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The Stripper Deck: Miracle Methods No. 1
by Jean Hugard & Fred Braue

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The Stripper Deck: Miracle Methods No. 1 by Jean Hugard & Fred Braue

The Stripper Deck has nothing to do with a girl shedding off her clothes, but rather is a specially gaffed deck. However, the gaff or preparation is not noticeable with the naked eye. It can even be handed out to spectators for shuffling and cutting. This manuscript outlines various moves as well as tricks with the Stripper Deck. Practically all effects can be achieved with pure sleight of hand using an unprepared deck. But the Stripper Deck simplifies the handling and makes miracles possible without difficult moves, leaving you time to focus on the presentation.

Paul Fleming wrote:

This is not one of the major works on magic. It is not, for example, in the same class as Expert Card Technique by the same authors, or Modern Magic Manual by Mr. Hugard himself - two books which, by the way, we shall examine in detail in later reviews. Nevertheless, Miracle Methods is worthy of a place in every magical library. It is rumored that one of our foremost card experts gains many of his remarkable effects by using a stripper deck, and an examination of this little book will convince the reader that the performer who scorns this useful "mechanical" pack is missing some of the best things in card magic.

The authors attribute the current unpopularity of the stripper deck among professional magicians largely to the inferior quality of the "strippers" that have been available on the market. Quite logically, their first step is to tell exactly how the reader may make a satisfactory stripper deck for himself. Their next task is to teach in detail the "mechanics" of handling a prepared pack of this kind. The magician who has thought that a stripper deck "works itself" will discover here the error of his ways, and perhaps the reason for his lack of success in deceiving spectators with this device. He will learn that there are right and wrong ways of handling a stripper deck and that while the wrong ways lead to almost certain detection, the right ways are so subtle as to be practically undetectable. Once mastered (and, as is so often true in magic, the right way in this instance is no harder to learn than the wrong), the ability to handle the stripper deck properly carries with it the power to perform a whole series of brilliant effects with cards.

Mr. Hugard and his collaborator do not ask the reader to originate these effects for himself. Instead, they devote three-fifths of their book to the presentation of twenty-two feats with a stripper deck which (though we have not the space to describe them) fully justify the authors in their use of the adjectives "unfathomable," "startling," "exciting," "phenomenal," and "bewildering." Among these tricks are, to quote the writers, "certain effects possible with a stripper pack which cannot be obtained by any other means," and others which, while they may be approximated by sleight-of-hand, can be performed either more easily or more convincingly with this prepared pack.

Miracle Methods is a well-written, well-printed booklet of 32 pages, bound in soft boards. It contains information which, if used intelligently, will make the reputation of the amateur magician, and may even add luster to that of many a professional.

32 pages.

  1. Introduction
  2. Preparing the Stripper Deck

    Mechanics

  3. The Stripper Grip
  4. The Hugard-Braue Strip Shuffle
  5. Reversing the Pack
  6. To Reverse a Packet of Cards
  7. To Reverse a Single Card
  8. A Reversed Card as Key Card
  9. The Hugard-Braue Cut Control
  10. Sighting the Bottom Card
  11. Hugard-Braue False Strip Shuffle
  12. To Control Two or More Cards
  13. The Stripper Jog Control
  14. Hugard-Braue Stripper Force
  15. The Stripper Undercut
  16. The Stripper Running Cut
  17. The Stripper Glide
  18. The Hugard-Braue Stripper Change
  19. The Stripper Cut

    Tricks with the Stripper Pack

  20. Unfathomable
  21. Astro-Vision
  22. The Slop Reverse
  23. The Busted Bobtail
  24. The Mind Mirror
  25. Money Talks
  26. Phenomenal
  27. Card and Number
  28. Dig with a Spade
  29. A Bewildering Change
  30. A Subtle Location
  31. A Stripper Spell
  32. The Stripper Key
  33. The Lightning Calculator
  34. Locating the Aces
  35. Princess Card Trick; Stripper Version
  36. A Canny Coincidence
  37. Cut and Come Again
  38. The Mystic Cut
  39. The Pickpocket
  40. Hallucination
  41. The Braue Aces

word count: 18680 which is equivalent to 74 standard pages of text