Alexander de Cova

I for­got how many times magi­cians have asked me that ques­tion in the past 25 years. It seems there is some­thing mys­ter­i­ous about that old book. The answer to that post’s title is:

Yes, abso­lutely!

What – a $2.00 book that is pub­lic domain and old-fashioned?

Yes, abso­lutely!

But then lay­men read­ing this will know all the secrets?

No, if you per­form them right.

Recently I stumbled across Aaron Fisher’s web­site, where he details his mas­ter­plan to get accom­plished in card magic. It is a very nice work he did. I like that he focusses on the tech­niques one really needs as a performer.

If I had only known this when I star­ted! When we star­ted out many years ago, we stud­ied everything we could get our hands on. Wasted time? I think so in many cases.

It would have been bet­ter if I had star­ted with the Erd­nase stuff right away (and then stick to it). When you take a look at the list below, you will see that most of these sleights are described in that book.

When I turned 30 I came back to Erd­nase and star­ted to re-learn the essen­tial sleights.

Here is a list of the moves I can do best and which have served me in the past 30 years. I accom­plished most of my tricks with the help of this arsen­al of trickery:

Break
Greek Break
Double Cut Swing Cut
Double Lift
Clas­sic Pass
Spread Pass
Diag­on­al Palm Shift
Top­ping The Deck
Erd­nase Bot­tom Palm
Fan Steal
Card Folds
Actions Switch
Over­hand False Shuffle (Erd­nase)
Zar­row Shuffle
Shank Shuffle
Hindushuffle
Jen­nings False Cut
Diverse Erd­nase Table False Cuts
Top Change
TILT
Clas­sic Force
Hofz­in­ser Cull
Robinson’s Force
Second Deal
Ver­non Trans­fer Move
Ghost Count(s)
Ascanio Spread
OLRAM Move
Mex­ic­an Turnover
Vernon’s One Handed Shuffle
All Around Square Up

Some of the moves (and the time) could have been avoided. Oth­ers should have been avoided. The import­ant ones should have been learned right away from the Erd­nase book.

The mor­al of the story? Go back to the basics and mas­ter them first. This will take a life­time in itself.

Hope this is of some help for the young­er ones start­ing out in card magic, in order to save time, energy and frus­tra­tion and get on the right track right from the beginning.

You barely need more than the stuff in Erd­nase as an all-round per­former with a career stirred towards per­form­ing for pay­ing lay people. Luck­ily, some of the import­ant pub­lish­ers have real­ised the import­ance of Erdnase’s work and put out fant­ast­ic reprints and edi­tions, even with the match­ing decks. No bet­ter way to get into the magic­al world of Erdnase.

But I know from my own exper­i­ence that in the begin­ning stages of one’s card magic devel­op­ment it is dif­fi­cult to res­ist the tempta­tion for the new and fancy stuff …

Some guys wondered about the sub­title of this blog. The expres­sion ’90% of everything is crap’ is the well-known Sturgeon’s Law (or Sturgeon’s Rev­el­a­tion). The reas­on I use it is because I find Daniel Dennett’s work quite inter­est­ing and I think in mod­ern magic it holds true (for 90%). Sturgeon’s Law is rep­res­en­ted (point 6) in his Sev­en Tools For Crit­ic­al Think­ing:

1. Use Your Mistakes

2. Respect Your Opponent

3. The ‘Surely’ Klaxon

4. Answer Rhet­or­ic­al Questions

5. Employ Occam’s Razor

6. Don’t Waste Your Time on Rubbish

7. Beware of Deepities

In order to get an idea of what he means you prob­ably have to check out the Inter­net. I found a couple of points def­in­itely can be applied to our magic­al think­ing. I’m sure Eugene Bur­ger would like it …

Jan Gallo’s Osaka Bills is one hell of a fun trick, and a prac­tic­al one, too. If you don’t have it yet, do your­self the favour and get it. It is worth hav­ing that one in your arsen­al of magic­al weapons. But buy it from the ori­gin­at­or, as it should be. 😉

What I am offer­ing is only a tiny addi­tion, which will show its worth when you actu­ally do the trick. It is a much sim­pler way for the pre­par­a­tion of the bills, which really makes life easi­er and ensures the bills are in the cor­rect start­ing pos­i­tion without hav­ing to think. Jan’s meth­od as he demon­strated it on his video was too much of a hassle for de Cov­a’s small magic brain, so I use this way of fold­ing and stack­ing the bills, which hap­pens totally in the hands and no table needed.

I don’t do table-hop­ping any­more, except in an emer­gency. But when I was doing this, here is a little strategy that is easy to make, doesn’t cost a lot and is really fun to per­form. This gets all your props in a handy case, sup­plies an addi­tion­al per­form­ing sur­face on the din­ing tables full of cut­lery, and gives an excel­lent introduction.

When I was booked in a posh hotel in Ber­lin many years ago, I was forced to stay around the hotel lobby and spot vic­tims for my nag­ging close-up magic. But I didn’t want to run around with a doctor’s bag or stu­pid boxes, let alone the alu­min­um attaché cases from the home sup­ply store. So I got the idea to switch over to a chess box! You can get these quite cheaply on eBay.

As you can see, the box eas­ily takes all the neces­sary equip­ment for two or three table-hop­ping sets of about 5–6 minutes’ dur­a­tion, depend­ing on the mater­i­al you per­form. One side is covered with felt to ease card and coin work; the oth­er side is left as is. This is now your new case, which you even can put onto the table in the corner. That way you have a little stage for your miracles.

But the best thing is the approach this now affords you. You walk around in the res­taur­ant or hotel, with the closed chess box under your arm, the checkered side show­ing, the felt side against your body. People will per­ceive you as someone run­ning around with a chess set and not as a magi­cian. Approach the table, put on your “I am the greatest” smile and ask, who has ordered to play a game of chess between the courses of the meal.

Now enjoy the puzzled faces, smile and deliv­er the usu­al line: “Nobody? That’s fine, lucky me because I actu­ally don’t play chess; I am the house magician ….”

Now I have stopped doing table-hop­ping and will leave that to the new gen­er­a­tion. I prefer to actu­ally play chess on the board, which fits an older man bet­ter than walk­ing around din­ner tables.

Cute, isn’t it? 🙂

When I was work­ing for the ZZM (Zauberzen­t­rale München) with Har­old Voit, one of the main tricks to be learned and demon­strated for the cus­tom­ers was Ken Brooke’s “Chase the Ace”: the one with the three jumbo cards with the false indices: Ace, Two and Three.

I always liked the trick. Small props but big effect. In the course of the years, I added a tiny thing, which makes the routine a bit more con­vin­cing. I wanted to be able to show the com­plete face of the Ace in the begin­ning, without hav­ing to cov­er the false index with the hand.

After dis­miss­ing all kind of weird and pre­pared jumbo cards stands that covered the false index, I finally hit upon the easi­est solu­tion. You need the clas­sic set and an index piece from a match­ing Ace. This means you will have to buy two sets and des­troy one of them.

Note that the index piece is not cut straight, but at an angle. This assures a more nat­ur­al hand pos­i­tion when hold­ing the cards.

Put the cards togeth­er and snap some broad rub­ber bands around them as shown. Pos­i­tion the bands so that the index piece fits. When bring­ing the cards out, you will hide the edge of the index piece in a nat­ur­al way with your thumb.

In this way, you can show the card pack­et more freely. The spec­tat­ors see a com­plete Ace. Remove the rub­ber bands, con­cur­rently secretly steal­ing the index piece, and put them away.

You are left with the tra­di­tion­al set of cards and can go into your routine (prefer­ably Ken Brooke’s).

Magi­cians are proud of their his­tory, the whole looooong story .…

We cher­ish the old stuff, but wrongly. We still per­form, like apes imit­at­ing each oth­er, the same lame stuff. One copy­ing the oth­er, in the hope to get the same strong reac­tions from the lines, jokes and gags. Get­ting the applause for the ego.

Noth­ing wrong with the old stuff because there is tons of real good wis­dom in it. But the new gen­er­a­tion just blindly cop­ies old-fash­ioned ways to do the tricks. The excuse: “It’s a clas­sic …” The reas­on: weak­ness? And maybe ego? Desire to be applauded? Accep­ted? Being “hip”? Noth­ing to do so with magic per se .…

For me, the truth is that most of us are afraid to dare to do some­thing dif­fer­ent; are afraid to leave the com­fort zone; and finally are afraid to do some­thing that nobody else has done before.

Sal­vano once told me: “Magi­cians in real­ity are afraid of magic.” At first I did­n’t under­stand what he meant, but now I know: He was right! Magi­cians don’t trust the prin­ciples of their own trade, and always try to seek ways to be on the safe side and get the recog­ni­tion from the audi­ence. They are afraid of con­front­ing the audi­ence with some­thing ori­gin­al, where there is no recipe, no proven success–something new and ori­gin­al (with­in their safety-seek­ing minds).

There­fore, they rely on “trus­ted” tricks and present­a­tions, tricks, where oth­ers have shown what works. These are then copied because it seems to be safe to do so.

But there is a dif­fer­ence between what we as magi­cians see and what lay people per­ceive. I will give you an example. This could (!) be the pos­sible thought pro­cess of a ran­dom spec­tat­or wit­ness­ing a per­form­ance of the cups and balls (our old­est and most trust­worthy trick we have in the his­tory of legerdemain) .…

Human being thinking:

Nice cop­per cups … will he pro­duce a drink from them?

What are these little red balls for?

Wait a moment … did he put them all under that one cup or the oth­er? Don’t remem­ber … does­n’t mat­ter … looks all the same anyway …

He’s mov­ing his hands so quickly …

Was that now two or three of these little balls? Does­n’t matter .…

Ah! Now! I will watch his oth­er hand going to his pock­ets all the time .…

I am get­ting bored .…

I saw someone doing this already … fuck … don’t remem­ber where this was .…

Oh no … not anoth­er time … he squeezed the balls already under that oth­er cups somehow .…

I am bored … always the same .…

Why does he put the cups onto the table upside down? Such bull­shit … can­’t he place them the right way?

When is the last train leaving?

Gosh, I am bored … yeah yeah yeah … good for now … I know these pebbles some­how are here and then there …

Hope I get my train in time …

WOW! Where did these lem­ons come from? Hahaha … that was cute! WOW! lem­ons … the fuck … he squeezed the lem­ons into that cups … huuuuhhh …

Are they real?

Can I take them home? I will mix a cock­tail with them, hahahahaaa .…

No idea where the f****** lem­ons came from … but wait: they must have been in the cups from the begin­ning … aha! That’s it! easy … but he did that in a way I could­n’t see it …

maybe col­lapsible rub­ber fruit of some­thing like that … but they smelled real …

Okay, I have to go, gotta catch my train and I wanna see the Walk­ing Dead tonight …

Thank you, magi­cian, was a nice trick with those lemons.

I believe the prob­lem is not that the old tricks are bad. They are not. I believe the prob­lem is in the thought­less­ness and lazi­ness of the major­ity of magi­cians in not try­ing new ways and going dif­fer­ent dir­ec­tions, mim­ick­ing the old (proven and sol­id) principles.

Espe­cially the present­a­tions of most of the clas­sic tricks should be updated and made into more ori­gin­al ones. In some cases, they do the cups and balls using the very same words. Don’t believe me? Take a look:

P.S.: This vid is the work of Josh Sil­ver­stein, whom I would like to thank for that insight­ful work.

What a crap! The very same words over and over again, through all gen­er­a­tions (NOT Josh’s video is the crap – the pat­ter is) !!

Time to re-think for us?

Maybe … or stay safe with the his­tory. Stay in our safe com­fort zones …

Maybe we are on the wrong track, the way we treat magic present­a­tions these days …

🙂