The Genii Forum

We're having some free speech issues here in our state capitol building, so I'm aiming to do some street theater featuring an oversized 3-card monte effect with a Statue of Liberty card as the elusive queen.

Although I have a large conjuring library, my focus is usually closeup, so many jumbo/stage effects often don't register in my brain. So I'd love some reference help.

Pointers to decent jumbo/stage 3-card monte routines (or routines adaptable to stage size) in print resources would be very helpful, and greatly appreciated.

Special needs: The money card must be a picture card (Liberty), and if that card can vanish at the end, that would be ideal.

Thanks for any aid!

All you need are a set of mega-jumbo cards and you can easily cut and tape a sliver of a red card to the face of an indifferent black card, slip a card which has the Statue of Liberty on it under the flap, and put another indifferent black card over it. This is an old method, but works very well.

At work, so I'm not able to check references easily, but I know Jim Steinmeyer has published/marketed some jumbo card 3-Card Monte routines. Soft-Shoe Monte is marketed by him, and I know his lecture notes Artificial Conclusions covers a jumbo version. I think there's also one in Device & Illusion.

In the Vernon Chronicles, Volume 3, the explanation for his Joker Monte might have some possibilities for your needs.

Would a version of the Martin Lewis Sidewalk Shuffle be a possibility?

Or, perhaps something with the Takagi Miracle Monte gimmicked card (described in The Amazing Miracles of Shigeo Takagi).

And there's also the marketed routine by Meir Yedid, Jumbo Quick Monte.

Hope this helps!

Jeremy

Harry Anderson has a few monte routines out there. I prefer his Mardi Gras routine. The 3 jumbo cards are not gaffed and can be handed out after the effect. The price to pay is a few sneaky counts and double lifts--but the cards are specially made for the moves, which makes the routine easier to handle than standard jumbo cards.

The method used by Qua-Fiki for his "Sooper Dooper Looper" as described in The Wizards' Journal #22 would work for this. His method allows you to make your own cards of any size, and in the video, although he shows the cards being removed by a spectator from a deck of cards, that part is not necessary if you don't want to make an entire deck of abnormally large cards. Just start with three cards of your choice, including the Statue of Liberty, and end at the point where the Statue of Liberty vanishes without going on to find her back in the deck. The cards can be printed out on heavy card stock photo paper and coated with fanning powder to make them smooth, if desired.

Thanks very much to all. I'll dig into these tonight and see what I come up with.

(But feel free to add more if something else leaps to mind!)

Thanks again for these references.

I'm adpating the handling from Harry Anderson's Monarch Monte from his Wise Guy book, enjoyably written by Mike Caveney.

This yields a 3-phase routine allowing full display of the elusive Liberty card, two clear transpositions and a strong ending as the Liberty card disappears.

It's a cynical piece, as the monte hustler is the Chief of the Capitol Police. Citizens who fail to find Lady Liberty are hauled off to jail, and Liberty wholly vanishes at the end.

Stung/Stung again?

Some in the audience might know the history of the statue and be puzzled by the iconography in context.

Are you attempting to allude to some connection between freedom of speech and freedom of choice - and false dichotomies?

Context:

People in the audience here in Madison will be aware that the WI Capitol police have suddenly started arresting people merely for holding up signs:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepolit ... 86236.html

And in a Kafkaesque turn in days since, the Capitol police will not answer any questions regarding what basic actions they will or will not allow. Google News link for the continuing saga:

http://news.google.com/news?q=madison%2 ... protesters

The new chief of the Capitol police is so extreme that the city and county police unions have actually issued a public statement criticizing his actions on this. This monte bit features him as the monte hustler.

It is not legal to refuse to state which behaviors are legal or illegal. Glad I don't live in that nuthouse.

Make sure you get a permit, and let us know if you get arrested for performing political magic.

You gonna change the pips to torches to make a queen into lady liberty?

Similar alterations can get you a queen of mean, lady luck and "miss fortune" ;)

Might want to call it at altering the jacks or kings in your set (mechanical monte) to show the faces as charicatures of the guy you are complaining about. Number of the beast and all that.

Very late to this party, and a year late for the OP, but the Harry Anderson Monarch Monte routine is also published in "Harry Anderson: Wise Guy" by Mike Caveney.