The theme was “Magic With Gaff Cards”. It was held in the evening of 15 May 2023 at Function Room 1 of the Drama Centre. The attendance included 30 members and 4 guests. 3 of the 4 guests signed up as Associate Members.
The evening was hosted by Satish Kumar and assisted by Enrico Varella. Using well-prepared PowerPoint slides, Satish shared on gaff cards and their history, while Enrico demonstrated the popular playing card gaffs and explained their uses. This took place in-between their introductions of each of the various performers.
Satish Kumar kicked off the performance by causing a freely selected card of a spectator to be the only card with a different back colour to the rest of the cards in the deck.
Carson Goh introduced the 4 guests so that we could get to know them better.
Using a packet of kid’s picture flash cards, both Ng Kah King and a spectator took turns to eliminate cards until the last card left which turned out to be the spectator’s chosen flash card. In the next effect, the spectator randomly cut at one of 2 decks of cards offered to him. The cards have random numbers printed on each of them. The 2 cards cut at gave 2 possibilities of use: the number on one card and the identity of the other card, or vice versa. The spectator decided on one of the possibilities and the second deck was used to count to the selected number, only to find the identity of the other card at that number.
Thomas Yeo showed 4 large court cards which magically turned out to be number cards. He then played a game with a spectator. Each took 6 cards which had different denominations of money printed on each set of cards. Each one spelt to a different word of a 5-word phrase by dealing their cards. Magically, the cards from each set arrived at after each spelling, matched exactly. This happened for each of the 5 words spelt. This saved the magician from losing any of his money.
John Teo showed 4 jumbo playing cards. Each card magically turned over by itself. Eventually, the “invisible” markings on the backs of each card became visible, and together they spelt F-A-K-E. He then showed 4 large blank cards: 2 with holes cut in them and 2 without holes. Magically, one of them became a whole card with a red spot, another one has numerous spots, one turned into a red colour card and another one had H-O-L-E-S printed on it.
It was “Fireside Chat” time with Carson Goh. New comer John Shutler was interviewed by Carson. We got to know how John got started with magic and his favourite magic effects. John then performed a picture colouring prediction effect using the mobile phone of a spectator.
James Pang took his induction test. His repertoire included Max Maven’s “Psign” where he successfully predicted which one of 8 different symbols was chosen by a spectator, a “4-card-match” trick where a spectator freely selected each of 3 cards
from 3 jumbo decks and the fourth card from a poker-sized deck of cards and they all matched exactly, and a “card-to-impossible-location” effect where a signed card vanished from a deck to reappear inside an empty transparent box.
Jeremy Pei predicted the outcomes of 2 cards cut at by a spectator: one by dividing its value by 2, and the other by multiplying its value by 2. They turned out to be the 31⁄2 of clubs and the 14 of diamonds, which matched his 2 prediction cards! He gave out these 2 “gaff” cards to everyone present. In his next effect, Jeremy cleverly combined the “Colour Monte” effect with Richard Sanders’ “Any Card” trick. A spectator freely named any card for the mystery card of the “Colour Monte” and this was revealed by the prediction written on the backs of 4 face-up Aces in a deck of cards. His final trick was Lubor Fielder’s “Flying Colour Cards” with a 3-card-monte effect done with the backs of the cards instead of the faces of the cards. The audience always failed to find which card had an orange colour border. Finally, all the white borders of the cards became orange coloured. Jeremy then demonstrated his internationally acclaimed “Eternal Ropes” trick where different rope effects can be performed with this special set of gimmicked ropes.
The last item was a lucky draw where 3 lucky members won a magic item each.
Just before the doors were closed at 11 pm, members had their own magic jam sessions.
