Email us at themagicoval@themagicoval.com, or email jerry@themagicoval.com / drew@themagicoval.com to reach Jerry and Drew respectively. Everyone we’re featuring emailed Jerry this time around, but all of your emails were appreciated.

“Not post comments, those are still disabled.” Why? Just curious.
-IM

It’s a good question, to be sure! I hope you don’t mind if my response is a great deal longer than your email.

You might have noticed we like to keep things pared down here, and the section below the blog entry is no different. For one thing, it avoids arguments. This prevents us from having to mediate disagreements.

It also avoids having to deal with manually approving comments and removing spam. We also have a strict policy of no advertisements. Any promotion we do should be based on our appreciation for the product. As soon as we get a comment mentioning a product, we have to consider whether or not it counts as an advertisement.

Finally, we’d just rather you email us instead! Every time we receive an email we jump for joy.

I like the new site! It navigates easier, at least on my phone. Although I think you could add an image to each post, if only to allow the reader to rest their eyes. But just my opinion. I know the magic oval is a jab at the magic circle, but is there any other reason for the name?
-DM

Thanks! Glad to hear it. We’ve taken your advice and started illustrating the majority of the posts. Our artist is only mildly bothered by this. Besides being a play on The Magic Circle, The Magic Oval is an anagram. What is it an anagram for? Well, a lot of things. Calm goat hive, for instance, or item lag havoc. Or a certain pen name. But what anagram did we actually have in mind when we named this place?

That’s a story for another time.

Hi,

Great blog! 

There is an even stronger version of the Gemini Twins that produces all 4 cards of the same value, conveniently solving the monogamy problem. That is, the jokers in your version are replaced by 2 of the 4 cards. It requires no set-up and no palming. For the life of me I can’t recall who it was I learned this from, but it was somewhere on youtube…

Method: In any shuffled deck it’s highly likely you will find 2 cards of the same value (mates) together. If not, shuffle again. Locate such a pair while explaining to the participants that you are finding 2 suitable cards to use. When you find the mates, split between them, complete the cut bringing one to the top and one to the bottom of the deck. Find the other 2 cards of the same value and give those to your participant for safe keeping. Start dealing cards, tell your participant to say stop and have them place one of the cards they are holding face up on the dealt pile. Throw the rest of the deck on top. Rinse. Repeat. 

Boom! 4 cards production.

If the pair you split was the same color, say hearts/diamonds, the participants black pair found the corresponding red pair. If the pair you split was red/black, try and remember which one is on top/bottom so that you can “force” the participant’s face up cards to find the mate of the same color.

Cheers,
Jay

First off, this is a really good idea, and I actually used to set Gemini Twins up like the first step of this procedure, cutting between mates impromptu from a shuffled deck. However, I had to find mates of a matching color for obvious reasons, which isn’t the case here! I’d say the reveal would be even more impressive if the prediction cards were different colors and found matching colors. I’ll definitely be trying this out in some form, and I appreciate that the monogamy issue is solved!

I do think the purity of method for a magician is greater than the impression for a participant, if that makes any sense. To a participant watching, as you’ve described it, this will seem less clean than the version with palming. I would personally probably hold out the target cards with two indifferents at the beginning to do my palming, and openly take out the “prediction cards” before they shuffle.

Long story short, I like this variant and I’ll try it out, though probably still with my palming setup.

It should be noted that my variant using Jokers to find the cards is actually less like Karl Fulves’ original Gemini Twins than this is, given that in the original handling you find, for example, an 8 of Spades with an 8 of Clubs and a 5 of Hearts with a 5 of Diamonds. I think I got this from John Bannon’s Collusion, an even finer trick.

Glad you like the blog!