Mir nach, Kanaillen!

Handbuch der Magie (German book) by Jochen Zmeck

Page 100 et seq.



Personal Comment: Follow the Leader as basic as it gets. This could be a nice lead-in quickie for a longer Follow the Leader routine with more switches of the leader cards.



Difficulty 2/5

3rd Flight by William P. Miesel

Epilogue by Karl Fulves

Issue 6

Page 48



Personal Comment: There is a problem with this trick. They way you see it, it works only 50% of the times. The other times the effect is slightly different. The "ugly" version requires you to pick up the packets and to cut them to show that the "leader" cards have returned to their packets, by a simple cut. Make of this what you will. It is possible to do the effect and your chances of getting the "good" version ain't too bad.



Difficulty 2/5

Rise and Switch by Bill Simon and Roberto Giobbi

Card College 3 by Roberto Giobbi
Page 590 et seq.

Personal Comment: Could be included in almost any existing ACR. The method is solid and the "indicator" card really help to make it easy to remember what is going on. I would file this under "Nice, but not my cup of tea" as again there is the issue with the table space, limiting it's real world use drastically. I can imagine, letting others hold the indicator cards and placing the selection on top of those. That would transform the bit into a "in the hands" item making this much more attractive. In face now thinking about it, it probably is the best approach. Just place the indicator card into the spectators hand. Face up. Then place the selection on that card Face down. Follow quickly with half the pack, then let them remove the indicator card from the bottom of the pack to be placed on top of the pack, telling them that the selection will now follow. During the second phase you make the two spectators switch the indicator cards. I assume you can even prompt them to do so. So it seems to be their idea, making this much stronger.

Difficulty 1/5

Three-way Excursion by Roberto Giobbi

Card College 4 by Roberto Giobbi
Page 859 et seq.
Page 841 et seq. in the German Edition ("Transposition Excelsior")

Personal Comment: Really nice and easy, but you need table space. Lot's of table space. So this is not for the closeup kind of guy who is used to doing card magic amongst wineglasses with very little space. But if you have the liberty of space, there is no reason not to do it. It is based on Irv Weiner's "Triple Transposition", a credit that is not in the German edition for some reason.

Difficulty 2/5

Simplified FTL by Phil Goldstein

Focus by Phil Goldstein 1990
Page 86 et seq.

Personal Comment: This is gold. Short and sweet. The method is direct and bold. There is hardly anything to dislike about it. The classic plot of Follow the Leader popularized by Dai Vernon might have found my personal favourite. Suggestion: instead of doing a Jordan count you can do a Stayon count buckling the bottom card. That way right after the count you can deal the top card from the face up packet onto the table and then turn over the three remaining cards so they become the face down followers. Looks a bit cleaner that way.

Difficulty 3/5

Off-Balance Leader by Phil Goldstein

Focus by Phil Goldstein 1990
Page 87 et seq.

Personal Comment: Yeah another one from Focus. But it is such a great book and I will go through the whole book and include all the effects not using gimmicked cards. The Off-Balance aspect of a Follow the Leader plot was originally proposed by Karl Fulves. I'm not sure if this is stronger than any regular Follow the Leader routine. But it certainly gets the head spinning. Maybe this is great within a regular Follow the Leader routine as some sort of finish.

Difficulty 3/5