Tony Giorgio and Erdnase

[Luis]

In page 38 of the May issue of Genii, Tony Giorgio says that most of the material in Erdnase is mythology, and that real hustlers laugh at it.
He also refers to his articles about the subject.

I wonder what is your reaction about these comments. I also would appreciate if anyone could tell me when the series of Tony Giorgio's articles about The Expert at the Card Table was published in Genii.

[Richard Kaufman]

Giorgio's "Giorgio Letters" regarding Erdnase appeared in Genii during the 1990s.

[Guest]

I was also interested in Tony Giorgio's take on Vernon's quest for the Kennedy center deal. All hype and hokum?

[Richard Kaufman]

There is no question that Allan Kennedy was a real guy. As to whether he really did a Center Deal, we have only Vernon's word on this, but I can't imagine why Vernon would make it up at that point in his life.
Giorgio's position is that the Center Deal is useless to card cheats, and there have been very few documented instances of card cheats using it. The Center Deal is also virtually useless to magicians. It is an extremely difficult sleight to master, and there are far easier ways to accomplish the same thing. I watched Gene Maze work on the Center Deal for 20 years--he mastered it to perfection. It was utterly invisible, and he did it from a slight step: no cards jogged out the side of the deck (which anyone can master). He was never able to come up with great tricks for it.

[Sam Kesler]

I stumbled onto an article about Dai Vernon's (and Charles Miller) quest to find Kennedy in the May 2001 issue of American Heritage magazine titled "The Magician and the Cardsharp" by Karl Johnson. The 10-page article says Vernon finally located the mechanic in Pleasant Hill, Missouri in early 30's. Vernon later wrote Miller that "He really does it perfectly." There's a photo of Kennedy, who was said to resemble the movie star Richard Dix. Kennedy died of lung cancer in 1960. The article includes a two-page spread about who Erdnase was as well.