Hi folks,


There seem to be a lot of variations on Hamman's F. count around -- for instance, the one by Shigeo Takagi in Kaufman's The Amazing Miracles of Shigeo Takagi (p. 19), and Marlo's Flustration Count in Racherbaumer's Counthesaurus. I'd like to learn one -- or more, if I have to, in order to decide which one I like best. But I hoped some of you experienced people could tell me which ones you find fly the best.


Thanks for your help,


Bob

The flushtration count isn't all that great on its own if it's the only proof you've got of the state of affairs.

If you've got some supporting proof, then even the basic one works fine.

In other words, it's about routining.

The Rumba count, by Jean Pierre Vallarino, is my favourite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tM1LhTMdN9s

P!

Thanks, Burnaby and Ado. I should have explained: in the trick I'm practicing, I want to quickly establish, using Flushtration, that all the cards are the same. Then I'm going to lay them out in a square on the table using Rumba.

I got to see Gabi Pareras lecture a few years ago at The Session, and he performed a variation of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmEcQwkNvOY

When he broke it down, he explained how instead of doing the exact same move 4 times, he changes the rhythm and the movement with every display, under the guise of showing the cards to all the spectators. I thought it was an interesting touch that I don't remember seeing before.


Of course, another resource is to look at the Conjuring Archive. I filtered by "False Display / All Alike". If you have any of the books listed that match the description, it might be worth looking into.
https://www.conjuringarchive.com/list/category/706

Along with Gabi, Alex Hansford has some great touches on it in his project Hessian.

Gabi's handling is really good when done casually. An interesting option just in case, to do this type of counts on the table is the Kiss Count by Boris Wild, it doesn't look great (no count does to be honest) but I find it fooling cause it is very open.

By the way, why do you bother with FC if you can only do the Rumba Count? The FC "works" mainly when showing the backs, when it comes to the faces I don't think it looks that good.

The Orion Count is awful, to me at least.

PS: Because all of these I tend to avoid tricks that require these sort of "all alike" counts.

Thanks for all the ideas, folks. Orlan, I especially appreciate your taking the time to filter the Conjuror's Archive. Parreras is amazing -- I had not even the remotest sense that he was making any moves, and he performed at a delightfully slow pace.

Bob

The flusteation count IMO is one of those moves that you do kind of in the background while talking and not directing attention to it. If you are directing them to the cards and showing them whilst they burn your hands it draws unnecessary attention to the move.

The fewer cards the better, I do it with just two and it looks great

Don't overthink things and just do it. It flies by without issue. To me, the basic one is far better than the extremely dodgy looking Orion variant.

Gabi's handling is published in Card college Vol.3.

furthermore, it's not the handling it counts, it's about the attitude, and the way you deliver to your spectator.
Gabi never verbally laying out the fact that 4 cards are identical, instead he focuses on 1st Joker, 2nd Joker and third...

I use Bro. john's original handling, occasionally Gabi's, but you just don't tell audiences "look, all the cards are the same, look, can you not see it?"

it's same as saying: "I have an ordinary deck of cards"

Thanks for all the good advice and references, folks. I'll come back to them for future tricks. I discovered that for the trick I'm working on now, Hamman's two as four count is perfect. It even allows for some possibilities not described in the trick description.


Bob