IBM Singapore Ring 115’s July meeting was held on Tuesday 15th July 2025, in Function Room 2, Level 3, of the National Library building. Luke Tan and John Shutler were the hosts. Total attendance was 44, which was made up of 37 members, 2 patrons, 4 guests and the legendary magician Bob Chua. The theme of the evening was “Bob Chua’s Lecture and Sharing By The Youths”. As usual it ended with 5 lucky draws.
Luke Tan opened with a warm welcome and announced a special treat of Bob Chua’s lecture. As there would be 2 performances by our youths before the lecture, Luke encouraged us to give feedback to them to help them improve on their magic.
Lim Shi Jie from Republic Polytechniqe had a card merely thought-of by a volunteer. He then magically dealt to the chosen card. Constructive feedback was that he was very skilful in handling the cards. However he should work on engaging with his audience to make it more interesting for them.
Xuande Tan from St Joseph’s College had a card (9H) chosen and replaced back into the deck. He split the deck in 2, and took 5 cards from the chosen half. The 9H appeared as the only face down card in the discarded packets and he was left with only 4 cards in his hand. In his next trick he cut the deck to the Ace of Hearts. He found the remaining Aces after going through a routine of being unable to find them. Constructive feedback was he handled the cards very skilfully. He should look up to engage with the audience more, reveal the chosen card as face up in the facedown deck, and build some drama when going through the phase of not finding the cards.
Bob Chua, an award-winner of close-up magic in Perth, Western Australia, performed and taught us his award-winning routines of several magical classics.
Professor’s Revenge is his take on Professor’s Nightmare where 3 unequal ropes magically became equal and then blended into one rope. He showed us Coins Across from hand to hand, with the climatic appearance of a jumbo coin. In the 3-Shell Game, a volunteer failed again and again to find the pea under one of 3 walnut shells. In the 3-Card Monte, the volunteer could not locate the only Queen from the 2 Jokers, even though the corner of the Queen was bent to indicate the target card.
Bob continued with Cannibal Cards, where the 4 Kings (cannibals) magically devoured 3 chosen cards.
After a 15-minutes break, Bob Chua taught us a 4 Kings to 4 Aces transpo, production of a royal flush using black and red cards, Dr Daley’s last trick where 2 red Aces transpo with the 2 black Aces, and a prediction card magically became a volunteer’s signed card. Bob closed with a Cop Cup routine using a sealed tin and Hershey’s kiss chocolates.
Bob Chua had 2 items for sales. His own hand-crafted set of the 3-Shell Game and a thumb-drive tutorial of his lecture.
5 lucky draws were conducted before closing the formal evening at 9:45 pm. However, networking and exchange of tricks carried on vigorously long after the formal closure.
Reported by
Kogi
