Robert Walker was a unicycling, high-school student. Looking five years younger than he was, he was a dyed-in-the-wool card guy tutored in Marlovian ways. He was also a precocious writer-creator, obsessed with false counts and packet tricks. He spent many hours "twisting the night away," taking voluminous notes, and developing new methods and approaches. His first mini-treatise dissected a marketed packet trick by Larry West ("Wild, Wild West") which he passed onto Jon Racherbaumer to publish. It became the second installment of the loose-leaf Avatar, printed on pink paper and unadorned by illustrations...