a fan and gesture towards a person from the audience. As you do the gesture, your right hand takes the top two cards and the bottom card, leaving the second from the bottom card in the left hand. Your right hand then sets it’s cards on top of the single card in the left hand.

  1. Triple turn over to show the “top card”.
  2. Kill your wrist and turn just the top card over.
    -The position of the cards are: face down – face up – face up – face down
  3. Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, but don’t flip over the packet.
  4. Do the Runner Up Count and this will show the first face up ace. When you count the fourth card, DO NOT put it on top of the packet in the right hand, but but under the top card.
  5. Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, but don’t flip over the packet.
  6. Do a regular Elmsley and this will show the second face up ace.
    -The position of the cards are: face down – face up – face down – face up
  7. Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, and secretly flip over the packet.
  8. Do the Runner Up Count and this will show the third face up ace.
  9. Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, but don’t flip over the packet.
  10. Do the Runner Up Count and this will show the fourth face up ace.
    As you do the count, leave the final ace out jogged.
  11. Strip out the final ace and put it on top of the packet face up
  12. Half pass the bottom card as you spread out the packet to show the three face down bottom cards (this is the Asher Twist move)

That’s it, a simple displacement at the beginning of the trick and then one displacement after the first count and it will work with a set of cards in numerical order. While this is essentially still Twisting the Aces, I’m happier with this now that I was a few days ago.

-Louie

Ghost Cards…

This is a packet trick revision of a trick called Ghost Cards. The following video has me do the trick as written in the instructions, followed by me trying to improve it.

The main problem with the trick as written is that there’s a lot of props and procedure to make one side of one card appear. In my revised version you can make four faces appear, which makes much more sense than just one. While not in the video, you can reverse the procedure to make the cards disappear at the end.

This is a trick that snuck into my close up set at the fair I recorded the video at. I forgot to take it out of my pocket the first day, and it lived there all week and I did it all week. It was fun, and I did it for people who had seen me multiple times as something different for them, but it’s not making it into the regular set.

The A.C.T. Card Trick…

Here’s the second video of me revising a packet trick that I got with a collection of magic that I acquired. Today’s trick is the A.C.T. (another card trick) by Bill Pryor.

Here’s a demo of the trick as written, then how I revised the trick:

The big problem with this packet trick is that the whole effect is a “kicker” without the initial ending. What I mean by that is that you start by asking someone to think of a card, but you never reveal it. You need the initial effect for a kicker to really work. I think at the end spectators will still be thinking, “what about the card I was thinking of?”

Also I don’t think the gags are strong enough to carry the trick past you never revealing the card they are thinking of.

Four Card Monte…

Recently I ended up with a collection of magic tricks and in that collection there were a bunch of packet tricks. Most weren’t very good, but that got me thinking about trying to improve them. The first one that I tried was called 4 Card Monte, and there are a lot of packet tricks with this title, so don’t judge them all by this one.

Here’s the effect as written in the instructions, then the effect reworked by me:

The trick as written is pretty bad, and doesn’t make much sense with the addition of a fifth card at the end. I think my version where there’s only four cards shown the whole time makes more sense. The addition of the kicker ending really adds a punctuation to the end.

One thing I think that’s important when you get a magic trick is to not discard because you don’t like the trick as written. Play with it and see if you can make it work!