From Ring Reporter Peter Rodgers
Ring 102 Sydney NSW Australia – The Maurice Rooklyn Ring
Meets 3rd Tuesday Every Month at 7:30pm at Northside Chatswood Salvation Army Church Hall Cnr. Bertram and Johnson Street Chatswood. Dale Trueman President email daletrueman@me.com
Our June meeting was opened by Vice President Conway Restom in the absence of President Dale Trueman who was unable to attend tonight’s meeting. After discussing and announcing some past and future ring 102 events Conway welcomed our visitors and introduced Peter Rodgers who was hosting tonight’s meeting, “Pasteboard Prestidigitation”.
To start the night Peter performed Star Warp, a “Card Warp” variant using a dollar note and just one playing card published in Harry Lorayne’s Apocalypse magazine in 1980. Peter had added some of his own moves and some ideas of Mike Close. Peter then welcomed Lindsay Gardner who showed The Shuffle Prophecy, a version of Simon Aronson’s “Shuffle-Bored” using a small booklet to disclose the multiple predictions, some of which were wrong but everything worked out in the end. Our next performer was our hard working treasure Peter Wood with a nice routine of gambling starting with a two card transposition, then showing a hand of poker that appeared to be made up of five jokers which changed to five aces and then to a royal routine flush. With some gambling patter Peter showed how to get a great hand by dealing to himself off the bottom of the pack and then using methods claimed by Walter Gibson, Harry Lorraine and many others he dealt himself a Royal Routine Flush. To conclude his set Peter defeated Phuoc from the audience in a game of ten card poker.
Steven Bell asked who were fans of Star Trek the long established SciFi TV series. With related patter he had the audience raise his hand by telekinesis. He then invited three spectators up and performed a cards across routine with a “Beam me up Scotty” patter. Two chosen cards vanished from one packet of ten cards only to appear in the other packet. Our next performer was Joey Szabo, a well known family entertainer in Sydney who rarely performs at our meetings. Tonight he had cards chosen from two packs of cards, both cards proved to be identical. Conway Restom came back this time to perform. He explained how important it is that the cellophane wrapper around a new pack of cards should never be disposed of. He carefully removed the wrapper from his card case gently handing it to a spectator. The card case disappeared leaving Conway with just the pack of cards. The case proved to have transported to his jacket pocket. Conway then had the cellophane wrapper held by the spectator on his open palm. Conway then performed a version of the Last Trick of Dr Jacob Daley with the four kings. The two black kings were placed into the cellophane wrapper only to transpose with the two red kings. To conclude his set, Conway changed the complete deck into just the four kings.
Although Phuoc Can Hua claims that card magic is not his thing he always has something to perform. Tonight he started with a fan of cards that in a flash turned into a fan of jumbo cards. He then took a normal pack of cards, he cut the pack into three piles which were all shuffled and a card on the top of one pile noted by a spectator. The plies were again shuffled and assembled, however, Phuoc was successful in locating the chosen card. Daniel Shields had a novel presentation of the classic Triumph routine. He very cleanly riffle shuffled half the pack face up into the other face down half. He cut the pack in half handing one half to an assisting spectator. Both halves were shown to consist of face up and face down cards and Daniel challenged the spectator to a race to restore their respective halves so that all the cards were facing the same direction. The spectator was given a ten second start and finished before Daniel had even started. Daniel then showed that all his cards had magically restored themselves and yet the spectators cards were back to their topsy turvy mixed condition.
Anthony Dillon was next. Anthony had a card chosen and returned, it was found reversed. Anthony started to explain the method but it was just a sucker explanation with a surprise conclusion. He then had a card chosen, it was returned to the deck and four cards removed. Anthony apparently read the spectators mind and disclosed which of the four cards was the spectators. We had just witnessed a fine performance of One Card and Only One Card by Larry Hass. Following Anthony was John Kanawati who always amazes us with his performances. Tonight it was with just four cards, the ace, two, three and four of clubs. It started when the ace on being inserted into the middle of the packet repeatedly kept rising to the top of the packet, then the same with the two followed by many gyrations of the cards which finally changed to diamonds.This was John’s version of the Larry Jennings’ Ambitious Classic with borrowed elements from James Swain, Bebel, Bruce Cervon and Derek Dingle.
Stephen Miller was our next performer, Steve has an eye for great magic had a card chosen and signed by Conway, the card was very cleanly returned to the pack and all the cards were dumped into a paper bag along with the card case. On shaking the bag the chosen card managed to jump into the card case. This was Stephen performing one of the many effects possible with the JP Vallarino’s Unhanded.
Two of our performers tonight were visitors, the first was Daryl Vears. Daryl is from Perth WA and is a member of WASM. He started with the old effect of having a spectator cut the pack into four piles, three cards were taken from the top of each packet and a card dealt to the other piles. After this mixing the top card of each packet proved to be a king. He then took to cards out of his pocket and the spots from one card vanished and appeared on the back of the other. Chris Zhang our second visitor is a Sydney local, but this is his first visit to our Ring. We hope that it wont be his last as he proved his skill with the pasteboard’s. Chris commenced by going through the pack with a spectator to show that the cards were well mixed. He then performed a version of Out of This World without using any leader cards. His use of a cull and novel switch at the end were discussed by members later in the night.
Our host Peter Rodgers returned to fulfil his promise of teaching a card routine at tonight’s meeting. With his aim to get our members interested in reading books he taught two effects, “Ulterior” and “Bluff Oracle Aces” from John Bannon’s book, Destination Zero. His main aim is to highlight great authors and books but tonight he covered the Balducci (cut deeper) Force, retaining a stock of cards in a shuffle, an open cull, and the Ose False Cut. He recommended that anyone interested in these routine should either track down the book or purchase the video’s of the book which are still available from BBM in the United Kingdom.
Our last performer was Jack Sharp who commented he had only had a few minutes to prepare for tonight, but he proved to be the consummate entertainer by starting with a very funny joke. He had two cards, just mentally selected, one a red suit and one black. With a bit of telepathy he deduced the red card and then made the black card vanish from the pack to appear in his pocket. This was Jacks rendition of Leo Reed’s Divine and Conquer. He then showed his own excellent routine incorporating a colour changing deck with the chosen card appearing face up in another deck which just happened to be of the Brainwave variety.
Peter thanked all the performers for making our annual card night so successful and everyone helped themselves to the supper of tea and biscuits. Groups of magicians quickly formed to talk magic.
Sydney Magic Club 