Hi folks,

Here's some of my reviews and my favourites effects in Peter Duffie's 'Effortless Card Magic' book.

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This is an excellent book for the beginner to intermediate cardician. It contains over 75 easy to perform effects.

Most of the stuff in this book works either "automatically" or with just a few basic moves.

Subtlety is your best allied with most of these material. Peter even admits in his preface that to describe these effects (or any card effects, for that matter) as "self-working" would be misleading. "Self-working" would mean that we should be able to place the deck on the table, leave and have a cup of coffee, while the deck entertains the audience. Any effect, regardless of how simple it is to perform, requires your presentational skills to pull it off successfully. But I can tell you, this high-impact magic is truly effortless, easy, simple, etc.

Each effect is described, history and credit given, then explained in clear concise terms with supported by lots of drawings where necessary. Moves are described as needed within the trick not by reference.

Below are favorites:
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From Nowhere - A quick Royal Flush production where spectator does most of handling.

We can work it out - Quite similar to Dean Dill's 'Blizzard' effect. All the deck change to blank face except the selection.

Different Class - red/black transposition using a Mexican block turnover.

Weird Image - spectator freely cuts to card and selection appears written on back of another card.

Aces Take the Plunge - Four Ace production using Harry Lorayne's Plunger.

Lie Detective - excellent lie detector that uses a small stack and a deck reversal. I do this all the time and have altered the handling slightly (feel free to e-mail me if interested).

Vanished or Gone - spectator thinks of card and then finds that card is missing or gone from deck. This will get you those Blaine-like responses.

Torn, Fooled, and Sealed - Between your palms type effect involving transposition of cards.

Dream Machine - revelation of thought of card. Almost like this as much as Daryl's Untouched.

Backfire Poker - variation of Jim Steinmeyer ten card poker deal.

Diary of Delusion - takes some prep work (filling out 365 days) but is a really clever diary trick where the spectator freely shuffles cards before they are used in prediction.

An interesting use of that Principle - principle here being a Svengali deck used in a most ingenious way to predict a chosen card (probably not the way you're thinking of now).

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In a nutshell, I highly recommend 'Effortless Card Magic' book for anyone who wants to really entertain your audience with cards. Like I said, this is easy-to-perform, strong card magic. If you belong to the "School of Sleightless Card Magic", then this book is for you. Even if you were extremely adept with sleight of hand card magic, you would find this book useful for it's creative subtleties and deceptive methods.

This book is quite long available in the market already and sadly now, it's out of print, but if you don't have it or if you haven't heard of it, then it's going to be one of Card Magic's best-kept secrets.

The Price is $35.

Best Wishes,
Andrew

Man, andrew u sure read a lot of magic books man.. and yes peter duffie's book im sure are awesome. I should start reading and learning from books and e-books again. I miss those time of just reading esp when i first started magic. I was always so excited. Now thinking abt getting back to reading again. i just hope that i can understand some of the moves/sleights involved :). Well, if i dont understand, i will surely look for u Andrew.... card magic sifu :)

MagicB, you are mostly welcome! :P

Andrew