It's a little larger than a deck of cards and only about a half inch thick. The version is a compact little number that can easily be stored in a shirt pocket if you're so inclined. The pages are gold edged, it has a ribbon bookmark, and the thin paper rings similar as well. It's called this because of its similarity with many pocket-sized Christian Bibles. This Bible Edition of the book is really cool. In any case, Erdnase starts the slim volume with a treatise on gambling cons to be performed at the gambler's table (the Artifice section), moves on to some fantastic magician slights (the Legerdemain section), then wraps the volume up with a short card routine that uses some of the techniques just described. Andrews, who admits in the beginning of the book that he wrote it purely for financial gain, adopted the Erdnase pseudonym to avoid being associated with a book that no doubt pissed off many professional gamblers of the day as it spelled out so many of their coveted secret moves. Erdnase, is believed by many to be East coast gambler James Andrews (just lop off the 'Jam' and spell his name backwards). The mysterious author's identity was never really discovered. The book is very nice but there are goofs and limitations that keep me from being one of the utterly devout. Although most consider a lot of the moves contrived and archaic the magicians who form the core following are immensely loyal to the book and spend many hours studying it with great care and attention. Amazingly, this book has been in continuous publication since 1902 and has a small but diehard following in the card magic community. This book is still the bible of card 'mechanics,' and as much a delight to read as it was in the early years of this century."Īwesome little book on card magic and slights. Gardner asserts, "are as useful today by magicians and card hustlers as they were in 1902. In an informative Foreword to this edition, Martin Gardner relates the unhappy details of the author's personal life, and recounts the history of this famous book, whose methods, Mr. Card handlers will love Erdnase's selection of dazzling card tricks, including The Acrobatic Jacks, The Exclusive Coterie, The Divining Rod, The Invisible Flights, A Mind Reading Trick, and many others. ![]() The second section covers legerdemain: the art of forcing a card, one- and two-hand transformations, the devious "slide" and more. Erdnase demonstrates his own systems of false shuffling, false riffling and cutting, dealing from the bottom, and such slick moves as palming cards, "skinning the hand" - even three-card monte. The first section of the book deals with card table artifice, or, to put it more bluntly, cheating at cards. ![]() Erdnase, a supreme master of card manipulation, teaches card enthusiasts how to perform the dazzling tricks and sleights - many of them his own creations - that made him famous. " The Expert at the Card Table is the most famous, the most carefully studied book ever published on the art of manipulating cards at gaming tables." -from the Foreword by Martin Gardner.įor almost a century, this book has been considered indispensable to attaining the highest level of card mastery.
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