The Genii Forum

I've been blogging about the good Doctor's most famous trick. The guys over at the green room seem to be enjoying the articles, so I thought I'd post the links here as well:

Daley Dilemma (Part 1)
Daley Dilemma (Part 2)
Daley Dilemma (Part 3)

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this classic trick and whether you agree/disagree with my analysis.

Marty

Forget about the nonsense of asking where is the Ace of Spades. That is confusing.
Far better when the effect is the two red aces change places with the two black aces.
In my experience using the helper's hands strengthens the effect, not weakens it.

I use the handling taught by Bev Bergeron in his lecture notes which I bought in 1978 and use the effect as an intro to McDonald's Aces. Taking out the four aces for the Daley trick gives me an excuse to put the balance of the deck into my outside jacket pocket.

As they turn over the cards in their hand, I remove the deck, ready for McDonald.

Thanks for your blog posts. They make interesting reading and a healthy discussion on any trick is always worthwhile.

Yes, on occasion I've performed it as a pure transformation as you suggest. However, I've found I get better results presenting it as a scam a la Three Card Monte (the original write-up seems to point the reader in this direction). Maybe this style just suits me better?

This trick is great for deck switches and secret add-ons as you describe.

Marty

For me, Marty is offering solutions to problems which simply do not exist for spectators.
The 'false problem' start point is something that has been used to justify way too many poor variations of tricks, in my opinion.
(NB - I'm not suggesting Marty's handling is poor - I've never seen it).

Hi El Mystico,

Well, you may be right, I don't have any hard empirical evidence to suggest these problems are significant. But I do not think these are false problems.

In my experience, most spectators will not tell you if they suspect something, you have to ask them directly. Obviously you wouldn't do this in most performance situations! However, I've done his with friends and family. The insight gained is invaluable.

And if I am just arguing over moot points, at least I'm in good company. John Bannon touched on some of these issues in his book Dear Mr. Fantasy. I'm sure there are other examples of this in the literature too.

Marty

P.S. I'll be sharing one of my handlings via my blog, so you can decide for yourself if I'm over thinking the issue and creating mediocre variations.

The final part of my analysis is now live. I've also added a novel version of Daley's trick to the free tricks area of my blog. This trick has been designed to address all of the issues I've mentioned in the four articles.

Read Daley Dilemma (Part 4)

Marty

Hi Marty, the only problem I had with Daley's trick is that it was over in a second. This spured my decision to create a version that transposes the cards one at a time. In 2004 I came up with "Drop Dead Queens." You can see a video on my website at the link below. Although it is performed to music, I sometimes use it as ademonstratin of pickpocketing by having the spec plac the first two cards in different jacket pockets and "steal" them one at a time.

http://www.jeffpiercemagic.com/index.ph ... ducts_id=6


Jeff

Hi Jeff,

I like Drop Dead Queens a lot. It genuinely adds something to the plot. Was this trick in your book The King Has Left the Building...With Amnesia (the hard copy version)? I seem to remember reading it in there, but maybe I'm just confused!

The pickpocketing ideas makes for a great presentational hook. I also have a version that allows you to steal the cards one at a time, which I present as a demonstration of card mucking.

Marty

P.S. For those of you who hadn't noticed, I've published a variation of Daley's trick on the "free tricks" page of my blog. The trick is called "Big Bullet Monte":

http://www.magiconthebrain.com/free-tricks/

I've resurrected these blog posts and added them as a single "long read" to my new blog:

Daley Dilemma: How Do We Fix the Four Weaknesses of Dr. Daley's Last Trick?

I've updated the content to reflect changes in how I think about these issues today and included some potential fixes for each of the four weaknesses.

These blog posts will eventually form part of a book called Developing Daley, dedicated to exploring the two-by-two transposition. Once I've finished it, it will include over fifty variations of this classic card magic plot!

Marty

I have made a three trick sequence out of this finishing with the Daley trick. My audiences seem to like it. I have found the effect is stronger when you make a little routine out of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Z04CRs7ymU

Thanks for sharing this performance, Mark. I often perform Daley's trick as the finale to a short three-trick act as well. The exact sequence tends to change depending on how I feel. My current favourite combination is to begin with a personal handling of "Twisting the Aces". I then transform all four cards into the AS using a diminishing lift sequence. I follow this with three colour changes to transform them back into the AD, AH and AC. Finally, the routine is completed with a version of DDLT (including a transformation kicker).

Interestingly, the phase where I display four duplicate Ace of Spades would work well with your "hallucination" patter, which I like a lot. That false count is very deceptive!

Marty

That False count is an idea from Cy Endfield

jon released this a few years ago...

https://www.lybrary.com/daley-bred-p-922458.html

Thanks, I bought this a while ago. Your post has reminded me to re-read it, though! Like all of Jon's compilations, this is an invaluable source of information about the plot.

Marty

For interest, on the presentation, and the use of all four Aces: Daley's Last Trick is heavily based on H. Adrian Smith’s ‘A “Four” Ace Trick’; The Sphinx April 1937.
In that, the patter is:
"One of the things which help a magician most is coincidence. For example, if we use merely the four aces, and proceed to shuffle these four cards, a most remarkable thing happens. No matter how much the four cards are shuffled, if we turn over a card, we find it to be a black card. Now, if we shuffle the remaining three cards we find that by coincidence, it also is a black ace. In other words, the black aces appear together, and the red aces appear together. However, sometimes people get the black aces mixed up with the red, and the red aces with the black."

Daley could have easily created his trick before Smith.

As wrote Racherbaumer in Daley Bred (2018) Adrian Smith and Jacob Daley may have been inspired by Ottokar Fischer with the trick explained page 118 of Illustrated Magic published in 1931 which is the translation of DAS WUNDERBUCH DER ZAUBERKUNST published in 1929.

Richard Kaufman wrote:Daley could have easily created his trick before Smith.

Very unlikely. Daley records the Smith trick in Volume 2 pP3 397 of his Notebooks. If Daley had already created the trick, why did he make a detailed and credited note of the Smith trick?

Philippe Billot wrote:As wrote Racherbaumer in Daley Bred (2018) Adrian Smith and Jacob Daley may have been inspired by Ottokar Fischer with the trick explained page 118 of Illustrated Magic published in 1931 which is the translation of DAS WUNDERBUCH DER ZAUBERKUNST published in 1929.

Thank you, Philippe!
A precursor to Fischer seems to be be Milbourne Christopher’s ‘Christopher’s Red and Black Aces’ (The Tarbell System, 1926).

Not exactly Dominic. The Christopher's version is in the SECOND edition of the Tarbell. In volume 5 published in 1948, not in the original in 1926-1927-1928

Thanks, Philippe! My source was wrong.

Thanks for all the information. I'm including a history of the trick in the introduction of the book, so these clarifications are helpful. Here's the draft chapter (it needs some work):

Chapter1: History of the Plot

All the available evidence suggests that Smith got there first. However, I agree with Richard that it is entirely possible that Dr. Daley was performing this in the 30s or 40s prior to showing it to Dai Vernon.

Marty

Here is another reference that may have inspired Doctor Daley:

The Error Aces in Genii, Vol. 1, no. 1, September 1936, page 6 by Wright & Larsen.

This trick was reprint in The Tarbell, Vol. 5 under the name Larsen's Aces, page 127.

It's not a "pair transposition" but it's a packet trick as only the aces are used.