Help us get to over 8,755 articles in 2024.
If you know of a magician not listed in MagicPedia, start a New Biography for them. Contact us at magicpediahelp@gmail.com
Ambitious Classic
Ambitious Classic is a small packet Ambitious Card routine which circulated in the underground magic community (starting with Persi Diaconis[1] before a version by Larry Jennings was finally published in Epilogue Special No. 3 (1975) and later in The Classic Magic of Larry Jennings.
Effect: Several cards in sequence (usually the Ace through Five), each rise to the top of the small packet one at a time and is set aside, until there's only one card left, which is then discovered to have magically changed into a completely different card.
This routine became very popular after Derek Dingle performed his version (Too Many Cards) on The Dick Cavett Show.
Prior Art
- Ambitious Ten in Ibidem No. 10, June 1957 by Bill Miesel
- Amorphous Aces by Brother Hamman (1970) later published in Secrets of Brother John Hamman [1]
Variations
- Ambitious Ace-Two-Three-Four-Five in Card Cavalcade II by Jerry Mentzer (1974)
- Limited Ambitions in Any Second Now by Martin Nash (1977)
- Variance Variant by Allan Ackerman in Here's My Card (1978)
- Con-Sequence in Shuffled Lecture by Max Maven (1981)
- Too Many Cards in The Complete Works of Derek Dingle (1982)
- The Magic "Six" by Ron Ferris in Apocalypse Vol. 6, no. 12, December 1983
- Fourlorn in Cardopolis by David Britland and Marc Russell (1984)
- Amorphous Aces by Brother Hamman in Secrets of Brother John Hamman (1989)
- Variation Of Ambitious Card Variation by Paul Gordon in Lecture Notes # 1 (1989) and reprinted in Card Marvels (2009).
- A Matter of Psychology in Ultra Cervon (which he states was a reworking of a Ray Grismer idea) by Bruce Cervon (1990).
- 5 Speed in Totally Out of Control by Chris Kenner (1992)
- Family Circus in Don't Blink: The Magic of James Swain by James Swain (1992)
- Ambitious Classic Revisited by Bob White in It's a Matter of Style lecture notes and Genii 2006 March
- Ambitious Ace to Five by Nick Trost in Subtle Card Creations, Vol. 1(2008)