This edition features a completely different routine for MacDonald's Aces and a simple way to make the gaffs yourself. This is more of a platform or parlor version and not a close-up trick. The patter and presentation are also completely different from MacDonald's Aces. This is also different from the version in Hilliard's Lost Notebook. Gregg performed this on TV in 1968 long before Hilliard's notebook was even found. If you pride yourself on being different from the crowd, you'll love this. A very catchy storyline and premise is included.
Next follows many updates on a trick of Gregg's, Blinded By the Lack of Light, a blindfold trick with many new details possible with ESP cards or playing cards. Blindfolded, you pass your hand above a row of cards and from 5 or 6 inches above a card, you can tell what it is. Clairvoyance at its best. Cards are shuffled and cut before this demonstration.
The last, of the 3 main articles, is about the use of signatures in card tricks. Gregg has written extensively on this subject, but now all the best ideas are presented together. Included are many tips about the difference between fooling magicians versus performing for non-magicians. No matter at what level you are, there will be something here for you when you have a card signed in a favorite card trick with an impossible ending.
For this issue's bonus essay, Gregg offers new findings about Jack Pots: Stories of the Great American Game, one of Gregg's favorite books. If you do any card tricks with a gambling theme, such as Gambler vs Magician, or Silas and the Slickers, Jack Pots contains enough information for your patter, for a lifetime. Also, if you like history, this book, and Houdini's copy is in the Library of Congress, contains the origin of the tale of the Mississippi Riverboat Gambler, and also the traveling gambler, who sometimes gambled right on trains as they traveled around. The new details will make Jack Pots even more interesting.
1st edition 2023, PDF 7 pages.
word count: 2375 which is equivalent to 9 standard pages of text
