Hello everyone!
Today’s topics are: 67th Birthday; SimposioMagia 2026 Torino; MRS Magic Convention 2026 Grenchen; Overhand Shuffle Glimpse; The Roberto Giobbi Sessions – Robert Schumann; Big Night Film; Ultimate Wisdom
These are The Magic Memories 227, gone online Sunday, May 3rd, 2026, at 0:07h sharp.
All The Magic Memories from 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025, including the Magic Advent Calendar from 2020, can be found HERE.
67th Birthday
These The Magic Memories 227 appear three days after my 67th birthday on May 1st, and I would like to take the occasion to thank all of you who have sent birthday wishes.
Please know that I read all of them and greatly appreciate them.
However, I also have to deeply apologize for not answering any of those which reached me over the multiple socials (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, etc.).
The reason is that although my webmaster and friend Andrea Pancotti has set up all those services as part of my webshop (I think it is compulsory to do so), I rarely – meaning almost never – go to them as I have not yet been able to understand its use for me except to steal time.
My IQ is not sufficiently high to make me understand why people are using half a dozen ways to communicate, worst of all Messenger, when they can simply write an email – the speed of transmission of all of these is exactly the same…
Briefly: THANK YOU to all of you who thought of me – I love you too!
I would like to highlight two messages for various reasons, not least of all because you might find them useful in magic.
One came from Karl-Heinz Krämer, aka Charly Chester, from Veitshöchheim, Germany, (what a city name… you do not want to have to spell that too often…), whom I have never met, but who seems to enjoy my books and has kindly and very ably translated various of my essays into German.
He wished me “good luck” for my birthday, and served the following anecdote with it:
A friend of mine once told me about his boss:
The boss—a very personable man—has, for many years, wished his employees, friends, and relatives nothing more than “good luck” on their birthdays and special occasions. Nothing else at all.
This always struck my friend as curious, and one day he asked his boss why he limited himself to simply saying “good luck.”
The boss replied:
“You see, the people on the Titanic may have been as healthy and as wealthy as one could wish. They simply didn’t have any luck.”
What a lovely Prologue this would make to introduce a trick that has “luck” as a presentational theme.
Another interesting message came from my dear friend Joe Gallant of Boston, who wrote:
Since 67 is a prime number, that is proof that you are in your prime!
Not only is 67 a prime number, but according to Wikipedia it is also a lucky prime, a super-prime, and a sexy prime.
I never knew there are dozens of different types of prime numbers – CLICK HERE to know more.
Such information is not just educational and amusing, more often than not it may offer a presentational idea for a trick.
In the above instance of 67 it could be argued that “6” and “7” have “magical” qualities.
You could apply this to the old chestnut of showing a Six and a Seven, putting them in the deck, and without further ado show them back on top – a lovely Double Ambitious Card.
No comment should be necessary, but for the rare newcomer in magic who reads these lines, I’ll briefly expand on this idea: Have the 6S and the 7C on top of the deck unbeknownst to your audience.
Start by telling them about the characteristics of the number 67, offering various very brief examples (see the Wiki-entry), as at the same time you spread through the deck with the faces toward you and throw the 6C and the 7S face down on the table (these are the “twins” of the pair on top of the deck). Only when you reach the punch line of your little Prologue turn the two cards face up, saying that they represent the number 67.
Done in this way it is virtually impossible that anyone focusses on the exact suit of the cards, but all will remember “black and 67”.
Show the cards for a few seconds, ideally capping this short display with yet another amusing fact about #67 – the laugh this brings acts as an interference in the ultra-short-term memory making them forget the suit, but will function in the short-term memory as an anchor to remind them of the values Six and Seven, black.
(It is better to use Clubs and Spades rather than Hearts and Diamonds, because Hearts is more probable to be remembered, being a universal symbol…)
If you think the trick is too short, I tend to agree.
But you can still use it to introduce a longer routine by saying, “Maybe two cards are one too many – which one do you prefer?” Now have this card signed, putting the other away, and proceed with the performance of your standard Ambitious Card.
At the end you could transform the signed card, assume she chose the 6S, into the 7C (which you kept under control at all times), e.g., by saying, “Maybe you ask what would have happened if you had chosen the Seven instead of the Six?” Transform the card, e.g., using the “Snap-over Color Change” (p. 1133 in Card College Volume 5).
Throw the 7C on the table, palm the signed 6C and bring it forth from some impossible location; if you have a good card to wallet use that and do not worry about those who say this is not a good climax for an Ambitious Card Routine… these people are theoreticians and have never performed in front of a paying audience… or if you agree with them, show that you have been sitting on it all the time (that is how I do it when I do not have my wallet available).
Talking of “wallets”: how about saying that the card is now in your wallet. Take out your regular wallet, open it, show it contains a card back-up, but when you turn it over it is blank-faced and reads something like, “That’s the wallet from Stone Age – check Wallet on Smartphone…” Take out your Smartphone, and upon opening it (provided it is in a sort of wallet) produce the signed card from there (this alludes, of course, to the Wallet App – not sure if only iPhones have that).
Anyway, just a few ideas how you can use birthday wishes for magic…
SimposioMagia 2026 Torino
Years ago it occurred to me to do a two-day gathering of magic in Torino, Italy.
The idea was to have an invitation-only meeting that would celebrate magic and gastronomy in equal parts, both being necessities for life, one spiritual/intellectual, the other physical.
It was set at the end of October when in Piedmont the season for white truffles starts.
The format was simple: have magic talks throughout the day, and in the evening do a big shared meal based on truffles and the best wines. There would be no convention fee, but the obligation that every participant would give a short talk (ca. 20 minutes) on any subject related to magic.
The inspiration for this was not so much the Card Conference held in San Lorenzo de El Escorial (no truffles there anyway…), but a private gathering in Toronto, Canada, by the name of 31 Faces North, annually organized by David Ben and Julie Eng, and sponsored by Allan Slaight.
This private convention always turned around two “guests of honor,” which in 2007 were Stephen Minch and – guess who – yes, yours truly.
What impressed me so much there was not so much the meals (no truffles), and not even the caliber of the people invited (total exactly 31, among whom heavy-weights such as Max Maven, John Thompson, Herb Zarrow, Michael Weber, Eric Mead, Bob Farmer, etc.). No, it was the fact that most contributed some kind of talk that related to magic, and I found all of those wonderful and interesting.
Back home from Toronto it immediately inspired me to create something similar (unfortunately without the sponsorship of a millionaire…) here in Europe, and my first thought was Italy, since I thought Switzerland was too small and did not have enough talent at the time (today is different and it could be done…), and Germany already had similar events (Cardworkshop, Mentalworkshop, etc.), but Italy really had nothing in that direction (except Tony Binarelli’s commercial magic days in San Martino di Castrozza, which were also based on an initial idea of mine).
When I told the idea to my Italian friends of many years, Aurelio Paviato and Marco Aimone, they both agreed to take over the reins: Aurelio knows almost every worthy magician in Italy, and Marco is the president of Italy’s largest magic club in Torino who could also put the event location at our disposal for free.
Said, done. The first SimposioMagia, as we chose to call it in honor of the Greek Symposia (see HERE), took place in 2007. This went on for three years.
When the SimposioMagia in Torino stopped, Giacomo Bertini of Florence, who had also been invited to the Torino sessions, asked me if he could take the concept of the meeting around coins, and so created the European Coin Magic Symposium, which was held in Milan for the first time in 2010, later renamed European Close-up Magic Symposium.
As such it went on from 2010 to 2018 in Milan, taking place at the Hotel Sunflower, attracting some of the biggest names in magic (David Roth, Flip Hallema, Francis Tabary, Miguelangel Gea, Shigeo Futagawa, Michael Rubinstein, etc., and I also became a permanent invited guest).
After 2018, the event evolved and moved to Vienna, Austria, under the name “The Original Close-Up Magic Symposium,” taking place in Bill Chueng’s formidable close-up theatre near Vienna. This meeting is now still going on to great success, I am told.
So, there you have it, a very short bit of magic history at a small scale. If the participants and their contributions were to be described, it would result in a big book.
Coming back to this years Simposiomagia, ably organized by Aurelio Paviato, and held on the premises of the Circolo Amici della Magia, the magic club of Torino under the presidency of Marco Aimone, it took place Saturday, 11th, and Sunday 12th April, with numerous shorter and longer presentations, all turning around magical topics (CLICK HERE for a PDF of the presentations, easily translated with ChatGPT for those who are interested).
I would have loved to tell you a bit about every single presentation, but alas neither time nor space allows for it. In any case, the event was so successful that it was unanimously decided to repeat a similar function next year.
MRS Magic Convention 2026 Grenchen
From Friday, 24th, to Sunday, 26th April, I attended the national convention of the Magic Club of Switzerland (MRS/CMS) in Grenchen.
FYI: MRS stands for Magischer Ring Schweiz, CMS for Club Magique Suisse, as well as for Club Magico Svizzero. Yes, that are the three official languages in Switzerland, and there is even a forth, which is Romansh (English for Rumantsch), the latter spoken by about 50’000 people.
If you consider that at the end of 2025 Switzerland’s resident population amounted to 9 million – that is half as many as in the Greater Los Angeles area – you may wonder how it is possible that so few people, with so diverse languages and cultures (and religions!), can live together, not only in peace, but prosperous and happy, Switzerland being among the top ten in “the happiness report” and, to my own surprise, number one in wealth (I think they have excluded authors of magic books from this statistic…).
I mention this for those who might not be aware of how small Switzerland is, and whose post offices occasionally mix it up with Sweden and Swaziland, a fact which shows when ca. 100 practitioners of magic attend a convention… that is not so many.
Nonetheless, look at the program below:
What you cannot see from the program, but which is hinted at on the cover of the program booklet (a rare gift at magic conventions nowadays, which I find a great pity), the talent booked for lectures and shows was just short of sensational.
Never before in the entire history of magic – as Churchill might have said had he been a magician – has such a small convention, in such an small town as Grenchen (CLICK HERE), and which boasts “over 16’000 inhabitants, ” booked so many world-class acts. Indeed, the evening gala on Saturday showcased nobody less than the two Grand Prix Winners of FISM 2025, Francesco della Bona (Italy) and Kibuki (Japan).
But that is not all, since the “supporting acts” where almost all past FISM Grand Prix Winners, too: Miguel Muñoz (Grand Prix Stage FISM 2018), Héctor Mancha (Grand Prix FISM 2015), Laurent Piron (Grand Prix FISM 2022), Marc Weide (Grand Prix Parlor FISM 2018), Eric Chien (Grand Prix Close-up 2018), Mortenn Christiansen (Grand Prix Parlor 2022/2025), Anca & Lucca (Winners Mental Magic FISM 2022), Mario López (no Grand Prix, but several other awards, and good enough for this gala!), all of this ably emceed by Swiss-German Peter Löhmann.
As you can guess, the gala was far too loooong, and the theatre without air conditioning, but someone like me who can sit through a 18-course Piemontese meal of four hours without complaining will not complain here either…
You may find it interesting to note that in contrast to most magic conventions, which are organized by magic clubs, this was managed by some non-magicians, and it showed in the “artistic conception” of the convention.
However, the lack of originality in the convention program was by far made good for by booking some of the world’s top talent. This was exclusively due to the fact that those non-magicians are well-connected in the real world – something missing from most magic club conventions – and who therefore succeeded in gathering the necessary sponsors and finances necessary to pull over such a grandiose event. It was like a buffet made by someone who had not much knowledge of food nor wine, but knew what the best food and wines are, and then found someone to pay for all that.
Briefly, as the British say: The proof of the pudding is in its standing, and in the case of this convention it was an outstanding event, and everyone left happy and enriched.
What more do you want!
In my own name, and in that of all participants, I thank Eric von Schulthess and his team for organizing such an extraordinary event in the small town of Grenchen, Switzerland – now the rest of the world knows where Grenchen is (head office of Rolex, in case you need a reference).
Overhand Shuffle Glimpse
This allows you to glimpse a card that will eventually end up on the bottom of the deck after an Overhand Shuffle.
Start a standard Overhand Shuffle but, as the left thumb chops off the first packet, it is very briefly pulled to the left and then immediately drops back as the shuffle is continued. In the instant the top packet topples to the left and back, the bottom card can be seen. After the shuffle, this card will be on the bottom of the deck.
I think it is a good idea to follow immediately with a second Overhand Shuffle and end with a False Cut. Even better than a False Shuffle retaining bottom stock and a False Cut is to apply Ascanio’s idea of Intelligent Movements (see Sharing Secrets, p. 54) in form on an Intelligent Injog Shuffle, to wit: Start an Overhand Shuffle until you are left with a small packet (although we want to control just one card, the same technique applied for a packet up to about a third of the deck – not so bad); throw this packet on top of all, injogging the lower cards. Let the deck slide in Dealing Position, and then cut it in several packets to the table, cutting at the injog first.
This will effectively deliver the selection back to the bottom. What makes this procedure “intelligent” is the fact that the two “techniques” are done in full view and simulate ordinary actions (you really shuffle, and you really cut, instead of false shuffling and false cutting).
Details of Handling: As soon as you have sighted the card, lift your gaze and look at the spectators, saying something meaningful to the trick. Correctly done, nobody will suspect that you even looked at the cards. The whole action looks like an ordinary Overhand Shuffle and the glimpse is imperceptible if correctly executed. As far as I know this is original with me but wouldn’t be surprised to learn otherwise.
This said, my notes point to the source that inspired me to come up with the above handling: “Roberto Giobbi, FEB 1993, inspired by reading Paul Daniels’s Adult Magic, p. 98/99.”
This book, authored by Barry Murray and published in 1989 by Michael O’Mara Books Ltd., is directed at the public, but as Charlie Miller already said, perusing such books from time to time can be of great benefit to the expert magician; not so much for the direct content, but for what the content can trigger.
It so happened with an item titled “Shuffle Glimpse, ” where the author suggests overhand shuffling a deck by tilting the cards in the receiving left hand back and forth, and in the process glimpse the card that ends up on the bottom of the deck. I think you will agree that my version I describe at the beginning looks more familiar to a lay audience and therefore more innocent.
This shuffle, by the way, is reminiscent of the “first method” Erdnase describes (see my take on that one in Unexpected Agenda, “January 22 – On Erdnase’s “First Method” False Shuffle Full-Deck Control,” a method I urge you to learn).
Mr. Murray’s description led me to one more idea (maybe already discovered by Marlo?), which I dubbed “Tilted Overhand Shuffle Glimpse”, to wit: Hold a break under card to be glimpsed (e.g., after Peek, Lateral Insertion, etc.). Start an Overhand Shuffle, but in the first shuffle movement the left thumb pulls the packet above the break to the left in a hinge-like movement.
The packet thus very briefly tilts to the left, allowing the glimpse of the outer upper index as well as the full face. The slight tilting of the packet is invisibilizized as the movement blends in with the Gestalt of the shuffle.
Coming up with these two ideas from a magic book for laypeople made me happy like a clam at high tide (with apologies to Mike Perovich).
The Roberto Giobbi Sessions – Robert Schumann
As I am proof-reading the layouted text of my assembled The Genii Session columns, tentatively titled Roberto Giobbi Sessions, scheduled to appear toward the end of this year (so says Vanishing Inc.), I cannot help but amaze myself at how much and to what depth I have dealt with the arguably largest variety of themes magical ever to be written about in a column of a magic magazine (six columns during fourteen years).
This editing work takes me longer than it should, because I keep getting stuck with the subjects I wrote about and pondering the many implications the subjects discussed have.
In The Genii Session for January 2011, for instance, I reproduced without comments the “Musical Rules for Life and the Home” by German composer, pianist, and music critic Robert Schumann (1810-1856), from Album for the Young, written in 1848.
What he says about music and how to study it is timeless, and anyone with an average intelligence and very little thinking can apply it virtually 1:1 to magic.
From the almost one hundred pieces of advice, I will quote and comment two:
Ear training is the most important thing of all. From the very start, try hard to recognize notes and keys. Bells, the window-pane, the cuckoo: listen to the sounds they make.
RG: Applying this to magic seems obvious: Watch as many magic shows, and performances in other genres, as you can and get inspiration.
You should play scales and other finger-exercises fluently. However, many people think that everything can be achieved by spending several hours a day in mechanical practice, even into advanced age. That’s almost as if one tried every day to say their A, B, C as fast as possible, getting faster and faster. Use your time more wisely.
RG: This does not even need a comment… although this is one…
Big Night Film
The other night I watched a movie I had completely forgotten about … yes, I just realize that this is a magic trick in itself…
The film I am referring to is Big Night (USA 1996) – read more about it HERE.
As I was going to extensively comment on it to explain why I waste time on watching movies instead of practicing Table Faros, I decided to just give you the YouTube link to it, where you can legally watch the film for free, and keep my mouth shut for once.
What could I say anyway that Roger Ebert has not already said in his review of the Chicago Sun-Time:
“Big Night is one of the great food movies, and yet it is so much more. It is about food not as a subject but as a language–the language by which one can speak to gods, can create, can seduce, can aspire to perfection.”
[RG: replace “food” with “magic”… and then find a magic performance this could be applied to.]
Enjoy it and see for yourself how it relates to excellence in magic… and life for that matter.
I believe the film can be streamed from various platforms, probably in better quality than if watched on YouTube, but here is your legal and free entry ticket: CLICK HERE (This is the German version, but I am sure that my english-speaking readers, who are Internet-smarter than I am, will find the English version.)
Ultimate Wisdom
“The meaning of life is to discover one’s gifts. The purpose of life is to offer them to others.” –Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Disclaimer
For the n-th time I remind you that this blog is free of charge, there is no advertising, I have no sponsors, and I am doing this with no hope of a (financial) return, instead of investing my time in clever YouTube clips or Instagram posts that would maybe garner me thousands of followers. Therefore, it is proof-read only once by myself, all typos and other errors being my full responsibility. Should anything be unbearable, please let me know via the “infos / contacts” menu item on the webshop www.robertogiobbi.com and I shall correct it.
Very best wishes,
Roberto Giobbi
