Price$15.00
Media TypeBook
CategoryClose Up
Date AddedMar 16, 2003
Deck Sterity
Lorayne, Harry
Robbins
(Based on 1 review)
Reviews
(Top ▲)
Unlike Personal Secrets (1964), or even My Favourite Card Tricks (1965), Harry Lorayne's first hardcover follow-up to the excellent Close-Up Card Magic (1963) gives one the sense of a meal comprised primarily of leftovers. I say this not to vilify Harry Lorayne (who is one of the most charismatic card magicians you will ever encounter), but rather to give the prospective buyer an idea of this particular book's place on the scale of Lorayne's more than 30 publications.
Thus, assuming that Close-Up Card Magic is at or near the top, and Trend Setters (1990) is feeding somewhere along the bottom, Deck-Sterity (1967) is more likely to be in the same area code as the latter than the former.
Naturally, that doesn't mean there is absolutely nothing of value here. "Mental Photography" is a great plot in which a blank-faced deck is introduced, then a spectator is asked to think of any card. Without revealing the name of his thought-of card, the blank-faced deck is spread, and one card is now seen to have a face -- the spectator's mental selection! From a real-world stand-point, one might get just as strong a reaction from Mark Leveridge's similar, self-contained "Brainstormer," and forego the "poor man's" card index and palming that one must employ with Harry's routine, but there is no question that the added effect of the chosen card being merely thought-of (and never named!) prior to its appearance is appealing, at least from a magician's stand-point.
"Stabbed in the Pack" is one of Harry's more novel contributions to card magic, an arresting effect in which an indifferent card thrown at a tabled deck slips neatly into the side of the pack. The pack is then cut where the tossed card resides, showing it to have landed directly beneath a chosen card!
"That Burns Me Up" is a strong vanish and reproduction of a lit cigarette that features, if not a wildly original method, at least some smart choreography leading up to the reproduction (this would go over particularly well as an impromptu trick at a bar).
"Modernized Slop Shuffle" is Johnny Benzais's approach to the Slop Shuffle Triumph, a handling that makes the shuffle look more convincing, but unfortunately relies on cutting to several natural breaks, a feat which many of us have learned works effortlessly during practice, but is often elusive in performance.
Finally, "Ten Card Poker Deal" (by far the best item in the book) is a hugely entertaining, dynamic routine in which ten cards culled from the deck are dealt into two poker hands in a multitude of ways, but somehow, the magician's hand always ends up winning. The effect uses an old principle, and it's virtually self-working, but Harry's routining transforms the hoary plot into a real reputation maker.
Apart from that, the reader is forced to wade through an array of mediocre moves and variations -- nothing great, nothing terrible - a double lift; a double drop; a bland location of three chosen cards; a labored two-card transposition; an uninspired color-change; a hackneyed selection reversal; a dry mathematical prediction effect; an approach to Paul Curry's "Out Of This World" wherein, couched as a memory stunt, the magician (not the spectator) determines which cards are red and which are black as they are dealt one by one and face down onto the table; a (I'm sorry -- there's just no other way to put this) bad method for Spectator Cuts To The Aces; a two-coin trick that, while functional, is the kind of routine just about anyone can slap together after a cursory reading of any basic coin-magic text; and so on.
So let's say you have no Harry Lorayne material in your library. Should you start with this? I would say only if you're looking for a version of the Ten Card Poker Deal. Otherwise, my advice is to start with Close-Up Card Magic, then give Personal Secrets a try. After that, you will likely be as hooked as the rest of us, and happy to discover that there are plenty of fine Harry Lorayne books left to choose from.
David Acer
Thus, assuming that Close-Up Card Magic is at or near the top, and Trend Setters (1990) is feeding somewhere along the bottom, Deck-Sterity (1967) is more likely to be in the same area code as the latter than the former.
Naturally, that doesn't mean there is absolutely nothing of value here. "Mental Photography" is a great plot in which a blank-faced deck is introduced, then a spectator is asked to think of any card. Without revealing the name of his thought-of card, the blank-faced deck is spread, and one card is now seen to have a face -- the spectator's mental selection! From a real-world stand-point, one might get just as strong a reaction from Mark Leveridge's similar, self-contained "Brainstormer," and forego the "poor man's" card index and palming that one must employ with Harry's routine, but there is no question that the added effect of the chosen card being merely thought-of (and never named!) prior to its appearance is appealing, at least from a magician's stand-point.
"Stabbed in the Pack" is one of Harry's more novel contributions to card magic, an arresting effect in which an indifferent card thrown at a tabled deck slips neatly into the side of the pack. The pack is then cut where the tossed card resides, showing it to have landed directly beneath a chosen card!
"That Burns Me Up" is a strong vanish and reproduction of a lit cigarette that features, if not a wildly original method, at least some smart choreography leading up to the reproduction (this would go over particularly well as an impromptu trick at a bar).
"Modernized Slop Shuffle" is Johnny Benzais's approach to the Slop Shuffle Triumph, a handling that makes the shuffle look more convincing, but unfortunately relies on cutting to several natural breaks, a feat which many of us have learned works effortlessly during practice, but is often elusive in performance.
Finally, "Ten Card Poker Deal" (by far the best item in the book) is a hugely entertaining, dynamic routine in which ten cards culled from the deck are dealt into two poker hands in a multitude of ways, but somehow, the magician's hand always ends up winning. The effect uses an old principle, and it's virtually self-working, but Harry's routining transforms the hoary plot into a real reputation maker.
Apart from that, the reader is forced to wade through an array of mediocre moves and variations -- nothing great, nothing terrible - a double lift; a double drop; a bland location of three chosen cards; a labored two-card transposition; an uninspired color-change; a hackneyed selection reversal; a dry mathematical prediction effect; an approach to Paul Curry's "Out Of This World" wherein, couched as a memory stunt, the magician (not the spectator) determines which cards are red and which are black as they are dealt one by one and face down onto the table; a (I'm sorry -- there's just no other way to put this) bad method for Spectator Cuts To The Aces; a two-coin trick that, while functional, is the kind of routine just about anyone can slap together after a cursory reading of any basic coin-magic text; and so on.
So let's say you have no Harry Lorayne material in your library. Should you start with this? I would say only if you're looking for a version of the Ten Card Poker Deal. Otherwise, my advice is to start with Close-Up Card Magic, then give Personal Secrets a try. After that, you will likely be as hooked as the rest of us, and happy to discover that there are plenty of fine Harry Lorayne books left to choose from.
David Acer