Jean Hugard & Fred Braue - The Stripper Deck: Miracle Methods No. 1

Product details

The Stripper Deck has nothing to do with a girl shedding off her clothes, but rather is a specially gaffed deck. However, the gaff or preparation is not noticeable with the naked eye. It can even be handed out to spectators for shuffling and cutting. This manuscript outlines various moves as well as tricks with the Stripper Deck. Practically all effects can be achieved with pure sleight of hand using an unprepared deck. But the Stripper Deck simplifies the handling and makes miracles possible without difficult moves, leaving you time to focus on the presentation.

Paul Fleming wrote:

This is not one of the major works on magic. It is not, for example, in the same class as Expert Card Technique by the same authors, or Modern Magic Manual by Mr. Hugard himself - two books which, by the way, we shall examine in detail in later reviews. Nevertheless, Miracle Methods is worthy of a place in every magical library. It is rumored that one of our foremost card experts gains many of his remarkable effects by using a stripper deck, and an examination of this little book will convince the reader that the performer who scorns this useful "mechanical" pack is missing some of the best things in card magic.

The authors attribute the current unpopularity of the stripper deck among professional magicians largely to the inferior quality of the "strippers" that have been available on the market. Quite logically, their first step is to tell exactly how the reader may make a satisfactory stripper deck for himself. Their next task is to teach in detail the "mechanics" of handling a prepared pack of this kind. The magician who has thought that a stripper deck "works itself" will discover here the error of his ways, and perhaps the reason for his lack of success in deceiving spectators with this device. He will learn that there are right and wrong ways of handling a stripper deck and that while the wrong ways lead to almost certain detection, the right ways are so subtle as to be practically undetectable. Once mastered (and, as is so often true in magic, the right way in this instance is no harder to learn than the wrong), the ability to handle the stripper deck properly carries with it the power to perform a whole series of brilliant effects with cards.

Mr. Hugard and his collaborator do not ask the reader to originate these effects for himself. Instead, they devote three-fifths of their book to the presentation of twenty-two feats with a stripper deck which (though we have not the space to describe them) fully justify the authors in their use of the adjectives "unfathomable," "startling," "exciting," "phenomenal," and "bewildering." Among these tricks are, to quote the writers, "certain effects possible with a stripper pack which cannot be obtained by any other means," and others which, while they may be approximated by sleight-of-hand, can be performed either more easily or more convincingly with this prepared pack.

Miracle Methods is a well-written, well-printed booklet of 32 pages, bound in soft boards. It contains information which, if used intelligently, will make the reputation of the amateur magician, and may even add luster to that of many a professional.

32 pages.

3. Introduction
3. Preparing the Stripper Deck

   Mechanics

4. The Stripper Grip
4. The Hugard-Braue Strip Shuffle
5. Reversing the Pack
6. To Reverse a Packet of Cards
6. To Reverse a Single Card
7. A Reversed Card as Key Card
7. The Hugard-Braue Cut Control
8. Sighting the Bottom Card
8. Hugard-Braue False Strip Shuffle
8. To Control Two or More Cards
9. The Stripper Jog Control
10. Hugard-Braue Stripper Force
10. The Stripper Undercut
11. The Stripper Running Cut
11. The Stripper Glide
12. The Hugard-Braue Stripper Change
12. The Stripper Cut

    Tricks with the Stripper Pack

13. Unfathomable
13. Astro-Vision
14. The Slop Reverse
15. The Busted Bobtail
16. The Mind Mirror
17. Money Talks
18. Phenomenal
19. Card and Number
19. Dig with a Spade
20. A Bewildering Change
21. A Subtle Location
22. A Stripper Spell
23. The Stripper Key
23. The Lightning Calculator
24. Locating the Aces
25. Princess Card Trick; Stripper Version
26. A Canny Coincidence
27. Cut and Come Again
27. The Mystic Cut
28. The Pickpocket
29. Hallucination
31. The Braue Aces