CARDOPOLIS 32
EXPERIMENTS IN ESP, BLACKJACK INTUITION, AND A KING'S QUEST
Welcome to Cardopolis 32. Thank you to everyone who subscribed. This is the first issue available only to paid subscribers. For lack of a better name, I’ll refer to this as the Cardopolis Club. I’ll continue the Cardopolis numbering to make things easy for anyone keeping track of where various items are. Cardopolis Lab newsletters, which Club Club members also receive, will have their own numbering system.
MORE THAN MENTALISM
In this issue we look at a classic card matching effect. Hen Fetsch made the effect popular with his marketed effect Symbologic (1954). That trick used a special set of cards. Similar effects using regular cards were developed, the most notable being Brother John Hamman’s The Million-To-One-Chance in The Card Magic of Bro John Hamman (1958). What I didn’t know until recently is that Jack Yates preceded Hamman with his More Than Mentalism (Abracadabra, 22nd October, 1955). What I love about Jack Yates’ trick is that he has two golden rules that can be applied to many versions of this effect and make the whole process a lot easier. The Yates routine seems to have been completely overlooked.
One thing I’ve added to More Than Mentalism, is the Past, Present, Future concept. You’ll see what I mean in the explanation but the forming the cards into different piles has always been an awkward moment. If we change the task for the spectator, this explains why we are suddenly changing the procedure. It’s an idea you can apply to many versions of this trick including Zennerism.