My Favorite Card Tricks: Jamy Ian Swiss
By Alex Robertson - Thursday, May 14, 2020
We asked some of magic's greatest minds to share with us their favorite card tricks. This week is the turn of Jamy Ian Swiss, you may know him from his books Shattering Illusions, Devious Standards and Preserving Mystery. Over to Jamy:
My Most Performed Card Tricks: The What and the Why
I invariably have a hard time answering these simplex poll questions, because I
immediately think of the implications, exceptions, and interconnections that
demand my considering the broader ideas. When Conjuring Community asked me,
“What are your three top magic books?” I responded with a 4000-word essay
discussing more than thirty books. I found the question … vague.
Here, I will attempt to address the following task: “We’d just love to know the top
three card effects that you perform the most.” So what I most wish to make clear at
the start is that these are by no means my favorite card tricks. The answer to that
question would include routines like the Vernon/Dingle All Backs with Selection,
Vernon’s The Travelers, Card Under Glass, and John Thompson’s $100 Prediction
(the latter being a platform and stage routine).
So if I adhere strictly to the question posed, then I have to answer with the
following:
Color Changes
Think-of-a-Card
Name-a-Card
Triumph
Ambitious Card
Okay, there are five items on that list, but (a) I’ll explain, and (b) just deal with it.
I know these routines comprise the core of my most accurate answer because, with
the exception of “Name-a-Card,” they have comprised my opening card sequence for
some 35 years or more, back to my early days of strolling magic, and then as a Magic
Bartender at Bob Sheets’ “Inn of Magic” in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC,
in the mid-1980s. After performing five long nights a week there for almost two
years, I estimated in the aftermath that I had probably performed my Ambitious
Card Routine – which in fact I title “The Big Apple Card” – somewhere in the vicinity
of 10,000 times.
So when I say these are what I’ve performed “the most,” I know whereof I speak. I’ve
done all of these … a lot.
What is more interesting to me than the specific tricks, however, is why this
sequence developed: the purposes they serve, and the reasons they were chosen. I
lack the space here to examine all the why’s and wherefore’s here (a subject I
addressed in detail on my “Live in London” lecture DVD), but briefly …
Color Changes. One of the reasons I’ve allowed myself to include five items is
because this really doesn’t constitute a trick, albeit it is a brief routine of sorts. It’s
really a set sequence of five color changes – three of one method with slight handling variations, followed by two of another method that serves to cancel the previous one – performed with a succinct but carefully written script.
I actually start out before this with two one-handed shuffles – essentially the only
flourishes I perform – because this combination of the shuffles and color changes
takes up a grand total of about 50 seconds, and in that efficiently utilized passage of
time, I have (a) seized viewers’ attention (b) credentialed myself (c) performed
purely visual actions and effects that require nothing of the audience (i.e., their
shuffling the deck, taking a card, etc.), deliberately leaving them briefly in a passive
condition to allow them to consider whether what I’m doing might warrant their
valuable time and attention; and (d) demonstrated things they have likely never
before seen in their lives. If their old Uncle Ralph used to torture and abuse them in
their traumatic childhoods with endless repeat versions of the 21 Card Trick, it’s
clear that I’m not him. Uncle Ralph never did anything that looked like that.
Think of a Card. One of the oldest effects in card magic – a version is described in
Discoverie of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot in 1584 – the effect of the magician
identifying a card merely thought of by a spectator is a venerable and compelling
one. The plot fascinated Dai Vernon, who dramatically advanced the field with the
creation of his iconic piece, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” (in More Inner Secrets of
Magic by Lewis Ganson, and also Card College, Volume 5 by Roberto Giobbi).
One of the great strengths of an effect of this nature is that it anticipates and avoids
the experience, upon asking someone to take a card, of immediately being faced
with the obnoxious and silly – yet not uncommon – challenge of, “I’ve seen this one.”
And now you’re left debating instead of performing. Having someone just think of a
card is a powerful effect because of its impossibility and fairness (if indeed the
method and procedure is sufficiently deceptive and convincingly fair!), its intimacy
(you’re apparently in the spectator’s head), but it also presents an implicit
cancelling of a common objection before it can even be expressed. What’s more,
such effects develop strong spectator management skills, in managing a spectator’s
attention, focus, thinking, and also behavior, and in utilizing psychology, timing, and
misdirection in general.
In my Magic Bar days I relied on Derek Dingle’s routine and handling (from The
Complete Works of Derek Dingle by Richard Kaufman), based in turn on Charlie
Miller’s (from Expert Card Technique by Hugard & Braue). Some time after that I
moved on to a different technique, but still within the range of that kind of approach,
in which the spectator simply looks over the cards and thinks of one.
Name-a-Card. Magically revealing a spectator’s named card is the relatively late
addition to this sequence of routines, which grew out of my adopting extensive use
of the memorized deck in the late 90s. I see this segment as optional in this list,
however, because sometimes the entire sequence is performed using a shuffled
deck, in which case the only element that changes is that I leave out this segment. In
the early days of my memdeck studies I only riffed a single named card; today I routinely do three in a row, with very different revelations, and in some
circumstances I will extend that even further.
I will note importantly that these riffed revelations, while flexibly chosen in the
moment, are not simply off the cuff, they are carefully refined and rehearsed. In the
closing moments of my first appearance on “The Late, Late Show with Craig
Ferguson,” Craig quite unexpectedly asked me to perform two more tricks. I was
prepared for one, even though I never expected to actually need it. In a live-on-tape
broadcast on national television in front of a live studio audience, I riffed two cards.
(And no – the thought never occurred to me that Craig, being Scottish, would even
know, much less think of, the Nine of Diamonds as “the Curse of Scotland.” Of all the
wacky stuff ever written about my work on magic forums, that proposal still stands
as the funniest.) I had the confidence that I could riff in the moment to named cards,
with powerful and effective results, because my catalog of approaches is well
rehearsed and hence readily available.
Triumph. Triumph is certainly one of my favorite tricks as well as being among my
most often performed ones. One of the greatest effects in all of card magic, it
challenges the public’s expectations of what is and is not possible with a deck of
cards, beginning with an event – the face-up/face-down shuffling – that violates
their very notion of their own experience with a deck of cards.
Recognizing these facets is important, so that the magician approaches the effect
with sufficient commitment and earnestness. If you toss this trick off casually, you’re
missing the whole point. If you’re not getting a response that leaves a spectator
utterly stunned and often speechless, you’re missing the whole point. The trick
should be approached with a certain level of gravitas, even if your performance style
is a humorous one.
There are countless methods for this effect, offering an extraordinary range of
quality; in plain English, most of them suck. The problem is that they are invariably
laden with unnatural procedures, which may be deceptive to a point, but are not so
convincing as to be unsuspected, as in “the most critical observer would not even
suspect, let alone detect” that any deception is afoot. My advice: Stick as closely as
possible to Vernon’s original handling, even if you’re translating the trick to an in-
the-hands version. To my eyes, I think a faro shuffle in this case is vastly inferior –
meaning, less convincing and compelling – than a riffle shuffle. On the table, I’ll go so
far (and yes, some will argue) as to say that I think a stripout shuffle – Vernon’s
original method – is preferable to the use of a Zarrow Shuffle. (Not as in Stars of
Magic [which isn’t bad, mind you], but as described in our book, The Magic of Johnny
Thompson, and also on the Johnny Thompson videos produced by L&L.)
For the in-the-hands version I use … well, maybe we’ll chat about that sometime,
over a cocktail. But I will let you in on something in my approach to the routining
here that I think is useful. I prefer to perform Triumph using a named card, by
relying on a stack. Hence in my sequence of riffing to named cards, I will eventually move on to Triumph when I think the time is right – that is, when I’ve found named
cards sufficient times, typically three but not always – or when I get a card that
doesn’t give me a natural reveal, so I may as well move on to Triumph because
locating the card may initially require some open cutting procedure. In other words,
even when I’ve determined that I’m ready to deliberately move on to Triumph, if the
spectator names an easily accessible card in the stack, I’ll take advantage of the
opportunity to do an additional riffing revelation, and then move on to Triumph
with the next named card. And furthermore, when riffing to cards in a memdeck, it is a critically important necessity to continually mix the cards, apparently shuffling and cutting between effects, in order to cancel the otherwise vulnerable method. And there is no better way to achieve this cancellation than by performing Triumph, since it is a trick that is explicitly about shuffling -- and which therefore puts you in a strong position for the subsequent performance of any routine that will further utilize the memdeck.
Ambitious Card. Last but not least is the venerable Ambitious Card. I began working
on this routine when I first obtained a copy of Close-up Card Magic by Harry Lorayne
as a young adolescent. I studied and experimented for years, incorporating work
from Royal Road to Card Magic, and later significantly from Vernon’s routine in The
Stars of Magic. Eventually I settled on a routine around the time I turned pro (at the
ancient age of 29), and then did the routine thousands of times as a Magic
Bartender. There are certainly different ways to approach this plot, and when
working with students I typically encourage a short routine, done slowly and
deliberately, making every effect count. The routine I devised for students many
years ago turned out to be almost identical to that described by Roberto Giobbi in
Card College Volume 5, with one small exception that is improved in his version. I
recommend it.
That said, however, my routine is exactly the opposite. It evolved at a different time
in my working career and in my tastes. It’s fast, furious, and consists of eleven
phases! I still enjoy doing it to this day – along with the rest of this entire sequence
of opening effects (except the name-a-card), it’s been a staple of my act in the Close-
up Gallery of the Magic Castle since 1987. For me, it used to serve, and sometimes
still does, an important purpose in the sequence. At some point or other, magicians
need to lure the spectator out of challenge mode – even if that mode is only in their
mind rather than in any overt action – and learn to experience the magic on a more
openhearted level. There are countless ways to do this. As Whit Haydn has written,
we help soothe the cognitive dissonance that magic induces by using story, humor,
and charm: “The sword of magic is concealed in the cloak of theater.”
That’s the best way to do it, and that’s how most of us do it. In my own case,
however, while I am certainly using those elements, in the case of my Big Apple Card
routine I’m also using a muscular element that ultimately amounts to a sheer
overpowering of the audience’s reasoning abilities. They lose the will to mentally
challenge the magic, and instead give into it, raising a mental white flag, and
recognizing that there is an easier, and far more enjoyable path, of how to process
and engage with the experience.
This speaks to the fact that the wealth of methods available for use in the Ambitious
Card presents us with the opportunity to use the routine as a blank canvas, upon
which we get to paint our own particular interpretation. That’s a potent artistic
opportunity that should not be overlooked or wasted.
Finally, I will add a thought that I have written about (and been quoted from)
elsewhere. I strongly believe that the act of choosing tricks and creating a repertoire
is in and of itself a significant creative step. I am strongly opposed to the
phenomenon of the generic repertoire, with five magicians showing up at a gig and
all doing the same routines. I’m also a great supporter of the use of classics. And
while superficially it may seem like these two statements are in conflict, they are
not. The beauty of a true classic is that it can often serve as a flexible vehicle that is
open to the performer’s individual interpretation.
However, true classics aside, the fundamental endeavor of choosing and adding to
your repertoire can and should amount to a creative act. I knew I was finally getting
somewhere in understanding my own character and style when I began to reject
tricks that I liked, that were good, and that I was capable of executing, but that didn’t
truly suit me, and did not inherently express my character and point of view.
So yes, by all means do the Ambitious Card. But please, make it your own. And if a
trick isn’t a classic, but rather the latest popular marketed item, I encourage you to
leave it to the others, and walk – run – in the opposite directly. Run to your library,
and open an old book, and find a good idea no one is using, and make that your own
instead. And eventually, develop a repertoire that is a true expression of – as the
maestro Tamariz dubs it in his masterpiece opus, The Magic Rainbow – persona. And
in considering that pursuit, what is important about my list of three (or slightly
more!) most frequently performed routines is not the what, but the why.
Cover photo by Michael Bulbenko
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