Tom Stone's Amongst Madmen

[Demonbrn]

This is from his "Sleapless in a Pipedream" e-book (yes, it is spelled like that), it is bassed on Darrel's Jolly Jumping Jokers, and other variants.

The trick (without the patter, McDonalds aces type effect):

The magician shows a (blue) deck of cards, shows the faces and backs to be all diffrent then shuffles and lays out 4 piles of three cards each face up in a diamond pattern. Then the magician asks a spectator to square up the piles and put them face down. The magician sets the rest of the deck aside and picks up 4 diffrent backed cards (red) and shows them to the audience, backs, then fronts, 4 jokers.

The magician then proceeds to put the jokers into/on the piles (top,second from top, third from top, bottom) the magician (working from bottome position to top) shows each pile with the red card and makes the joker switch with an indiffrent card each time to reveal all 4 jokers in the last pile!

Review:

I saw this trick initially through The Magic Cafe from one of Tom's promotional posts (this is really the only thing worth getting on the ebook, the rest are just ideas Tom published with the trick) and after watching the video of tom's preformance, had to know how it was done. The trick it's self is simple in theroy, but can be difficult to master overall, I've been working with it since it's release (bout a year I think, maybe more) and have shown it maybe 2 or 3 times. I'm not great with patters, and the one suggested doesn't sit well with me, so I always have problems with that.

Since the trick still needs work, I give it 3 out of 5. The effect is odviously a work in progress (if you get the ebook, you'll understand) so it's potential is great, the trick as it is now, is hard work for somthing that can be achieved with much less. It requires 2 seperate setups along with gaffs, so is hard to introduce later in a routine if you are a card worker only (I don't do other magic but cards, they are hard enough to fit in my schedule as it is, lol) and could potentially be to strong of an opener, and dampen the rest of the routine.