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I have been performing a variation of Paul Curry?s Out of this World for about 20 years. It was taught to me (along with the classic Curry method as well as Curry?s own variation) by my mentor in magic, Barry Gibbs.
You
use a freely shuffled deck of cards and ask a spectator to separate the
deck into two piles, one of red cards and one of black.
Sounds simple.
But
here’s the rub, your spectator is not allowed to look at the faces but
must deal the cards face down as their intuition instructs them. Now it
sounds impossible. At the end of the demonstration, the cards are
turned face up and the spectator’s intuition proved correct. Every card
is correctly aligned.
When I learned the effect, I was told that it was a very, very closely held secret; that few magicians knew. So secret was the secret that a magician was shot in some back alley of New Orleans for refusing to disclose it to another magician. I don?t know if any of that is true but it makes for great patter.
Over the years, I have come to realize that the effect has a profound effect on audiences because it seems impossible. There is no logical explanation for what they witness.
But what they witness is a lot different than what I perform and so it was a pleasure to see a video of the effect. I had not seen the trick from this perspective since I first learned it.
It is an amazing effect to watch.
It seems like real magic to watch and I really like the ease of handling. The
Ace Assembly should appear like magic and with this method there do not
appear to be any tricky moves, everything is above board.
![]() |
I have been performing a variation of Paul Curry?s Out of this World for about 20 years. It was taught to me (along with the classic Curry method as well as Curry?s own variation) by my mentor in magic, Barry Gibbs.
You
use a freely shuffled deck of cards and ask a spectator to separate the
deck into two piles, one of red cards and one of black.
Sounds simple.
But
here’s the rub, your spectator is not allowed to look at the faces but
must deal the cards face down as their intuition instructs them. Now it
sounds impossible. At the end of the demonstration, the cards are
turned face up and the spectator’s intuition proved correct. Every card
is correctly aligned.
When I learned the effect, I was told that it was a very, very closely held secret; that few magicians knew. So secret was the secret that a magician was shot in some back alley of New Orleans for refusing to disclose it to another magician. I don?t know if any of that is true but it makes for great patter.
Over the years, I have come to realize that the effect has a profound effect on audiences because it seems impossible. There is no logical explanation for what they witness.
But what they witness is a lot different than what I perform and so it was a pleasure to see a video of the effect. I had not seen the trick from this perspective since I first learned it.
It is an amazing effect to watch.
It seems like real magic to watch and I really like the ease of handling. The
Ace Assembly should appear like magic and with this method there do not
appear to be any tricky moves, everything is above board.
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