At Magic Live 2024, Gary Plants was one of the Close-up Clinic lecturers. He taught a pretty cool "self working" trick and I believe he mentioned that it was called (or based on a trick called) 'Rook Shuffle" by Brother John Hamman. I already understand how the trick works (and, in fact, have already performed it a couple of times), but I'd like to read more about it. So, I went searching for any references to it and came up blank. I believe Gary Plants said it was featured in a past issue of Genii, but I'll be darned if I can find it.

A spectator cuts the deck and two cards are selected, remembered, and replaced. Now the magician lays out 9 cards in a tic-tac-toe arraignment (3x3 grid). The remainder of the cards are dealt onto the top of the existing 9 cards at the direction of a spectator (who is allowed to move only in horizontal or vertical directions, thus the "Rook" shuffle). Then the piles are collected only in diagonal movements until down to 2 piles. When these piles are spread face up, one pile contains only black cards except for the spectator's chosen red card and the other pile contains only red cards except for the spectator's chosen black card.

Anyone know anything about this effect? The name and/or which issue of Genii it was featured?

Thanks,

Mark

P.S. This simple self-working effect is really hitting hard in my few performances so far. I've already heard "no way" a couple of times!

I just googled it and in Brother Hammon's lost works DVD's it mentions Rook's Tour. Not sure if it's the same thing?

Thank you. I believe you are right. I posted a query in the All Things Magic group on Facebook and Gary Plants responded. Although, he didn't make it clear that it was called Rook Tour, he did say it is in Brother Hamman's 6 DVD set.

The DVDs are still available, I think I'll order a set.

Mark

It is indeed on Volume 1 of The Lost Works of Brother John Hamman DVD set. It's called Rook's Tour. I don't think that the DVD set will give you any great insights into this particular effect. The video quality isn't that great, but it's interesting to see Hamman's handling of his original sleight of hand creations. Kaufman took these videos as part of the process of writing The Secrets of Brother John Hamman.

The effect that you described is the selection process from Juan Tamariz's Neither Blind Nor Silly (or is it Stupid) combined with the revelation process from Rook's Tour.

Mark,

Was Gary selling lecture notes and was this trick written up in it. I do know Juan's trick but am curious about the Rook's tour. Thanks.

Gary was selling lecture notes but this particular effect was not included.

I just watched the Juan Tamariz effect (Neither Blind nor Stupid) and, indeed, that is the first half of the trick but Juan handles it differently, making a much bigger deal about constant mixing of the cards.

I also received my copy of the Lost Works of Bro. John Hamman today and located Rook's Tour on the first disc. To my surprise, for the demo of the effect, John makes a few card placement mistakes and the cards end up a little bit mixed up (red with black and black with red). All's well in the explanation.

The videos were shot by Richard Kaufman using a Betamax camera. In the liner notes from Richard, he openly admits the image quality and production quality is low. But I found it very watchable and it is easy to ignore the limitations caused by the technology of in the (ancient) 1980s.

Mark

Thank you, Mark.

The Lost Works of Bro. John Hamman 6-DVD set contains a table of contents on the back of the (very thick) DVD case. Unfortunately, without time codes. If anyone needs to reference the 97 effects on the set, Martin's Magic Collection has reproduced the table of contents here:

https://www.martinsmagic.com/allmagic/vi......oration/

Mark