The Genii Forum

Richard Kaufman wrote:The routine in "On the Up and Up" alllows you to do a Rising Card routine with three freely chosen cards. The third comes up back toward audience and then visibly turns around. It looks exactly like a routine with a gimmicked deck, except you can borrow the deck.

Hostler: why wouldn't people want to learn that?

A good reason to learn the "On the Up and Up" card rise comes from a story by Pat Page in one of his Pabular Page Boy Speaks columns. He had been booked for an evening of walk around magic at a club and at one point pulled out his Devano deck for card rise effects. Two people he did the effect for asked him where they could buy the trick. They didn't give him credit for the magic and suspected a gaffed deck.

When Page later discussed that incident with Fred Kaps, the Dutch master replied that had the deck been used for other effects prior to the rising card trick, it would not have been suspected. As the Chief Genii pointed out, you can do the OUU rise with any deck at any time in your set.

There was a story about a couple of magicians in Scotland who worked at the same restaurant chain (unverified, but knowing the perpetrators, believable). One of them used a Devano deck, and the other used something similar to On the Up and Up.

The tale was that the latter would tell customers that if they ever saw someone performing this routine, they should ask to shuffle the deck...

(On a related note, when feeling less than charitable I would suggest to people that the Nine of Diamonds is the Curse of Scotland, and if you ever saw that card on the face of a deck, you should shuffle well. This was when memdeck work was becoming popular...)

You are a cold man, Mr. Kendall!