You’ve probably never heard of Lewis Cohen. That’s not surprising, considering he was born over 200 years ago. Cohen was the first person to make lead pencils in America, and he invented a four-color printing process that revolutionized the manufacture of playing cards in the late 1830′s.

A son and two nephews of Lewis Cohen merged their respective playing card companies in 1871 and became the Consolidated Card Company. Calling themselves the New York Consolidated Card Co. a few years later, the group became a leading producer of playing cards in a very short period of time.

The term “squeezers” appears to have come out of the New York Consolidated group, although it’s impossible to tell which of the cousins was using it first before merging. Squeezers refers to the relatively recent invention of putting indices at the corners of the cards. That allowed the players to ascertain the value of their hands by merely “squeezing” the cards apart slightly. The name became synonymous with all NYCC cards after 1873.

In 1877, New York Consolidated made a distribution pact with the Andrew Dougherty Co. To commemorate the two rivals working together, NYCC issued a deck showing two dogs, “Trip” and “Squeezer” trying to attack one another, but being restrained by chains attached to their doghouses. The back design represents the fact that the two companies were competitive rivals but were not going to “attack” one another due to the agreement they had made (the chains). The caption under the image reads, “There is a tie that binds us to our homes.” This back design has been reissued several times over the years.

In 1892, NYCC produced the first cards under the Bee brand. Although most magicians are only familiar with the standard No. 67 “all-over” back design, there were actually quite a few backs made under this brand.

Over a dozen back designs were produced in various quantities in the late 1800′s.

The Bee No. 67 is the only back design that has never been out of print and continues to be the casino “standard” playing card back. Apart from two minor alterations, it has remained essentially unchanged for over a century. The first alteration was the addition of casino logos on the backs. The second is the “fade-to-edge” process that was first seen on Stinger playing cards marketed to casinos. theory11 produced the first Stinger cards available to the non-casino market in 2009.

2013 marks the 121st anniversary of the Bee back design. They trace their heritage back through USPCC, through New York Consolidated, and indeed all the way back to Lewis Cohen.

Take a few minutes to break out a deck of Bee cards this week and tip your hat to Mr. Cohen for making it all possible for us.

Editor’s Note: This article is the 12th in a series by Jason England: MYSTERIUM. Each article will be posted on Wednesday at 11:00am EST – every post on a different subject. This week, Jason discusses the legendary Georges Méliès – magician, performer, and filmmaker in the late 19th century.

Mysterium: Georges Méliès

There have been a handful of movies over the past decade that feature magic in a prominent role. The Illusionist and The Prestige were both released only a few years ago and this year we get The Incredible Burt Wonderstone and Now You See Me. But some of you may not know that virtually all movies owe a little something to the world of magic.

Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, better known as simply Georges Méliès, was born in Paris in 1861.

As a young man he worked for his father in the shoe business. In London in 1884, the young Méliès discovered Egyptian Hall, the magic theater run by John Nevil Maskelyne and George Cooke. There, Méliès saw the most incredible illusions of the late 19th century. The effect on him was profound and he ultimately made magic his profession.

Upon his return to Paris, Méliès took over the Théâtre Robert-Houdin and began performing and creating magic full time. It’s said that he designed over 25 original illusions during his time as a professional magician.

In December of 1895, Méliès witnessed a demonstration of the Lumière brothers’ version of the Cinématographe. Méliès was so impressed with what he saw that he immediately tried to buy it from the brothers with the intention of showing films at his own theater. They refused. Undaunted, Méliès traveled again to London where he managed to buy an early projector and have it converted into a camera of his own.

Less than a year later, Méliès was shooting his first film, Une Partie de Cartes (A Card Party). While it’s not exactly The Godfather in terms of plot and drama, Une Partie de Cartes is an important milestone in Méliès’s career, as it marked the turning point in his evolution from magician and theater manager to filmmaker. You can see the film here.

By the end of his first year Méliès had created over 80 short films.

During the filming of one scene, he discovered that a jammed camera created the illusion that a bus had transformed into a hearse. This scene was among the world’s first “special effects” in film.

Over the next several years, Méliès refined his filmmaking techniques and introduced dozens of new ideas from his experiences as a magician. While his final output as a filmmaker may never be truly known, he’s believed to have created over 550 films in his lifetime. Approximately 200 of them survive to this day.

The most famous of Méliès’s films is his Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon). The launch scene concludes with the rocketship impaling the eye of the moon in one of the most iconic scenes in movie history. Voyage dans la lune was a global success and was also an early victim of pirating. Thomas Edison and Carl Laemmle, two early American pioneers in the film industry, obtained illegal copies and made small fortunes off of Méliès’s work without his knowledge or consent.

A series of events including the beginning of World War I left Méliès bankrupt. He faded from public view and began working in a small toy kiosk. Eventually however, his works were recognized for their importance and he was even awarded the Legion of Honor, France’s highest civilian (or military) award.

Georges Méliès, the father of modern special effects, died in 1938.

In 2011, the movie Hugo, based on the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, was released. The film centers on the adventures of a young boy who lives in a Parisian train station. While the character of Hugo is fictitious, a large portion of the film is devoted to explaining who Georges Méliès was. Although certainly some artistic liberties were taken, Hugo depicts most of the big pieces of Méliès’s life accurately. I highly recommend the film to anyone who hasn’t seen it.

Editor’s Note: This article is the eleventh in a weekly series by Jason England: MYSTERIUM. Each article will be posted on Wednesday at 11:00am EST – every post on a different subject. This week, Jason discusses which games are the best in a casino, with the odds the most in your favor.

Mysterium – The Best Game in Town

To date, I’ve filmed 24 training videos on card cheat techniques – false shuffles, card controls, and the like. These videos are produced for entertainment purposes only. To win in a REAL casino, fair and square, you need to beat the odds – and that starts with choosing which game to play. In this article, I’ll review which games are the best, with the odds the most in your favor.

Living in Las Vegas, people frequently ask me, “What’s the best game to play in the casino?” To the vast majority of people I simply reply, “Blackjack”.

It’s not that I don’t want to take the time to explain the real answer; it’s just that most people are asking what they perceive to be a simple question and so I don’t disappoint them – I give them a simple answer.

But recently someone that I knew to be the type to appreciate a serious, thoughtful answer asked me this same question, “What’s the best game to play?” My reply to him took several minutes and had a few tangential discussions that aren’t relevant here. But, I thought those of you that perform gambling demonstrations might be interested in the real answer, in case you’re ever asked the same question.

The truth of the matter is that determining the best game to play in a casino is more complicated that it first appears.

Perhaps the biggest issue that is usually left unresolved (or worse, unmentioned) is: What kind of player are you? If you are a classic “tourist” or “weekend” gambler that only gambles once a year and you don’t want to devote any time to learning even a rudimentary strategy, then baccarat is a good choice for you.

The house edge in baccarat is very low (around 1% if you avoid the “tie” bet) and the game is slow enough that you won’t go broke in an hour. The only downside to baccarat is that it often has some of the highest table limits in the casino. You might only be able to find $25.00 tables in most major properties, although you can sometimes find lower minimums at mini-baccarat (the same basic game except played on a blackjack-sized table).

But what if you don’t mind learning some basic betting concepts? Then craps might be a good choice.

Although the “strategy” for craps really only boils down to avoiding the bets with the high house advantages and sticking with pass/don’t pass and come/don’t come bets, the overall casino edge can be reduced to a tiny fraction with proper play. For example, a player betting $5.00 on the pass line and backing his bet with single odds can be playing against a house edge of well less than 1%. That’s very, very good for traditional casino games.

The only problem with craps is that it’s a relatively fast-paced game. Even though the player may only be wagering $5.00 on any given roll, there can be 50 or more rolls in an hour. If not controlled for, the fast pace actually cause you to lose money more rapidly than a game with slightly worse house odds, but a slower pace.

At the end of the day, baccarat and craps are long-term losing games. Only in a few rare instances can certain rare advantage playing techniques be used to turn a profit in these games. But, for the casual gambler who doesn’t want to invest much (or any) time into learning a sophisticated strategy, they offer the best bet in the house.

However, if you are the type of player who is willing to educate yourself over the course of 6 months or so, you can do significantly better than baccarat or craps. The two primary games that come to mind that fall into this category are video poker and blackjack. We’ll look at video poker first.

Video poker can actually be played with a small player advantage if the proper game is chosen and the appropriate strategy is applied. Depending on the specific game you choose, you can occasionally play a video poker machine with an actual edge, or you can even choose one with a tiny casino edge and still be a long-term winner? How is this possible?

The way it works is this: slot players are highly sought-after by the casino industry.

Every major casino has a slot club that offers incentives and coupons to regular players. Most of the time, these coupons and small cash incentives don’t amount to much more than simple advertising. But on occasion, slot clubs will offer to return a certain percentage of your total action back to the player in the form of a check. This is similar to the “cash back” programs offered by major credit cards. Spend $25,000 on your credit card in a year and they’ll mail you a check for 1% ($250.00) at the end of the year.

By playing certain video poker machines that are essentially a dead-even gamble against the house, and by recycling your buy-in amounts many times over, professional video poker players essentially “fool” the house into thinking they were gambling. These professionals are only gambling in a very narrow sense. The truth is they’ve calculated their edge against the machines and balanced that against their bankrolls to come up with a very smart plan to run tens of thousands of dollar through the machines without really losing anything. Then they sit back and wait for the casinos to mail them a check at the end of the month as a way of saying, “Thanks for gambling at our casino!”

If the cash-back systems are paying out enough money (say 1%), then it’s possible to use them even against a video poker game that actually has a tiny house edge. If the edge is too much, then the cash-back program can’t overcome it, but the smart players know where this break even point is and they avoid machines that don’t give them the best chances of making a good return.

The last of the classic casino games that we’ll look at is blackjack.

This is the game that most people believe has the lowest house edge and is therefore the game that they should play in a casino if they want the best chance of making some money.

The only problem with blackjack for most players is the amount of work it takes to play the game with an edge. Memorizing a basic strategy chart is a necessary first step, but that alone won’t allow you to play with an edge. There was a time when the proper basic strategy chart for a single deck blackjack game on the Las Vegas Strip would have the player at essentially a dead-even gamble with the casino. Those days are gone. Today, basic strategy charts still leave the player with a small disadvantage, usually in the neighborhood of 0.5 – 1.0% depending on the specifics of the game.

Once you’ve learned basic strategy you can start to explore the realm of counting.

It’s not particularly easy, but it isn’t rocket science either. Most people can get the hang of card counting over the course of a few weeks and with a month or two of steady practice can actually implement the concepts in a casino.

Of course, this takes time and effort and we’re back to the crux of our initial question: what kind of player are you? If you’re not willing to invest any time at all learning, then we’ve seen baccarat is as decent a game as any. If you’re willing to do some work, then perhaps craps is for you. If you’re willing to do significant strategy research and actually practice at home, then certain video poker games or blackjack might be more your speed.

As you can see, answering the apparently simple question of “What’s the best game to play in a casino?” is actually anything but simple. The next time you hear someone bring up the topic, you can refer them to this article, or you can just do what I do and say, “Blackjack.”

Editor’s Note: This article is the tenth in a weekly series by Jason England: MYSTERIUM. Each article in this series will be posted on Wednesday at 11:00am EST – every post on a different subject. This week, Jason discusses the merit of using a script during a magic performance.

The Words We Use

There is debate in the magic world about whether or not a performer should work from a script or whether it’s sufficient to decide what you’re going to say in the moment (and perhaps make changes from one show to another). My own opinion is this: I believe in scripts for the vast majority of situations, but don’t necessarily have a problem with working from only an outline in informal performances. Let me explain.

The very best magic shows I’ve ever seen were scripted.

I’ve seen Mac King’s show in Las Vegas dozens of times. The same goes for David Copperfield and Penn and Teller. Apart from changes to the shows driving script changes out of necessity, all of these performers say and do the same actions at the same points during all of their shows. They’re working from a script, plain and simple.

More recently, I’ve seen Nothing to Hide at the Geffen Theater in Los Angeles on three occasions. You guessed it – scripted. Several years ago I saw Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants.  I only saw the show once live, but I’d seen it many times before on a VHS copy of the same show that had aired on HBO almost 10 years previously. Even though there was a gap of nearly a decade between the time Ricky had filmed the HBO show and the time I saw the show live, it was virtually identical. Again, the reason is that the show is scripted; in Ricky’s case, by none other than playwright David Mamet.

These shows are some of the best contemporary magic has ever seen. The fact that they all use scripts is no real surprise. After all, these are all formal shows that take place in theaters for paying audiences that expect a certain amount of professionalism. I guess the question then is should an amateur magician trying to amuse his friends for a few minutes across a restaurant table go to the effort to script his brief, casual performances? The answer, in my opinion, is yes.

Scripting your performances brings a focus and a clarity to the effects that is difficult, albeit not impossible, to achieve otherwise.

The process of creating and practicing to a script allows the performer to choose the perfect phrasing for every given phase of a beat, effect, or act. This facilitates a precision that is very hard to capture when you’re trying to think of what to say next at every step along the way of an effect.

Of course, this precision only comes once you have a GOOD script. Any of us could write a bad, or non-sensical script and never deviate from it even when we knew it was awful. The goal is to continually tweak your script until you know that you’re saying the exactly proper thing at each step in the routine.

So, if an overall improvement to your act is the upside to scripting, is there a downside? Well, I don’t know that “downside” is the proper term necessarily, but there are pitfalls to look out for.

Many magicians don’t know how to properly script an effect.

They wind up saying things in ways that are completely out of character for them. Imagine a young magician doing simple coin tricks for his friends suddenly launching into a Ricky Jay-esque historical observation on some deep intellectual subject. It’ll work for Ricky – he’s a genuine expert on the history of magic and unusual entertainers. It won’t work for a 15 year old. He’ll come across as someone trying to sound like an expert rather than actually being an expert. You have to play to, and write to, your strengths. Or more importantly, your character’s strengths.

When constructing your scripts, it’s important to understand who you are as a performer. Make sense of yourself.

In my case, my performing persona is very much my real persona, but with exaggerations in all the places I think I need or want them. For instance, I don’t think I have a “laugh-a-minute” personality like a Bill Malone or a David Williamson. My sense of humor doesn’t run to the slapstick or silly end of the spectrum. It runs more towards the quiet, intellectual, perhaps occasionally even cynical end of the spectrum. Because I’m aware of this, I’d be very cautious about using a sight-gag or an over-the-top joke in any of my performances. Maybe I could pull it off with a lot of practice if it was an absolutely incredible joke that added to my show in a really meaningful way – but it’s not in my nature to go looking for that type of material.

If you’re a young magician, play to your strength. Exuberance, naivety, and a sense of “I’m just discovering this for the first time too!”

All are good traits to look at when creating a performing persona (and by extension, a script). If you’re an older performer, you can begin to address more adult themes like family relationships, life and death, gambling and cheating at gambling games, etc.

Of course, these themes aren’t written in stone. An older performer can certainly bring a sense of wonder and amazement to his/her shows, and a young magician can absolutely pull off a gambling routine if it’s done properly. The point is to understand who you are and then script things that your character would say.

Now that I’ve made my case for scripts, let me tell you a few situations where I think it’s okay to not use one. The first example is for extremely simple effects that are little more than visual eye candy. If you’re performing a double-turnover for a young child and then placing the top card onto their hands and snapping your fingers before revealing the change, I don’t think a full-blown script is required. Likewise a quick, series of color changes often doesn’t require that you say anything. I think saying something is quite likely to improve the color changes if what you say is carefully constructed, but it’s perhaps not critical.

A final example of when it might not be completely necessary to work from a script is if the current script you have is inappropriate for the audience at hand.

For example, if you normally work behind a bar for people that are drinking, you might play from a bawdy, raucous script. That same script probably won’t work if you’re hired on short notice to work a more intimate, formal corporate gig. In this case, I’d abandon the inappropriate script and do my best to either produce a new one completely, or at the very least work from a more appropriate outline of what I wanted to say if there wasn’t enough time to work out all the kinks in a full-blown script.

In a follow-up article, I’ll play devil’s advocate and discuss why some performers don’t want to work from a script. Perhaps you have your own reasons? If so, let’s hear ‘em.

Editor’s Note: This article is the ninth in a weekly series by Jason England: MYSTERIUM. Each article in this series will be posted on Wednesday at 11:00am EST – every post on a different subject. This week, Jason shares the history of playing cards – and the world’s OLDEST deck.

The World’s Oldest Deck of Cards

Playing cards weren’t “invented” in the sense that other objects are invented. There isn’t a single day or week in history that we can point to and state that playing cards were invented during that period. Rather, playing cards evolved into their present form. We know that the Chinese were using paper objects very much like playing cards for various games as early as the 9^th century and perhaps as much as 500 years earlier. These cards had traditional Chinese pictogram images on them and were related to both dice and dominoes.

A range of 500 years – give or take a century, here or there – is a pretty wide swath of history. Why such imprecision?

Well, it turns out that how one defines the term “playing cards” is what pushes the date back farther into history. Are dominoes essentially playing cards? They both contain an “information” side and an “all the same” side.

They’re both used in games. They’re both typically shuffled before play begins. They both involve concealing or revealing the “information” side depending on the game being played and the strategies employed. I could go on. Conceptually, one could argue that dominoes and playing cards are essentially the same thing.

Most historians would argue that while dominoes and playing cards are very similar, the construction of playing cards is what really sets them apart from dominoes.

Simply put, playing cards are made of (essentially) paper. Other gaming implements aside, it wasn’t until the invention of paper that making playing cards, as we understand them today, became possible.

In the late-1300s, playing cards appeared in Europe. Some of the earliest references date from legal notices outlawing playing cards. Cards seem to have surfaced in virtually every country in Europe simultaneously, which almost certainly means they caught on like wildfire, at least amongst those that could afford them.

There are historical mentions of playing cards in France, Italy, Switzerland, and Spain that all date to the late 14th century.

In 1983, Sotheby’s in London auctioned a deck of cards that was said to be one of, if not the earliest complete European deck known to exist. Although the deck contained 52 cards, with four “suits” and three court cards each, the suits don’t correspond to our modern suits. Instead of hearts, clubs, spades and diamonds, these cards depict hunting and sporting themes – horns, dog collars, ropes and nooses for catching game.

The cards were dated by a variety of methods to somewhere between 1465 – 1480 an attributed to an area of what is now in northern France. The deck was touted as the “world’s oldest deck of cards.” It almost certainly isn’t, but it can lay claim to being one of the most expensive. Almost thirty years ago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City paid over $143,000.00 for it.

Editor’s Note: This article is the eighth in a weekly series by Jason England: MYSTERIUM. Each article in this series will be posted on Wednesday at 11:00am EST – every post on a different subject. This week, Jason talks about the the psychology and method behind memorizing the order of an entire deck.

Total Recall

Years ago, I read a story about how Dai Vernon would often try and memorize a deck of playing cards before going to bed. This wasn’t to perform magic with a “Mem-Deck” as we now understand the term, but rather as a pure memory stunt. Although I haven’t been able to locate this story again, I believe Vernon stated that he got his time down to around a minute or so with practice.

The current world record for memorizing a deck of cards is under 30 seconds.

Actually, 21.90 seconds to be exact. It’s held by Simon Reinhard of Germany. Other sub-60 second past champions are Ben Pridmore (24.9 seconds), Andi Bell (32.9 seconds), and Dominic O’Brien (38.29 seconds). Dominic O’Brien appears to be the first person to break the 60-second “barrier” in an official event, although other memory experts are likely to have duplicated the feat long before official records were kept.

Although experts like Reinhard, Bell and Pridmore all have their own systems these days, most modern systems can trace their roots (via Dominic O’Brien), to ancient Greece. The core idea behind memorizing a deck of cards or any random series of numbers for that matter is called the Loci Method. The Loci, or journey method uses a pre-memorized journey onto which events can be attached. These events can then be recalled by taking a mental stroll down your pre-memorized path.

As an example, let’s imagine a pathway through your house.

It might start at the front door, then proceed to a hallway or entrance way. You may go upstairs or downstairs depending on the layout, but you would try and hit every room, no matter how big or small. If you want a lot of fidelity in your journey, you could even create points within a room or rooms.

Eventually you will wind your way through your house or apartment and arrive at the end of your journey. For some, this will mean going out the back door and onto a back porch. Others may end their journey in a garage or back very near the front door where they began. The specifics aren’t important, only that you have a pre-memorized pathway through a space that you’re very familiar with.

Let’s assume a generic pathway of: front door, entrance hallway, living room, kitchen, bedroom, laundry room, spare bedroom, hall closet, stairway, garage. This journey has 10 stops from the front door to the basement.

Now let’s try and memorize the following list:

Hamburger, iPhone, spare tire, lamp, tennis racket, chessboard, t-shirt, ball cap and diamond ring. The first thing you would do is to imagine yourself eating a hamburger at your front door. The next step would be to imagine you dropping your iPhone and having it shatter in your entrance hallway. Next would be to imagine trying to change a spare tire in your living room.

You would continue creating interesting mental images using the items in this list until you ran out of objects to remember. By the way, if you run out of locations then you need to expand your journey!

To recall the list, imagine yourself at your front door. What are you doing? If you created a strong mental image a moment ago, you should have no trouble remembering that you were eating a hamburger at the front door. Going to the next step on our journey, we see that we’ve dropped our iPhone in the entrance hallway and it’s shattered. Next we find ourselves in the living room. What are we doing? Changing a tire. You get the idea.

The more ridiculous you make the images, the easier it will be to remember them.

Make things incredibly large or small, set them on fire, destroy them, alter them, etc. The crazier your image is, the better it will stick in your memory.

To memorize playing cards, you need to be able to “encode” the cards into objects or people in order to be able to visualize them. Only then can you “place” them into your memorized journey.

The various professional memory experts all have their own tricks and tips, but the Dominic O’Brien system is as good a place as any of them to begin.

Dominic assigns every 2-digit number from 00 to 99 a person and an action. For instance, in his book How to Develop a Perfect Memory, O’Brien assigned the number 15 to Albert Einstein. Einstein’s action was writing on a chalkboard. Dominic also assigned 63 to Sean Connery (the original and still the best, James Bond). Connery’s action was holding a gun. Remember, every two-digit number had an associated person and action. And each of these people and actions are unique. You can’t repeat an action or person in your pre-memorized lists. This is important.

Let’s say you were trying to remember the number 1563 for some reason. You would take the person from the first two digits (the 15) and take the action from the last two digits (the 63). Combining these images you get Albert Einstein holding a gun. Additionally, you would place Albert Einstein holding a gun at the first position in your Loci system: at the front door.

Imagining Albert Einstein holding a gun at your front door is a fairly ridiculous mental image. Deciphering the image would tell us that the first portion of that image (Einstein himself) gives us 15 and the last portion (holding a gun) gives us 63.

A list of 20 digits might look like this:

1563 = Albert Einstein holding a gun at your front door.
5366 = Eric Clapton pointing with E.T. in your entrance hall.
9175 = Neil Armstrong singing in your living room.
8238 = Humphrey Bogart baptizing someone in your kitchen.
2326 = Bill Clinton driving a stake into a vampire in your bedroom.

I think you’ll agree that all of these images are crazy. That’s what makes them easy to remember. Notice that it only takes five actual images to recall 20 random digits. That’s a pretty good “return on investment” when it comes to memory work.

To decipher these image you would of course have to know Dominic O’Brien’s original system, which I’m not at liberty to actually reveal here. However, if you’re interested in this type of memory stunt, web searches for Dominic O’Brien, Andi Bell, Ben Pridmore, memoriad and “memory olympics” will provide you with hours and hours of reading.

Enjoy.

Editor’s Note: This article is the seventh in a weekly series by Jason England: MYSTERIUM. Each article in this series will be posted on Wednesday at 11:00am EST – every post on a different subject. This week, Jason shares his experience from a recent cruise ship gig, where he performed close up shows for 10 days, while cruising around the tip of South America.

Old Dog, New Trick

As some of you know, I was recently on a cruise ship that sailed around the tip of South America. I was hired to perform close-up magic in a small theater on the ship for up to 22 guests at a time. This meant that I did two shows per day for about 10 of the 21 days I was there. When not performing in the theater, I had full guest status and was encouraged, but not required to mingle with the other guests and to do some informal performing if the situation was right and I felt comfortable doing so.

Although I’m known primarily for my abilities with a regular deck of cards and for my penchant for gambling-related routines and moves, I’ve never let go of my magic roots completely. I still enjoy a wide assortment of great close-up magic effects both with and without playing cards, even though I rarely perform with anything other than cards these days.

The Formal Close-up shows

In the formal shows that I did, my set included everything from classic card magic like Dai Vernon’s Triumph to hard-core gambling routines involving second dealing, bottom and Greek dealing, center dealing and riffle stacking. I closed with a non-sleight-of-hand marketed item that I might write about in a future article. The shows were very well received. It probably didn’t hurt that about 300 of the guests are die-hard bridge players and I was doing an effect where I deal myself a perfect bridge hand of all 13 Spades in sequence.

You would think the best of these formal, scripted shows would be my fondest performing memory of the entire trip. Nope – not even close. The cruise ship’s management had a notice in the advertising for my shows that no one under the age of 18 was allowed to attend. This isn’t my rule necessarily, but it’s one the company has adopted to ensure the revenue guests (the ones that have paid huge sums to cruise around the world) aren’t interrupted by small children. As it turns out, this wasn’t a problem at any point on my trip because there were not any children onboard.

Except for two.

One of the other guest entertainers on the ship was Trent Dimas, an all-American gymnast and a member of the U.S. men’s gymnastic team that competed in the 1992  Olympics in Barcelona. Trent brought home the gold medal for his flawless routine on the horizontal bar, which you can watch here.

Trent was on the ship to give a talk about his time in gymnastics and his experiences at the Olympics. He and his wife Lisa came to see my show and we briefly discussed the fact that his 9-year old daughter Capote and his 6-year old son Hudson couldn’t attend. I told Trent that although I thought the subject matter of the formal show would play over the heads of such young children, I would be happy to do something just for them if he met me after dinner in the main lobby of the ship. We agreed to do so.

Before leaving on my trip, I had made sure to pack some non-card items that I knew would play well for small, informal performances. I also threw some purely “fun” items into my bag that I wasn’t sure if I would have the opportunity to use, but wanted to have with me just in case. I’m glad I did, as two of these items in particular were just what I needed for Trent’s children.

Just after 8:00 I walked downstairs and sat at a large wooden table. Capote and Hudson, with Dad Trent watching from behind, sat with wide eyes and huge smiles on their faces as I did several simple card tricks that involved performing a double-lift and allowing the children to rub the facedown card on the table before revealing that it had changed into another card. It’s an easy trick, but a very effective one.

I then did several old, but excellent rubber band tricks that I’ve known for years that never fail to get gasps of amazement. At least one of these tricks comes straight out of Tarbell Vol. 1. You can find it on p. 134.

Finally, I “closed” the show with two great effects that magicians have been using for decades. First, I did a version of the Koornwinder Car for Hudson.

Even at 6, he understood that toy cars aren’t supposed to magically stop when they pass selected playing cards. The look on his face when the car repeatedly stopped at his card was priceless.

For “Cappy” as she likes to be called, I reached into my pocket and came out with one of the greatest tricks that a close-up magician can ever do, especially for a young child: the bunnies.

Although I’ve been familiar with the trick my entire life and I’ve even performed it in the past, I don’t think I’ve done the bunnies for anyone in over 15 years. It’s not that I considered it a bad trick – far from it. It’s a great trick. It’s just that I’ve been concentrating on other things in that time.

For Cappy, I brought out the bunnies and performed a very simple routine that ended with ten baby bunnies pouring out of her hand. As she beamed, I made a mental note to never again go years without performing the bunnies for someone. It’s just too great of a moment to allow it to sit dormant.

As I performed for the kids, I was aware of a small gathering of adults in the lobby that had stopped to watch the show. Many of them had already seen my formal show in the theater, but were now seeing me do things that they hadn’t seen before. As Cappy and Hudson were laughing in amazement at the appearance of the bunnies, I heard a loud round of applause. It was much too loud to be coming from just the small group that had assembled near me. I looked up, and found over 50 people had stopped and were watching the show from the ship’s balcony above me. No one had seen a thing, but even if they had it wouldn’t have mattered. This show was just for Cappy and Hudson. I knew it and the other guests knew it as well.

Trent couldn’t thank me enough for taking a few minutes out of my evening for his children. I guess he thinks I did him a favor. It’s actually the other way around. I’m the one that really benefited. I want to take this opportunity to thank Trent Dimas, for helping me relearn a great trick and reconnecting with that feeling of wonder that comes with experiencing a terrific magical moment – no matter which side of the table you’re on.

Editor’s Note: This article is the sixth in a new, weekly series by Jason England: MYSTERIUM. Each article in this series will be posted on Wednesday at 11:00am EST – every post on a different subject. This week, Jason shares several cheating moves and techniques he saw while hosting the 2013 World Game Protection Conference in Las Vegas.

Hosting the World Game Protection Conference

As most of the readers of this new column know, I’m a magician with a serious, long-term interest in gambling moves. By “gambling moves”, I mean of course the techniques and principles that card, dice and roulette cheaters use to win money in both private games and in casino games.

This interest of mine has resulted in me hosting for the past two years in a row, the World Game Protection Conference here in Las Vegas, Nevada. As host, my duties include introducing the speakers to a large (over 400 attendees) audience and ensuring the day proceeds smoothly. I also facilitate Q&A sessions between the speakers and the audience. From time to time, I’ll chime in and participate in discussions where it’s appropriate, but only if I feel I have some insight into the subject matter at hand.

The 2013 conference ended this afternoon (it’s very late on February 27^th as I type this) and I thought I’d give those of you who share my interest in “real” – as opposed to “theatrical” – cheating moves and techniques a glimpse into what I saw and learned over the past 3 days.

The conference officially opened on Monday the 25^th with a Surveillance Directors’ Meeting. Although in the past this meeting has been open to all attendees, this year, for reasons I can’t go into, it was closed to anyone that isn’t a surveillance director of a casino. The remainder of Monday is a more of a fun, “welcome to Las Vegas” day that ends with a meet-n-greet party at the M resort at the very south end of the Strip.

Tuesday morning is when the conference really kicks into high gear.

At 9:00, I stepped out onto the stage and greeted the crowd to introduce our keynote speaker. You have to understand that this crowd consists of 400 surveillance directors, assistant directors, managers, and operators. These are the “eye in the sky” folks that are tasked with protecting every square inch of a casino using the camers that are located behind hundreds, if not thousands, of black domes in the ceilings of all legitimate casinos.

In most casinos, cameras can be found in every room on the property, including restaurants, store-rooms, maintenance hallways and closets, and even in the hotel hallways and elevators.

Basically every single inch of the casino and hotel floors are covered except for areas in public restrooms and inside the actual hotel rooms where the guests stay.

This group spends their time looking for cheaters, employee theft, “slip and falls” (where a patron pretends to slip and fall down so that they can sue the casino for injury/damages), dealer mistakes, and a host of other issues. They’re a good group of people doing a tough, unsung job for their casino bosses. Getting them to “wake up” on a Tuesday morning is not an easy task. Luckily for us at the conference, we had a very good opening speaker. His name is Don Johnson and for a few short months last year, he won a whopping 15 million dollars (give or take a few hundred thousand here or there) at blackjack tables in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Interestingly enough, he isn’t a card counter. Curious about how he did it? So were we!

Mr. Johnson was able to negotiate an incentive from the A.C. casinos that effectively gave him a massive edge over them even without counting cards. He was playing a very skillful game of blackjack without counting, but it was the “kickback” incentives that really made the difference. Although I’m oversimplifying this a bit, imagine if we agreed to flip a coin 1000 times. If it comes up heads, you win. If it comes up tails, you lose. We’ll play for a dollar per flip. What’s goin to happen? Well, you and I will basically come out dead even after 1000 flips. Oh sure, one of us might be ahead by a few dozen flips one way or another, but there’s really no “edge” to such a simple game like this. You’ll win approximately 500 bucks off of me, and you’ll lose approximately 500 bucks to me.

But what if I agreed to “relieve” 10% of your losses? In other words, I’ll give you back 10% of whatever you lose to me. Now what happens? Well, you’ll still win roughly 500 flips and I’ll have to pay you $500. And you’ll lose roughly 500 of those 1000 flips and you would owe me $500. Except that I’ve agreed to kick back 10% of your losses to you. That means you get $50 kicked back to you ($50 is of course 10% of $500). You walk away with $50 for every 1000 flips. That’s a lot of trouble for such small money. What if we increased the stakes to $10,000 per flip though? You would wind up making $50,000 dollars for every 1000 flips we play. Now you’re talking about a worthwhile deal!

Although the coin flip scenario I’ve just described isn’t exactly what Johnson was doing, the basic concept is similar. He was playing a dead-even game of blackjack with the house and his edge came from the fact that he was risking a much smaller portion of his bankroll than it appeared on the surface to win. He couldn’t lose! For more information, check out the Atlantic Monthly article on Mr. Johnson here.

Other speakers on Tuesday included magician Paul Wilson. Paul gave a talk on cons and scams that was punctuated with performances of some excellent pieces from his professional working repertoire. The audience reacted very strongly to Paul’s demonstration and many of them spent the remainder of the conference coming up to him telling how much they enjoyed the show. Great job, Paul!

Also on Tuesday I moderated and participated in a panel discussion on the subject of poorly cut playing cards and the things that can be done with them in a casino environment. Several major brands of casino playing cards, including selections from the USPCC, Gemaco, Paulson, and Piatnik were shown and the poorly cut borders discussed.

Players often times use completely legal strategic loopholes to gain information during gameplay.

Several recent advantage playing techniques were discussed that involve using these poorly cut borders to gain information to help the players make proper decisions. Keep in mind, these techniques are not cheating techniques  rather, they are legal strategies that simply exploit loopholes in procedures, but do not otherwise interfere in any way with the game’s normal operation.

Later, we heard from an Australian slot machine expert who’s won millions of dollars playing progressive slot machines over the past 15+ years. In that same time, he’s won more than a dozen high-end luxury cars. He kept only one, selling the rest to pump money back into his playing capital. It’s an interesting system and a perfectly legal one. It isn’t easy to implement, but the math is sound and he’s not the only one doing this. Don’t quit your day job just yet – the system requires long hours of scouting to find the right machine and you have to be sufficiently financed to afford to weather some significant losses before the big wins come.

Our final speaker was Jeff Murphy, the Director of Surveillance at the Cosmopolitan here in Las Vegas. Jeff gave an excellent talk on the role of modern surveillance in today’s gaming environment. He also showed a video compilation of many cheating and employee theft attempts that he and his team have foiled in the past year. For those of you that wonder how often people are arrested in a given year, Jeff provided a number: his team has made over 400 arrests in the past two years for cheating and related offences.

Wednesday morning we began with a series of “breakout” sessions that allowed the attendees to choose which session they wanted to watch.

Gambling and sleight-of-hand expert George Joseph did a session on switching cards and showed some really interesting videos of cheaters in Asia using electronic versions of a “Kepplinger-style” holdout device.

Assistant Surveillance Director Bill Joseph (no relation to George), then taught a large room full of people how to false shuffle a deck of cards. Actually, Bill taught three different false shuffles including a variant of the Shank shuffle and a push-through shuffle.

It was a great session, designed not to actually “teach” people how to really perform the shuffles expertly – we all know that takes many, many months or even years of dedicated practice at a minimum. Instead, Bill wanted the surveillance operators to understand a false shuffle using a hands on approach versus a purely academic approach. It was very effective.

After Bill’s talk, Paul Wilson and I watched the conference organizer Willie Allison give a presentation on some recent cheating devices that have surfaced in the past few years. It isn’t known if any of these devices have surfaced in legitimate casinos, but there is some evidence that they have. The evidence just isn’t conclusive. You can be that even if they haven’t, someone somewhere has tried.

The devices included a device that appears to be a cell phone. Instead of making calls however, this device can read secret infrared marks on the edges of a deck of playing cards. A hidden computer that also looks like a cell phone, tucked away in your pocket then interprets these marks and the cheaters are told via a tiny earpiece which player will have the best hand in Texas Hold ‘Em. They’re also told which player will have the second best hand. The exact cards in the hands may or may not be revealed depending on the software, but just knowing you can’t lose is obviously a massive edge.

Another cheating device was a dealing shoe that could deal seconds for the dealer automatically. A video of this shoe can be seen here.

Incidentally, while this shoe would make a great “toy” for a gambling collector like me and in the right situation could possibly make some money, there is a visible flaw in the shoe. The faceplate (the large white plate that protects the front of the shoe) is much larger than it needs to be. This is a problem that many second dealing shoes have, and the fact that this shoe is doing all the work for you only causes more of a problem. I won’t go into any more detail than that, but a sharp eye could spot this shoe from across the room.

After Willie’s presentation, I gave a 45-minute demonstration of cheating moves that a dealer can execute with only a modicum of practice.

I demonstrated a second deal (admittedly a move that takes more than just a few days or weeks to learn) some peek moves, a few flashes of the top card to secret confederates, and I also taught a slug control that added onto the material Bill Joseph had discussed a few hours prior to me. My talk was apparently a success based on the thank you’s and questions that I got afterwards.

The conference ended with a talk from a marked cards expert and friend of mine from New York. I’m not sure if he wants his name mentioned here, so I’ll refrain, but interested parties will probably be able to figure out the person I’m talking about.

During both Tuesday and Wednesday there was a “dealers’ room” of a sort. The exhibitors’ hall was full of booth from surveillance camera and surveillance software vendors, new game inventors, and people selling the latest and greatest items designed to increase all manner of productivity. It’s a fascinating place to just stroll around and look at all the new toys.

All told, the conference was two solid days of information on the current state of cheating and advantage playing techniques that are currently “making the rounds” in casino throughout the world. Those of you with more than a passing interest in the subject matter are welcome to email me and ask me questions. I’ll answer to the degree I’m allowed to.

Editor’s Note: This article is the fifth in a new, weekly series by Jason England: MYSTERIUM. Each article in this series will be posted on Wednesday at 11:00am EST – every post on a different subject. This week, Jason talks about how to manage performing for “difficult” spectators.

It’s better to maintain control than try and regain it.

As I type this, I’m sitting on a cruise ship docked in the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia, Argentina, at the very southern tip of South America.

While I’ve been on the ship the past few weeks, I’ve been performing close-up magic shows for approximately twenty guests at a time in a small theater that’s been set up on board just for these performances. It’s very much like performing at the Close-up Room at The Magic Castle, only without the raked seating. Still, the room is intimate enough that sight lines are not a problem and I don’t need a microphone.

Over the past fifteen or so shows, I’ve begun to realize that I don’t have a lot of the problems that other, less experienced close-up performers often have with non-magician spectators. Until I gave this some thought recently, I had always shrugged off my success with “good” spectators as mere luck. Now that I’ve been thinking about writing an article once a week however, I’ve begun to analyze my act a bit more and I think I realized something these past few weeks: I’m not lucky at all.

I’m actually coaching my audiences and I wasn’t really even conscious of it.

Let’s back up a bit. How many of you have ever had this experience: you have a spectator select a card, memorize it, and perhaps show it around to others nearby. You then perform a swing cut of the deck and ask them to place the card onto the half in your left hand.

If you’re fortunate and have a cooperative spectator, they’ll do exactly what you ask and you’re able to continue without any problems. But many times the spectator seizes this opportunity to try and dictate the terms of the selection’s return to the deck. They’ll insist that they be allowed to shove the card into the middle of the deck and square it up themselves, or they’ll try and circumvent your cut by lifting up some cards of their own and dropping the selection deeper into the deck than you had intended. Although this exact thing has happened to me many times in the past twenty-plus years, it virtually never happens any more.

Now, you might read that and take it to mean that I still do the swing cut and ask the spectators to return the card and if they try and take control I just insist that they do things my way. That’s not what I’m talking about at all. The way I handle selections these days actually removes the possibility from ever occurring.

The method is very easy. I almost always work with a table, but these ideas can be adapted to entirely in-the-hands methods also. I ask the spectator to slide a card out of the face-down spread. As soon as they do this, I gather the rest of the cards as I say to the spectator, “I’ll get these out of your way.” I then turn my back and ask them to show the card around and replace it face-down onto the table so that I can turn around again. When I turn around, the selection is face-down on the table and I swing cut the deck and use the right edge of the left-hand half to scoop up the selection and “lose” it into the deck. Sometimes I hold a break, sometimes I use a crimped card, and sometimes I know a key card or the numerical position from the top.

The only time the spectator can potentially achieve the upper hand is when they have the capability to hold the selection “hostage” until it’s returned to their liking. By having them place the card onto the table, they no longer have the ability to seize control. Preventing the problem through a minor restructuring of the effect is the name of the game here.

A similar problem comes up frequently just as the performer is reaching the ending of an effect. Let’s say you’re performing Dai Vernon’s Triumph,* and you are just about to spread the deck to reveal that the spectator’s card is the only one that is face up in the face-down spread. You look at your spectator and you say, “Name your card!” In a perfect world, the spectator names her card and you spread the deck to amazement and thunderous applause. Unfortunately, what often happens is that instead of naming her card, the spectator often says, “Aren’t you supposed to tell me what my card is?” While a completely innocent and natural (albeit erroneous) question, this has the effect of derailing the climax of the effect until the performer can reply, reassure the spectator that naming the card aloud is for dramatic reasons only, and then attempt to restart the “magical moment” to end the trick.

How do we avoid this problem? Again, the solution is a sort of “pre-emptive strike” against the spectator’s line of thinking. In the first solution, we controlled the physical location of the card (we got it out of their hands before it was returned). In this example, we have to anticipate the objection of the spectator and address the concept of “naming a card” for magical or dramatic reasons ahead of time.

Don’t get me wrong; I wish we didn’t have to do this. But I find it takes only a second to say something like, “Now, I’m not a mind reader. I can’t tell you which card you chose. I honestly don’t know what it is. But I’ve got something amazing to show you. Please name your card out loud.”

I can promise you that if you say something like this to your spectators, you’re going to have far, far fewer problems. Only the most dedicated “troublemaker” spectators will stick to their guns and insist that you tell them the card. If that’s the case, then you have to finish the effect however you can and immediately get them off the stage and away from you.

I should point out, that I don’t say the exact words I wrote above. In fact, what I say isn’t even close to that, but the concept is the same. I’m removing the very idea of resisting from their minds by planting the (better) idea of a dramatic build. The end result: they cooperate every time and never realize that they’ve been manipulated in the least.

The really nice thing about using this strategy is that it doesn’t have to be repeated for every effect in which a spectator names a card. Once you are a few items into your show, the audience should come to realize that cooperating with your instructions provides them with a better experience than trying to take charge of the show at every turn.

There are other problems that come up from time to time that can be addressed in similar ways. Some spectators want to shuffle the deck after choosing and returning a card. Others want to grab the deck between effects, remove a single card and insist that you tell them what it is. Still others remove a card from the deck and “protect” it with both hands to the point that it’s mangled beyond repair and then try and return it to your deck. We solve these problems the same way the two problems in the examples above have been solved: we anticipate the issue ahead of time and either restructure the effect to eliminate the possibility of a problem, or we plant a better, competing idea in the spectator’s mind – one that obviously coincides with what we want them to do.

Analyze your effects and your act, and I’m confident you’ll find places to apply these and other techniques to improve the experience for your audiences.

* I don’t actually ask the spectator to name her card before I end Vernon’s Triumph. I just used that effect as an example of a situation where the ending was all but over and the performer wants the spectator to name her card out loud. I don’t necessarily think Triumph needs that element, so I thought I’d clarify.

Editor’s Note: This article is the fourth in a new, weekly series by Jason England: MYSTERIUM. Each article in this series will be posted on Wednesday at 11:00am EST – every post on a different subject. This week, Jason describes a practical way to practice and master The Bottom Deal.

The Bottom Deal is a classic sleight-of-hand card movement that enables you to covertly deal the bottom card of the deck while in play. With practice, the move can be done without detection.

Come Sail Away - A Practical Way to Practice and Master the Bottom Deal

I no longer have a set practice schedule. These days I find that frequent performing, even if they are only informal performances for friends and family, is enough to keep my physical skills with the cards reasonably sharp. I do still practice quite often. It’s just that I no longer need to sit down for formal practice sessions every day like I did when I was first starting out in magic.

One thing that has stuck with me however, is the concept of drilling a given movement over and over again in every imaginable way. Let me give you an example of a drill that I still do at least once a week, and sometimes much more often. It involves practicing the bottom deal.

I set up a large working area. Usually this is my kitchen table with an oversized close-up pad, but I’ve also used my blackjack table, a regulation poker table (my favorite) and even a chair turned inwards towards the couch for this drill. The idea is to give myself enough space to really sail the cards into a large number of positions.

I always practice sailing the cards. I almost never practice “placing” the cards down to the table the way we often do in magic routines. The only reason is that I’ve found that I don’t need to practice that type of bottom dealing. We get enough of it in regular magic effects to not have to worry about practicing it. Plus, it’s such a simple thing to begin with. I feel my time is better spent practicing the things that are actually difficult!

I then take several decks of cards, in various states of wear. I usually use three decks. One is brand new, one is rather old and is often a deck I’d normally throw away, and the third is usually in an in-between state of wear. I pick up any of the three decks and immediately begin to deal the cards clockwise around the table to 10 positions. When I get to the 10th position (myself), I deal the bottom card. I do this for all five rounds. All of the cards are dealt face down. I do not bother to pre-set a hand like four Aces or a Royal Flush to bottom deal; I just deal the cards.

I then gather all of the cards and deal another ten-handed “game.” This time I deal the cards to the 9th position which is to my immediate right. Afterwards, I gather the cards and do it all over again, dealing four or five bottoms to the 8th position, then the 7th, the 6th, and so on. If you’re a right-handed dealer like me, you know that it gets a bit tougher to deal bottoms as the position moves counter-clockwise around the dealing surface. It’s much easier for a right-handed dealer to deal bottoms to someone seated on his right (positions 7, 8, 9, etc.) than it is to deal to the 1st or 2nd position. This is because removing the bottom card and continuing in the same direction of travel is easier than having to reverse directions as soon as the card comes off the bottom.

After I’ve moved all the way around the table and I’ve dealt bottoms to all ten positions, I change the format to a nine-handed “game” and begin again.

This time, to speed up a bit, I’ll often only deal bottoms to the 9-seat and the 8-seat, but skip the round where I should’ve dealt to the 7 and 6-seats. I’m skipping these rounds because as I’ve already stated, dealing to those positions is inherently easy for me. By skipping these “easy” positions, I spend more time practicing the positions that are the most difficult for me.

After completing a nine-handed game, I move to an eight-handed game, then a seven-handed game and so on. As before, I tend to skip a few of the easier positions and focus only on dealing bottoms to the spots where I have the most difficulty. If you’re a beginner, I do not recommend you skip any positions. You need all the practice you can get. You’ll probably notice eventually that dealing to the right (assuming you’re right-handed) is easier, but continue to deal to these positions for the practice. If you’re already an accomplished bottom dealer, then you can skip a few of the really easy position combinations, but I recommend you still do some of them, just like I’ve outlined above. In other words, don’t always skip them just because they’re a bit easier.

If you follow this progression from a ten-handed game downwards, you’ll eventually find yourself in five-handed, four-handed and three-handed games. I suggest you return to dealing to every possible position once you’re into these smaller numbers. The turn-around time between bottom deals is getting smaller and that makes dealing to these positions a bit tougher. I’m using the phrase ‘turn-around time’ to refer to the amount of time between bottom deals. For instance, in a nine-handed game where you’re dealing bottoms to yourself you have eight other normal deals between each bottom. That’s plenty of time to do any pre-loosening actions that you might need to extract the bottom card. But when you’re dealing a three-handed game, you only have two cards in between the bottoms. For those who prefer to use a tiny loosening action like I do, that’s not a lot of time!

Finally I like to practice bottom dealing to two positions. I envision a “head-to-head” poker game and I alternate bottom dealing first to myself and then I gather and re-deal this time bottom dealing to my opponent. Even though I’ve been using an imaginary hand of four Aces or a Royal Flush for most of the previous deals, for this round I continue bottom dealing cards either to myself or my opponent until I’ve dealt out about half of the deck before stopping.

The last thing I do before changing the deck is to deal some consecutive bottoms. I practice this in two ways: the first is to deal them directly to myself in a small pile. The second way is to deal the cards clockwise around the table (as if I were dealing a game of poker) but with every card coming off the bottom.

It’s pretty difficult to do and I always start over if I mess up. I only allow myself to call it a day when I’ve gotten all the way around the table a few times without a mistake. At this point, I switch the decks and repeat the same thing.

To be honest, I don’t deal the cards back at every single position. As before, I tend to skip the positions that are easier and concentrate on the harder spots. Naturally your skill level will dictate how many positions you should be skipping if any at all.

Once I’ve done the drill with all three decks, the bulk of the Bottom Dealing session is over. I have similar drills for Center Deals and Greek Deals. Second deals are a different animal entirely and may be discussed in a future article.