Alex Elmsley was one of the great card magicians of the 20th century, credited with inventing many of the sleights magicians use today. In this video, we react to some of the best Alex Elmsley magic, including his famous ‘Dazzle‘ effect (one of the greatest packet tricks ever and required viewing for serious card magicians.)
You’ll also discover essential training on Alex Elmsley’s techniques from the CC Panel (the video is worth watching for this alone!)
Transcript:
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody, what’s up and welcome. I am Aaron Fisher and I’m joined here today by Adam, Alex and Steve from conjure community, the world’s best magic club. Now in today’s video, you’re going to get a taste of what a great magic club can offer you. So please do us a favor if you like what you see, hit the like button and also subscribe to this channel so you’ll be notified every time we go live with a new video. So Adam, what are we going to do today?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Yep, yup, yup. All right. So today we are going to look at some classic Alex Ellsley footage. Uh, very thankfully sent by one of our condor community members thought that we would be particularly interested in looking at this and talking about this a bit. If you do not know Alex Ellsley, you should, if you are a card magician, especially because he is known for inventing a couple of very famous moves that we use all the time in card magic. But we’ll get to that in just a moment. First, why don’t we take a look at one of the most famous acts that Alex Helmsley put out and I can’t wait to see you guys a reaction to this here. It’s called the dazzle act. Here we go.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
Thank you. Now this trick is one that I liked to do is the jokers, because in this streak, the values don’t matter. It’s the backs that matter and the backs are all blue. You see I’ve turned the middle joker over, but it has a blue back too. Now the turnover card in the middle is very important because any card turned over in that position has an effect on the others. And suppose I take one with a red bag and I put it turned over in the middle.
We hope you’re enjoying this discussion of Alex Elmsley magic. Remember, scroll up and check out the video above to see exactly what we’re talking about.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
Boom.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Back to the others changed to match. Yeah, it’s just the effect of the turnover joker in the middle of this one. Unfortunately, that trick goes on so long I won’t have time to do it, but instead I could show you a trick and trick. I take one with a greenback and I put it turned over in the middle and the backs of the others change to match.
Speaker 4 (02:04):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (02:07):
But that tricks over so quickly, it’s hardly worth doing. I used to do a trick and we try to talk a joke or the flower on the back and I put it turned over in the middle of Florida. Patrick’s so easy. I no longer didn’t the satisfaction of doing it much better as the trick in which I take a joker that has a bicycle on the back and I put it turned over in the middle and the backs of the others change to match, but that’s Citrix. So difficult, I can’t do it. I’m often asked that break in which I take a joke as it has a banjo on the back and I put it turned over in the middle at the backs of the others changed to match, but nowadays everybody knows how to. Patrick’s done more exclusive is the trick which I take a joke of.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
It has an elephant top of the back. And I put it turned over in the middle of the backs of the others change to match that trick. So exclusive, I don’t know how it’s done. An extra trick is the one which I take a juggle. It has a dental pattern back and I, it turned over in the middle and the backs of the others changed match, but like many excellent things that tricks old. So now I’m going to show you a completely new trick in which I take a joke that has a joker on the back. Oh. And I put it turned over in the middle. And not just the backs this time, but the faces of all of the other cars changed to match.
We hope you’re enjoying this discussion of Alex Elmsley magic. Remember, scroll up and check out the video above to see exactly what we’re talking about.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
[inaudible]
Speaker 5 (03:33):
can I get, uh Oh yeah,
Speaker 1 (03:36):
a lot of changes. It’s a lot of changes. It’s a pretty amazing sequence. It’s an S, you know, it’s a really a hardworking sequence. So I think one thing we need to be aware of, and we’re watching this, you know, what year did those books come out, Alex?
Speaker 6 (03:50):
They were mid nineties I think. 94 no, 1994 or five was the second one. So it might’ve been like 91 or two for the first one. Now that I’m thinking about it.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
So when Alex Helmsley, a lot of the first people that we ever knew that saw Alex Adams, we saw him during the seventies when he came out of retirement for the first time in 10 to 20 years to do this dazzle act, which is the core of it was, uh, that lecture was the act that we just saw and that was already, he’d been in vantage from the magic scene for a long time because Alexander Lee said that when he went to hang out with the famous American card and magicians, I think he was hanging out with him in New York. And I think he discovered during that trip that none of them were professional magicians and it crushed his dream of being a professional magician. So he disappeared for like 10 or 20 years. Then he came back and appeared in around 77 I think it was. And I’m totally making this up off the top of my head. And believe me, my memory is not what it used to be to do this dazzle act and then went into retirement again for the better part of 20 years before doing these lecture tapes. And that’s how you do it. That’s how you make out an act less the lifetime.
Speaker 5 (05:02):
It was the dazzle act and it was like this much of the book too. I, I love that book. But I mean there’s a lot of that book that’s to the dazzle act is a big chunk of that book
Speaker 6 (05:10):
and you need those cards, right? If you don’t have those cards you can’t play. So that was the other thing, like those came out on the market and that was a pretty big deal because you could actually do the trick from the outside book. Now I remember it was a, it was a big, a real big deal and we sold out real quick reprinted them. It was a whole thing.
Speaker 5 (05:25):
What’s the deal with this bridge size cards. Anybody know they’re smaller? Huh? You know, you know what Alex said that I think is, is really important and I think you made me think about this, is that a lot of times when something comes out on the market, like those cards, you got to buy them when they’re there because they’re going to go away and you know, you might find a set in an auction maybe or you know, so when some, when you get a chance to get something I’ve been buying like that’s what you said to me, Alex, you’re like, if there’s something want by like two or three
Speaker 6 (05:58):
really, and that’s conservative, right? Bob Reed was like, if you like it by a gross.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Yeah. So he is widely known to be like a genius, right? That goes account, which is one of the two ever-present aspects of this routine, uh, is Helmsley’s ghost count, commonly referred to as the Helmsley count. It’s probably the most fundamentally, uh, popular false count and display in, and certainly anytime you’re doing magic with just a handful of cards. Adam, did he ever call it him? Did he himself ever call it the only count really? Unclassy, you know, because what you’re actually doing is using your name in the first person, you know. So if I say I call this the Fisher lift, it just doesn’t play well at parties. If other people want to do that, you know my friend, you’re right, that Dasher, our buddy came up with a half past, uh, during a spread and he called it the grave turnover, but then Gary, we let decided to call it the Asher twist and that worked just fine. You know, so I don’t know. I haven’t, I don’t remember Pratt. Alex remembers whether, uh, the other Alex of his namesake uses the phrase Ellsley count in those tapes.
We hope you’re enjoying this discussion of Alex Elmsley magic. Remember, scroll up and check out the video above to see exactly what we’re talking about.
Speaker 6 (07:13):
I don’t know. He probably does on the tapes at some point, but I know that he was famous for calling it. It goes count. And it was the other magicians that were calling it the Helmsley count to pay tribute to their friend or their genius friend that came up with this thing. I remember a story of a, I think it’s burning, is hanging out with the guys like Charlie Miller and you know, other guys of that ilk. They’re all hanging out sessioning and Vernon as twisting the ACEs. No one’s seen twisting the ACEs and no one really knows the ghost count and he just floors. All these guys just nails them, shows them the trick and they’re all like, what? He’s like, alright, got to go to bed. See y’all in the morning. You just let them for the rest of the night. Just like looking at twisting years is trying to decipher what the hell just happened. Amazing. Just an amazing thing. I can pretty much reenact for you how the ghost count. Got the name, the Elm slate count. Are you ready for this? Here we go. Some guy in America is like, have you seen this thing that the guy does over uh, over from the UK where he does the, uh, the count, the count? What’s his name? I can’t remember the name of it, but his name is Elms Lee. So yeah. Have you seen this thing? This Helmsley count? That’s how it started, right?
Speaker 1 (08:24):
It was a small crew. It was a very small crew and it was a small crew then and there was a handful of guys in England. There was a handful of guys in America. Just the kind of thing that was ever seen. A kid from England, you know, he was like, look, look at this. Almost like child, you know? Interesting to note. I would say the other ever-present aspect of that video and that routine at anyone else spot the secret reversal.
Speaker 6 (08:50):
Oh, I was wondering what you would have to say about this much of a secret in that. Well,
Speaker 1 (08:56):
you know there’s, I will say this kind of routine gives a very good, first of all, there’s a really good lesson for us all to learn there about routines that ask you to do every move a move when there’s a routine that forces you to be doing move after move after moon. Notice he’s doing that on stage none. It’s lecture, stage style. And he was seated in those closeups. So he didn’t have any opportunity to say, I’ll take this one out and I’ll take this and I’ll place it in here. And then watch care. He didn’t have any of that opportunity because, and that would have given some shade. But even so, the construction is a difficult construction to play because the attention is never thrown to the audience. So what you have is a traditional half pass with traditional half past problems, right? These are the kinds of problems that was prevalent in a half past.
We hope you’re enjoying this discussion of Alex Elmsley magic. Remember, scroll up and check out the video above to see exactly what we’re talking about.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I dare say, uh, the one that I put in print, the gravity half pass and the paper engine was really quite productive in terms of getting rid of the visibility factor in it. Ellsley was covering it because notice that they have passed, had the same problems that it always has had. Helmsley was embedding it within the turnover. He’s sticking the card in, he’s doing the half pass and the covering action for that is turning the cards over even so you can see that the move wasn’t really designed to be done without misdirection. And of course very few moves are, you know, so I, I always get a little bit uptight if the construction I’m working with gets overburdened with several moves in a row and I don’t get to toss the attention ball to the audience before I do them. And in this case, you get to really see, you know, they stack up and once you start to looking at it, it starts to stick out to you and you start watching it a lot again.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
That’s the problem with video as problem with an old style half pass and a problem with conceivably the structure of a routine. You know, these days when someone’s going to do something on TV or on video, they structure the entire thing around that. But Alex Helmsley is a gentlemen of the old school and he’s performing the show the way he used to do it. He’s performing the act the way it was built and they could just record it however they wished. Although I can’t help but to think he would have been rather unplugged used to find those closeups on his hands. If you just had the whole picture while he was doing them, you would’ve seen it but you wouldn’t have seen it nearly as bad.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, they were like they’re zooming in right when he’s doing that, that turnover too like and then if you place it in zoom in turnover. So it was just kind of bad timing but, but the thing about the dazzle act is that screw the move and the effect is so astounding. I mean it really is a good one. How many color changes were there? Adam? Many.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
And it’s really interesting cause he probably had seven times or so or eight times. He changed every, all the colors of the cards and then just when you’re positive that that packet holds the secret that that packet has got shenanigans going on with the backs of those cards. He goes into this all faces phase where there are no backs of any kind, which is wonderful. Right? Cause the audience is probably pretty sure that you’ve got some tricky cards. Everything’s conceived so that you will, you’ve got these, what are they jokers? Yeah. And then you start pulling cards one at a time out of your pocket. So it’s all designed to lead you to go, how’s that happening? Well at least I know traditional magic way of thinking. At least I know that it’s the cards and that those are not regular cards. The backs are weird, the backs are weird.
We hope you’re enjoying this discussion of Alex Elmsley magic. Remember, scroll up and check out the video above to see exactly what we’re talking about.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
There are no backs. Yup. Yup. That’s right. And that’s a beautiful thing. You know, I would like to say the gravity half-ass can totally be done at with turning cards over his cover and it works. Just fine. Works great. Uh, it’s a good example of the thing we were talking about beforehand. Before we even started the recording, just about, uh, the riffle pass, we were talking a little bit about referral passes. And pardon me, I am not prepared for this, but if I stick that card in and I bring these hands together and I do the past, turning the cards over is the covering action for it. Right. But it doesn’t affect the way the move works. Does that make sense, Adam?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Marvelous. Yes, of course. It seems like if you would’ve just put a little bit more breathing room in there, a couple more gestures, maybe talking about what was on those backs, he could have had enough space that he could have had covered. Well, if you had a proper half pass at the time, he could have had complete cover on all those moves.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
I’d be very curious to know if he performed the dazzle act standing up because one of the main problems, uh, that is contributing to the trouble he’s having with that as in the dazzle act in this instance, is he seated while he’s doing a move that really would benefit from six, eight inches of movement?
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Right. Well, we luckily we have another example of a Alex Ellsley clip that is a little bit older that we’re going to look at next. And this may be much more satisfying to some of you guys and girls that are watching. So let’s check out this next thing by Alex Helmsley, the Mesta. Here he is.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
You know how Cod shops have romantic names like the Terry, his kid. I got the acquaintance who calls himself the incredible nerd. I don’t know him well enough to use his first name. So I called him mr nerd. Now he was very proud of a new car control he was trying to show me the other day. He took the pack and he caught one, two, three, four and five packets, turn them over. And there were 10 of hearts. Jack of hearts, queen of hearts, King of hearts, ACE of hearts, a Royal flush and hearts. Mome
Speaker 5 (14:59):
Whoa.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
I wasn’t very impressed. As I said to him, you took those cards straight out of the case, they’d never been shuffled. So he said, all right, uh, shuffle the cards and he shuffled the cards and then once more he cut and he cut. One, two, three, four, five packets, and once more he had 10 of hearts. Jack of hearts, queen of hearts, King of hearts, ACE of hearts. I thought that was a bit better, but I wasn’t going to admit it. So I said to him, one, shuffle a big deal in a real game, because get shuffled time after time. So he said, all right, then I’ll shuffle again. And he shuffled again. And he did show me the cards were well shuffled. Then again, he cut one, two, three, four and five packets. And again, you had 10 of huts, queen of hearts, King of hearts of hops.
Speaker 5 (16:12):
You know, he found his cards in a gift shop somewhere and he’s like, Oh, these will be perfect for my act Americans. And they’re quaint beer.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
I was quite impressed by it now. So I asked if I could have a gov. He wasn’t very willing, but at length he agreed. Trouble was, I didn’t know what he’d been doing. So all I could try was to imitate his actions. So I shuffled the cause and I made sure they were well shuffled, was legit. But then I caught, I caught one, two, three, four and five packets. Then I held my breath and hope for the best and I was pretty pleased with myself. He didn’t agree. He claimed he was very observed until it happened to notice that when we started, we were using cars from a pack with red backs and he offered to bet me that that flushing hearts came from a different pack to these others. Like I said, I didn’t know what I’d been doing, so I was in no position to stop making bets. I thought the only thing I could try was to take out that flushing parts and could actually look at them. Yeah. [inaudible] sure enough, they came from a different pack. I got out of it cause I applied get out to him. He hadn’t been caught. He’d, because from that packet he’d been cutting them from this packet. So if the flushing house was sort of the same pack as this, there was no problem.
We hope you’re enjoying this discussion of Alex Elmsley magic. Remember, scroll up and check out the video above to see exactly what we’re talking about.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
Yeah. Yeah. You know, a lot of it, when you read those Helmsley books, a lot of his plots revolve around the idea of switching to packets. It’s amazing how much of his material had to do with secretly switching to packets,
Speaker 1 (18:04):
you mean effect wise or method wise?
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Method wise and effect wise. I mean he a lot of tricks with small packets but, but this idea that, you know, that was, that would always be the method for accomplishing the big finale was the switch of the packets and to make the audience not think that you would switch packets, but what, you know, what are you going to say about that? That tricks just great. You know,
Speaker 1 (18:25):
I’m just gonna I’m just gonna quickly pose to the panel. That trick is sensational, Alex and I’ve never seen it before and they really just was wonderful. Uh, I think I actually like it, uh, better than dazzle.
Speaker 6 (18:37):
I kinda like it better than dazzle too.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Two. Yeah. And that’s what I was very, I was actually thinking the same thing now we most like, what is this trick and can I still get it? Yeah. It’s all, they’re both very clearly magician’s magic. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. But you know, we, we all like some magicians magic more than others, you know, uh, I guess, I guess it’s the devil, you know. Right? Like which do you prefer? Eight, eight, half fatties uh, the followed by elderly counts or, or like eight Pharaoh shuffles
Speaker 6 (19:11):
a Farrow shuffle doesn’t seem like it’s a move on the surface to me. So it seems safer and that, you know, the dazzle act, it definitely has like the flavor of being like, like a 1970s construction to a magic trick. You know, like you said, every move and move and that’s, you know, modern magic is not created in that way. There’s much more cover. There’s, you know, moments that are happening, there’s interactions that’s happening and all these things are opportunities to hide and all of this technology that like, you just like, all right, I’m going to do the thing and it’s just awkward right there. The whole time I removed. That’s a not my stop.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
You know, another thing too about Helmsley style. And when you read his books, his pattern like you, you noticed it with those two tricks, like his pattern was always very similar in all the tricks he did. He would sort of tell a story, but the story would have to do with him cutting cards or something. So, and you know, in one story you’d be like, I met a guy one time and he told me cut the cards into three piles and now the guy said, well, turn the top card over. And he smacked me on the jowls. Golly. I said to him, and we’ll count three cards. One, two, three. It turned out with the fourth, you know, so he always had a bit of like instructive, uh, uh, pattern going on. And, um, and that’s, that’s how he just, uh, handled patter. Really. Some of the most amazing tricks in that
Speaker 1 (20:28):
book are so involved procedure, heavy, lot of procedure, a lot of slight of hand, lot of configurations and wild card to pocket sequences, which will blow your mind if you see them. Uh, but they require an awful lot of expositional pattern. Like I think, I think, I think to him the, and the method were really the thing and I’d not separating those two. I’m not saying the effect and the method, I’m saying the effective method was the thing and the presentations were set up to make it a work any which way he could. No, I have not thought about that Aaron. But I bet you’re right. You are right. Because the, the really the, it’s a pattern didn’t instruct. Uh, if it didn’t have a bit of that in it, then you could get easily lost in, in all that process. Think about all those cards that got to get moved around just to get things set up for that last thing. Cause you know, I think we can say fairly, he’s got about half the deck out and then, and we know what’s going on with those cards. We know that we’ve got roughly five different cards of each of four different back designs or five. So it’s 20 to 25 cards and there’s probably five large cards left over for cover. And then there’s like another 20 to 25 cards that are all in the other color back. Right. I mean, so
Speaker 6 (21:50):
the big couple red cards on top,
Speaker 1 (21:51):
right. So, so at the end he’s got to get those green cards out and get everything all Shanana gated. Then he’s got to get that deck with a couple of cuts. He’s got to get what seems like it might be the same packet, little time, mr. Action back to his right. You know, and so he could do that big finish. So if you just take that one example of all the things that got to get moved around, you know, three cards, this card, that card. And you know, that’s why he’s always meeting a bunch of magical strangers who are asking to do a bunch of silly things that you wouldn’t possibly do unless some weird man who was showing you a trick asked you to do them. And since you don’t want to make you that guy, cause you can’t get the spectator to do those weird things. So you have to be the guy that had to do them and therefore some weirder guy had to ask you to do them and and that’s pattern you navigated.
We hope you’re enjoying this discussion of Alex Elmsley magic. Remember, scroll up and check out the video above to see exactly what we’re talking about.
Speaker 6 (22:44):
That’s sharing with cards. I points you with this card so I can put it on the bottom.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
My favorite line was he said, and I, he agreed at length to let me shuffle the cards. Uh, what are y’alls favorite Helmsley creations that are for the lay folk? I’m going to say for me it’s between the palms. That’s my favorite Helmsley trick. Alex,
Speaker 6 (23:09):
I must admit that I was totally enamored with the original Ford card trick. Like the first trick that Helmsley explains with the, with the Emsley count with the blank face cards and the joker that has the odd back. I used to do that trick all the time. I thought it was one of the great packet tricks. But once I got into magic I, I became sort of enamored with this cups and balls routine and I sort of launched off of that to another place. Specifically, I fell in love with his load sequence that he has because he has a thing that he calls a loose load where the cups all end up full of salt and it’s just loose grains of salt and it’s just big mound of salt for the load when you’re done with the cups and balls and it’s, I don’t know, I think it transcends what cups and balls is when it’s, when that’s, you know, when you have final loads like fruit or something like that, it like gets away from the magic trick part that happens before you get to those final loads. And I think that’s pretty brilliant thinking even even by today’s standards, I think that’s still a pretty brilliant notion. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Yeah. There was one in his, uh, there was one in his book that I literally love and I worked on it forever when I was 18 years old. And it, the plot is, I can’t remember the title of the trick, but the plot, it’s in the, it’s in the first book and the plot is you have someone select a card from a one half of the deck which has all a red cards, right. And then that card goes back in and it travels over to the black half and it’s right there. That gets which buddy? Well, it is. Yeah. And but, but it’s a, the plot is really easy to follow, you know, and um, the moves however, are not the, none of it is easy. I can’t remember the, I wish I could remember the name of the trick because it was, I probably wasted a good three to six months of my life trying to work on that one.
Speaker 6 (24:58):
I just remembered another one that I used to be really enamored with and was playing with different methods to track because it sort of ended dirty the way that Alex explains it in the book. But there’s a great trick that he has that duplicates what the brainwave deck is, where you have a fan of cards, the cards we’re thinking of as the one that’s reversed in the deck, right? And he called it brain leave and used Barrow shuffle. If you have the Alex Helmsley books, go look up randomly right now. You will be so happy to play with that trick. It is so much fun and it’s, if you can do a basic Pharaoh, it doesn’t have to be a perfect Pharaoh. If you can do a basic Pharaoh, you can create a real mind Buster with this. Uh, with this trip. It’s really good
Speaker 1 (25:35):
if you happen to be learning Faro shuffle, uh, the Alex Adams book is one of the most important books you’ll ever find because, uh, it has an entire chapter of volume two. And while you have as an entire chapter on how to correct pharaohs, where you get extra cards at the top or the bottom, so you can just continue the Pharaoh, you don’t have to stop and change it. You can just correct, correct it by doing a quick go overhand sequence. That’s really easy to do afterwards. And so that’s one of the major crutches, uh, that you’ll ever find for some traveler and how to do a fair shot.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
Those are heavy books. So they are, they’re heavy book to book one’s free book. One’s got, I think more more of the, uh, classic plot stuff in it, isn’t it? Book two, that’s more,
Speaker 1 (26:20):
yeah. Pointed departures in volume one, the Helmsley counts and volume, wine dazzles and volume two there are notes is invaluable. So very traditional magic to volume, magic book structure,
Speaker 2 (26:34):
two volume book, magic structure.
Speaker 6 (26:38):
They’re killer books though. There’s so much good stuff in there. No, they’re not in the store. We gotta get the, I don’t even
Speaker 7 (26:44):
know if they’re in stock. It’s not out of print. A long time ago. Long time ago. Yeah. You got to, you have to pay for them. Clever enough books that we could actually sell. I mean, we’re not, we’re not that clever cleverness. It has to do with magic companies not staying on, well, they’re leaving money on the table, aren’t they? Think of all the folks who would love to buy those books. Right now? No, I think it’s more like we just picked these videos because we thought they were cool. Not that we thought, you know,
Speaker 2 (27:14):
sometimes cool is unavailable. You know there’s a lot, there’s a lot of magicians though. When you, when you look at all your magicians, who we think of today as like our modern masters, and you ask them who are their main inspirations? You’re always the name Alex Elms. Lee’s always going to come up. It just always is because he was responsible for so much. So many great discoveries in card magic. So this next clip we’re going to watch is somebody who definitely was inspired by Helmsley but has a, you know, become a somewhat of a folk hero himself, right? So I’m interested to get you guys’ reaction to one of our very favorites, Mr. Michael. I are doing, wow. I’m not going to spoil it. Here it is.
We hope you’re enjoying this discussion of Alex Elmsley magic. Remember, scroll up and check out the video above to see exactly what we’re talking about.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Did you ever hear that?
Speaker 8 (28:09):
If I say it went up his sleeve, the trick is up the magician slave. You ever heard that sort of thing? You hear? The professor told me once, that’s the greatest lie ever told by a magician was that it went up asleep because everybody’s looking up the magician sleep and while you all are looking there, we’re just doing it all someplace else. I show you what I mean by that. Just to see if you can stop me at a nice soundbite. Just say stop any way you want right there. Let’s see. Ooh, close, close. That’s actually, that’s what the K stands for. It is close.
Speaker 8 (28:40):
Let’s see over here. Oh, just missed, which is what the J stands for. Justice. Let’s say I wanted a nice, see, I could actually go to my sleeves, but I wouldn’t use the inside like everybody thinks. What you do is you use the outside of this sleeve and you get them in a magical sort of way. That’s the first one. The great thing is it’s ambidextrous. See if I do it over here, I get one over there as well. Works every single time, so that’s two of the ACEs that we need. That’s the ACE of diamonds. That’s the ACE of hearts. Let’s see if we can’t go back for clubs and spades this time. I’ll do it a little different. Just down here a touch and there you go.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Nice camera.
Speaker 8 (29:20):
Let’s see if I do it again, but just to rub. And there you go. And we get all four ACEs. Maybe you’d like to see it in your very own hands. All at your one hand flat there for me. Here’s what I’ll do. I’ll place the ACE of clubs into it now. Just give it a little bit of shake and it comes all the way to the back, even while it’s in your own hands. That’s pretty neat, isn’t it? Works every time. Let’s see here. Let’s see if we can,
Speaker 5 (29:52):
you know, I just like to say real quick before we move on that we have a killer, uh, teach on that in the backroom. Speaking of you guys, if any of you guys really like that, conjure community members, if you like it, you should check it out. We’ve got some cool, uh, variations of that anyway. Uh, yeah. Okay. Alright. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s keep going. Fine. Fine. Here we go.
Speaker 8 (30:22):
Uh, I end up doing something exactly the opposite of what you’ve just seen. Uh, I’ll show you what I mean by that. I, if I place three cards on top of each one of these ACEs, it doesn’t matter what’s cards we use, but I’m want to minimize that entire movement. So there’ll be no confusion. We’ll eliminate the rest of the deck and we’ll try and accomplish that same sort of thing. Three cards on top of each one of the ACEs. There we go. Now you saw that, uh, I used a certain counter-clockwise, uh, action. Now if I use the opposite action, see if I actually go clockwise. The ACEs now vanish. You see we started with the ACEs over here. But now, just like this, the first day says, vanished. Now you may not have known what to expect that time, but now you’ll know what to look forward. And if you are paying attention on those, something particularly interesting, see, the ACEs are not actually disappearing. See, what they’re doing is they’re changing. See, we started with three cards. We still got three cards, but the ACEs are changing.
We hope you’re enjoying this discussion of Alex Elmsley magic. Remember, scroll up and check out the video above to see exactly what we’re talking about.
Speaker 5 (31:36):
Dang, that looks so good. I just want to say that little good. It looks like real magic, huh? Yeah.
Speaker 8 (31:42):
And we’ve still got those three cards that we started with, but the ACE has gone now if you have a good memory for cards, you can even remember the cards that we’re starting with. In this case, the uh, the nine, the seven and the eight. Now if I add the ACE to it and I give it that little reverse motion, just like that, now we’ve still got the eight. We’ve still got the seven, we still got the nine, but that A’s why it’s changed into a different card. One more to go, you know exactly what to look for. All I do is give it that little clockwise action and those ACEs completely disappear. Nothing over here. So we started with three,
Speaker 5 (32:30):
thank God he’s called spelling Collins ACEs. So I guess I’m not alone in being totally curious on, on tenterhooks figuring out how this is going to end. Right. What could happen next? Yo, yo, how, how old is how, what, when was this shot? Anybody? No, no, this is like mid nineties. Maybe even like seven 98 maybe. Cause that man was on top of his game. I mean he still is but, but, but that gun man, I always watching, you know, he, he’s always watching me. He’s got a camera in my room. Oh that’s creepy. Yeah. Does your mom know I come into your room, mr knows things. You guys have to be careful. He knows things. That is creepy. Um, alright, so here we go. Check it out.
Speaker 8 (33:30):
Three cards over here. We still got three cards and a different card.
Speaker 8 (33:36):
Surely you’re thinking yourself. They must have gone someplace perhaps to the rest of the deck and want to give you a choice. Two, three, four, five or six six six one, two, three, four, five, six cuts. Now let’s see if we can spell a C E O F S P a D E S and just like that, that’s the first one. Good job. Now the ACE of clubs spells with 10 letters. I know that because I spelled it just before I came out and if I cut just like that, that should be a C E O F C L U. V S Hey, I got lucky now. There’s a couple more ACEs left. Let’s see. Let’s go for a one of the longer spelling ones. That would be the AC, E, O, F, D I. A M O, N, D. S. And there we go. There’s the ACE of diamonds. Now at this point you may be saying yourself, well, Michael, what if I can’t spell? And that’s a good question. In this case, let’s, uh, let’s count down nine. That’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. And that’s all for ACEs.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
[inaudible]
Speaker 5 (34:54):
well, beautiful middle of that trick yet it is. That’s like, we talk about the openers, middles and clothes. That’s a great example of a middle right there, isn’t it a beautiful middle. It’s got that pacing. It’s got that timing is up already. Your role in your role and your role is and your role and you know, yeah, yeah. I’m curious to see what he’s going to do next. Frankly. The old Jim. All right, here we go. Adam, just set that to music. Can you see that? Yeah. Alright.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
[inaudible]
Speaker 8 (35:33):
but as long as we’ve got the ACEs out, I’ll show you something that actually, uh, puzzles me. Uh, I want to take, uh, let’s see, one, two, three, four here and show you exactly what I mean. In spite of the fact that clearly we only have four cards and the ACEs, uh, you know, have been used already. What I don’t understand is if I take the ACE of spades and I place it onto the bottom and I give it a little bit of a like this, the ACE of spades comes back to the top. I’ll do it again. You see, if I take the ACE and I place it onto the bottom, give it a little snap. It comes back to the top. Now what I don’t understand about it is the fact that I put the ACE anywhere into the pack and I give it that little magical movement.
Speaker 8 (36:23):
It comes back to the top. I could put it onto the table and still it comes back to the top. Now what I really don’t understand about this is that this is called the four 10 of hearts Trek. That’s what I don’t understand about it, and I’m thinking why should it be called it the the the 14 on heart strip? Because I put the ACE down into here and I, and it comes back to the top. Sometimes I put it down to the bottom, I give it a little magic move and it comes back to the top. Sometimes I put it onto the table and it still, it comes back to the top. So why should it be called the four 10 of heart strip? Now the reason that it’s called the for 10 of heartstrings is because I use a one 10 of hearts. I use two 10 of hearts. I use a three 10 of hearts and I use four 10 of hearts. That’s one reason why I would call it the 10 of hearts trick, but that’s not why I’m confused as to why I’m confused is because this trick is actually done with a King and it’s done with a second King. It’s done with the third King and a fourth King. That’s why I don’t understand why it’s called the four 10 on heart strick,
Speaker 2 (37:30):
snap. Boy you’re, and you’re one of your, is it your, in your book, you’ve got a great count that, that shows that that four for one count, what’s that called, Aaron?
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Uh, well that was the, it’s got a real sexy name called diminishing lift sequence that’s hot. No one fell in love with it and named it after you hot the Aaron Fisher or the lip sequence slope. Certainly not that I would say. That’s right. The Fisher sequence, the Fisher count. There’s so many sequences that would have that name. You know, it’s difficult
Speaker 2 (38:08):
that we’ll have to choose that last, uh, sequence though. Like when he, when he shows those as ACEs, then he shows them as Kings and then they’re, what were they after that? Oh, tins are ACEs, tens then Kings. I mean, for a spectator who’s just watching that, they have to be mind blown. You’re looking at, you’re looking at those cards, do you know there’s only four of them. There’s no mistaking that. And so the rest of all of that illusion, all of the stuff that’s happening and the way he orchestrated, it’s really pretty brilliant. Pretty, pretty brilliant. Thinking there
Speaker 7 (38:40):
and it’s in the back room for members. Go check it out. You could learn that. You know what I like about it though? Like I look at that whole sequence there and that’s card magic. It’s not card tricks. It’s like unexpected things are happening. It’s not like anything, any lay person ever saw uncle Bob do at the Thanksgiving dinner table. It’s like next level type stuff, you know? And it’s not that hard. It says professional card magic when you see a return, like, right. Like that’s the kind of trick where if someone knows a card trick, that’s when they just shut up. They’re just like, yeah, I know a country, but whatever. I have no idea what that was. Yeah. That was my card magic, you know? Exactly. Yeah.
We hope you’re enjoying this discussion of Alex Elmsley magic. Remember, scroll up and check out the video above to see exactly what we’re talking about.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
No mistaking at all. No mistaking. How’d you guys like that? Did you guys like that routine? Put a one in chat if you, uh, yeah, yes, you’re right. William. Mr does have this, this relayed back aura. He, I love his, his laugh too. He’s got this, this great mrs always has this great laugh that you’ll notice when he performs magic. He’s constantly like kind of laughing with alone with his audience, you know, really puts them at ease. It’s just a nice guy too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He came, he came here to conjure community and did a huge lecture for us where he told some amazing stories, showed some amazing magic. Uh, it was just a, it was a really incredible night. That was one of our, one of our best ever, uh, lectures that we’ve ever had or living room lectures, a condor community.
Speaker 6 (40:13):
I, uh, I added an ambitious card routine move right out of that lecture to the night that I saw it. There was this, this, uh, Sakowitz Jerry Sakowitz move that I had never seen someone described before. I think I’d experienced it before. I had no idea what it was. But for those that are interested, go watch that Amor lecture. There’s a, in addition to many other things that great moves in there. I added it to my ambitious card routine right away because it’s just
Speaker 2 (40:36):
killer. So we just see it was, did he do it?
Speaker 6 (40:39):
No, no, it wasn’t in there. It’s in our lecture though. It’s in the back room here at CC so we have it. But uh, I’ll leave it at that if you have any questions hit me up but I’m sure you’ll be able to find it
Speaker 2 (40:50):
cause he’s got that great that the diminishing lift or the the the lift at the end. He’s got that great frustration count in there and then he’s got a couple of different variations in the, in the lift sequence to where he, you know, once he does the flip over on the last, the third and fourth card and the other time he shows both hands that way. And I didn’t quite even catch what he did. I just knew it was a variation. You know, it wasn’t a bluff. Was he bluffing on one of them? Like
Speaker 6 (41:16):
no, he, it’s that Gemini count. You’re doing the Gemini, it’s like a double from the S from the center, then a double from the bottom and then you’re showing the singles and they are the duplicates of the one you just showed. So it’s using that brother John Hammond rights to make that beautiful little sequence happen. And it gets in the backroom. We covered that gem and account pretty heavily so you can, uh, if you, if you want those trick, it’s there. The information is there for you to learn it. That’s for sure.
Speaker 9 (41:40):
All right, so I’ve got another clip. Which one should we watch?
Speaker 6 (41:43):
Why don’t you go to the, to the next one? Skip that. Skip the, the, the four minute one and go to that two minute 43 one.
Speaker 9 (41:50):
Okay, good. Good, good, good. All right, so this is another one here. We’ll just watch it. I won’t have to tell you much about it.
Speaker 6 (41:55):
This, this is fun. This is really fun. Is this Michael Lamar? No, this is a, this is perception and this is, there’s a couple of these in here that are just going to be nice, fun things that are, I think are great for everybody, but as magicians you guys are gonna love them just a little bit more. I think it’s the magic islands.
Speaker 9 (42:12):
I’m Richard. This is Sarah. Are we good? Amazing color changing? What’s that?
Speaker 6 (42:17):
We don’t have it on your, on your screen there. Oh, whoops. Let me try that again. You saw the background on your desktop there. Okay, beautiful. That’s it.
Speaker 9 (42:27):
All right. Thanks. Trick with this blue back deck of cards. Now the idea is very simple. I’m just going to spread the cards in front of Sarah and ask her to push any card towards the camera. Okay. Now Sarah could have selected any card. Thanks for the crimp.
Speaker 6 (42:54):
[inaudible].
Speaker 9 (42:56):
Oh, that’s funny. All the tool from the deck, but she selected the card which is now face down on the table. Alton going to ask her to do is show us which card she selected. What do you think it was? In fact, I think she’s in on it. I’m not sure, but she could be. How heavily scripted is this? Just wait guys, you’re going to get your heads blown off here in a second. The three of diamonds. Okay, excellent choice. That card goes back into the deck. Now I’m just going to spread the cost face up on the table, do a little click of the fingers and you’ll see that Sarah’s card here has now got a blue back. Not particularly surprising. What’s slightly more surprising is all of the other cards have got red backs. That is the amazing color changing copter.
Speaker 6 (43:48):
Now wait a second. You’re, you’re about to get your head blown off here. He’s going to show you how it all happens, so pay attention and don’t lie. You’re going to love this. It’s going to blow your mind. Okay?
We hope you’re enjoying this discussion of Alex Elmsley magic. Remember, scroll up and check out the video above to see exactly what we’re talking about.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
[inaudible].
Speaker 9 (44:16):
Hi, I’m Richard. This is Sarah. Are we going to perform the amazing color changing card trick with this blue back deck of cards? Now the idea is very simple. I’m just going to spread the cards in front of Sarah and ask her to push any card towards camera. Oh my God. Okay. Now Sarah could have selected any card at all from the deck, but she selected the card, which is now facedown on the table. I’m going to ask us to do is show us which card she selected. Three of diamonds. Okay, excellent choice. That card goes back into the deck. Now I’m just going to spread the cost face off on the table. Do a little click of the fingers and you’ll see that Sarah’s card here has now got a blue back. Simply surprising. What’s slightly more surprising is all of the other cards have got red backs. That is the amazing color changing copter and had a good card trick work, Sarah. Let’s check it out.
Speaker 6 (45:35):
Watch it. Watch it from the beginning again. Yeah, totally. Totally. Yeah. See if you can spot them.
Speaker 9 (45:40):
This is Sarah. Are we good to perform the amazing color changing card trick with this blue back deck of cards? Now the idea is very simple. I’m just going to spread the cards in front of Sarah and ask her to push any card towards the camera. Okay. Now Sarah could have selected any card at all from the deck, but she selected the car, which is now face down on the table or to go to ask her to do is show us which card she selected. The card that I chase was in fact the three of diamonds, the three of diamonds. Okay, excellent choice. That card goes back into the deck. Now I’m just going to spread the cost face up on the table, do a little click of the fingers and you’ll see that Sarah’s cars here has now got a blue back. Not particularly surprising. What’s slightly more surprising is all of the other cars have got red backs. That is the amazing color changing card.
Speaker 6 (46:50):
That’s pretty fun. She has the, can I speak to the manager hair? Somebody. Somebody noticed the gorilla sitting over on the side too. I think that must be a callback to the, to the that there’s a very famous gorilla test. Uh, yeah. If we make it, it’s at the end. I put it in just for fun. If we, if we had time for it, maybe we would handle it another time. But uh, but definitely do these other two from him. They’re really, really fun. Like this. I, I’m, I think that stuff is so cool. I love Richard Wiseman.
Speaker 9 (47:22):
Alright. Alright. Alright. Thank you. Gracie. The gorilla was the only thing I did get.
We hope you’re enjoying this discussion of Alex Elmsley magic. Remember, scroll up and check out the video above to see exactly what we’re talking about.
Speaker 6 (47:26):
Yeah, I know. I didn’t see, I didn’t see any of that.
Speaker 5 (47:30):
We, we as magician, we were so focused in on the method, like I’m watching method, method, method, method, method. I want method. Um, alright, so hard cause he knows that’s what you’re looking for. You’re not saying, is that the one? I’ll just play the assumptions in the next one. The other, the gorilla thing we can get to another time, but these other ones are fun. We should get those in because they’re really cool and people might not have seen these ones. Okay. All right. All right. Check it out. Here comes 10. Tell me if you can see the, uh, Oh grace. Hold on a second. Sorry. Here we go. We’ll try it again. There we go. Here we go. That last one’s just a really, he’s just giving you the finger with that one. It’s pretty good. It’s pretty good. This next one we might want to watch a couple of times. This next one’s pretty good. It’s got a lot going on and there’s, well, I’ll just let it play. Okay. Alright, here we go.
Speaker 10 (49:29):
[inaudible]
Speaker 4 (50:07):
[inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]
Speaker 10 (50:32):
[inaudible]
Speaker 4 (50:43):
[inaudible]
Speaker 10 (50:54):
[inaudible] [inaudible]
Speaker 4 (50:55):
it’s a giant [inaudible]
Speaker 2 (51:08):
well, production value, right?
Speaker 10 (51:16):
[inaudible]
Speaker 4 (51:36):
[inaudible]
Speaker 10 (51:37):
wow.
Speaker 4 (51:55):
Consistent sound. [inaudible]
Speaker 2 (52:13):
that’s some of the most astonishing, wonderful things I’ve ever seen.
Speaker 6 (52:15):
Yeah. Awesome. Right?
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Never seen any of that. No. I never have. Wow.
Speaker 6 (52:23):
Success
Speaker 2 (52:26):
find Alex. That’s really good. Is there more, is there more of his stuff?
Speaker 6 (52:31):
Uh, there, those are the best of his stuff. The other stuff sort of has some redundancy to this, but this was the stuff that I knew was going to get you guys.
Speaker 2 (52:43):
Yeah. I love that. I love that altered perception. Uh, optical illusion. Like, I mean, who doesn’t, right? Like there is so much, if you Google optical illusions there, there are so many great optical illusions that you can find online that really mess with your head. But the one that I really think I love the most in terms of performing in front of an audience is that one where you spin the disk and then you watch the spectators head, uh, grow,
Speaker 6 (53:08):
growing and shrinking yet illusion. Yeah. That, that disc is amazing. Right? And it’s just built in, it’s hardwired into our brain and someone just found the way to manipulate it so that it’s a magic trick. That’s amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:21):
Um, cool. He has a YouTube channel called quirk ology. What’s his name again? Richard Richard Weisman. Richard Weisman. Go check out Richard Weitzman’s YouTube channel called quirk. Ology is there.
Speaker 6 (53:32):
He spends his time working out like why, why humans can even experience magic. He’s more of a scientist than he is a magician, but he’s also a magician and he’s also heavily featured in that, uh, movie. Our magic, that documentary that was put out on magic a few years back. He has one of those little vignettes on there too. And uh, he’s just wonderful. He has a great book called magic and theory where he sort of breaks down why magic does what it does. He’s just, you know, just, just cool stuff to be out there in the world for people that are even just kind of interested in magic on the periphery. I think Richard sort of services that, uh, that, that little tick on your brain, you know, it’s really, really cool.
Speaker 4 (54:08):
Hmm.
Speaker 2 (54:09):
Yeah. Mira says he’s a psychologist. That would make sense. There you go.
Speaker 4 (54:13):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (54:14):
Another successful showing my friend.
Speaker 2 (54:18):
Yeah. Well good. We have a jam session starting next. Uh, and uh, guys, listen. If, uh, if you had fun today, take a moment. Do us a favor. Hit that like button down below the video, which tells you too, we’re doing a good job with these videos and remember a Contra community, we do these live member jams, special lectures several times a week. If you’ve never tried out a proper magic club, then there’s a link in the description where you can learn more about why we are the best magic in the world magic club in the world. I can hardly get that out. We’ll see you on a Thursday for the next afternoon. Astonishment.
We hope you enjoyed this discussion of Alex Elmsley magic. Remember, scroll up and check out the video above to see exactly what we’re talking about.