In a recent article I listed all of the effects that Roy Walton published in British magic magazine, Abra. During my rummage through the magazines, I spotted a few Karl Fulves tricks that I hadn’t seen before. Being a big Fulves fan, I immediately spent the next few hours looking for and experimenting with his magic in Abra magazine. I’ve always found Karl Fulves’ material pretty inspiring, so in hope that a brief description of the effects inspire you too here is a brief a rundown of the Karl Fulves effects from Abra, throughout the years:

A Hofzinser Variation
1st March, 1969. Volume 47, Number 1205. Page 140
A variant of Hofzinser’s Remeber & Forget effect. In this handling three people each select a card. The first person is then asked to pick another card and decide which of the two they’d like to keep. They then hand their discard to the next participant, who decides whether to keep that or his first selection. That discard is passed to the next person, who is asked to make the same decision. Karl then names all three selections. While the effect is certainly simple in method I’m considering adding it to my repertoire as I’m sure that it would absolutely fry any audience.

Think-A-Card
16th March, 1974. Volume 57, Number 1468. Page 210
Instructions for how to make a pretty detailed gimmicked deck. It’s similar to the Ultra Mental deck, but with the cards separated at the start. This allows you to place a odd-backed card into the deck (without anyone seeing it’s face) and have someone think of one of the cards from a spread. Then, you show that the named card is actually the odd-backed card.

Kings Row
30th March, 1974. Volume 57, Number 1470. Page 261
A basic Sandwich routine using two black Kings. Fulves also suggests a challenge to the reader that you might like to experiment with: “As a problem the reader may wish to solve, this basic effect can be elaborated upon as follows: the red Kings and the black Kings are shown separately. One of two chosen cards ends up between the red Kings. The other chosen card then ends up between the black Kings.”

That’s Odd
27th April, 1974. Volume 57, Number 1474. Page 330
An fun transposition routine where someone on your left is given two odd value cards and someone on your right two even value cards. The two odd cards are placed into the card box and are caused to transpose with the even cards. When the participants check the card box for extra cards they just find the words, “That’s odd” written on the case!

That’s Odd
22nd June, 1974. Volume 57, Number 1482. Page 490
A weird and original effect using two borrowed playing cards and two clear plastic sheets. A card, say the Four of Spades is cut into quarters and placed on top of one of the plastic sheets. Another card, say the Seven of Spades, is placed on top of the quarters and then the other plastic sheet is placed on top of that. The condition of the cards is then caused to swap: so the Seven of Spades is now the cut card and the four is shown to be completed restored.

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