Merlin's Lost Ace Trick

[oscar.abraham]

I've been performing this trick lately, and I've been getting some pretty good reactions to it. However, I have to admit that I was never a big fan of this trick due to its complex mechanics, but after some adjustments, I think I've made it very easy to perform with any deck, under any condition -- by condition I mean anywhere, anytime -- and the reactions have been excellent in my opinion. (For those of you that are not familiar with this effect, I'll leave some links so you guys can check out the trick.)


I first learned it from Expert Card Technique, and I was very intimidated by it. The trick is explained in less than 1 page, but the mechanics is what made it very complicated for people that are not very good with a specific move -- like me. After looking up the trick on the internet, I found some videos of magicians such as Dan & Dave performing it for the camera and I got very impressed with the way it looked: sleightless.

The trick relies on a complicated move -- which I will not reveal here --, and I've never been very good at it; so I decided to work a way for me to perform it without using that move. At first I wasn't sure how to adjust it, until some time ago I got the simplest idea to set-up the packet in a way that I wouldn't be needing to make use of the move I was talking about.

I'd like to discuss my method and the original trick a little bit further without exposure, so please PM or just reply to this post and we can be cryptic about the various moves.

Please let me know what you guys think of this trick, and your experience with it?

I'll try to upload a video of my performance.

Performances:

 

[Josh Burch]

I love ace assembleys of all sorts. In my close up show I do 3 back to back (ala John Bannon). They each have good parts and and not so great parts. It's not all that useful but I have probably 8 different versions I can do at the drop of the hat, that's the extent of my obsession! haha

If the sleights in the Merlin variation are intimidating check out John Bannon's material. He calls the aces bullets so when you look at his stuff and he mentions bullets often times he's referring to an ace assembly. Oh and like all of Bannon's stuff, his are pretty easy to do.

 

[ChrisJGJ]

It took me quite a while to get the mechanics down to perform this at a decent level. I've only performed this for friends where I don't care if I mess up. The second video is interesting. Is it lying? Or was that really free choice?

 

[Toby Langdon]

Haha I love coincidences I was just reading about this trick in expert card technique last night and it was the last thing I was working on and then the first thing I see when I come to the forums is Merlin's lost ace trick. I really liked your performance though!

 

[Josh Burch]

It took me quite a while to get the mechanics down to perform this at a decent level. I've only performed this for friends where I don't care if I mess up. The second video is interesting. Is it lying? Or was that really free choice?

We can't reveal methods here, it's not lying but of course there's more to the trick. PM me if you are confused