Dice Mysteries by Steve Drury

If you love dice effects – and who doesn’t – you will love Steve Drury’s new book 🙂 It is a wonderful treasure trove of ideas, history and effects and at 582 pages it is huge! It is very detailed and thorough and is jam packed with useful information with almost everything to do with dice and taps into related areas such as runes and even mentions Brian Watson’s Sim Stones.  I was immediately able to finally identify some dice that I had long forgotten about here. 

This book is not really aimed at the casual performer but if you want to take your dice effects to the next level there is so much in here to find and use.

• The first part of the book is all about history, etymology, cultural and scientific impacts of Dice and their alternatives – any number of nuggets can be used to amp up your patter and bizarrist stories. 
• Then next part of book is concerned with using dice for divination with sections from Les Cross, Richard Webster and Stephen Ball.
• The next section gets into gambling with dice pretty seriously and Steve includes a very interesting reproduction of H.C. Evans Secret Blue Book (1932) which is a wonderful catalogue detailing all manner of gaffed dice and gambling devices which I found very interesting.
• Then various other types of dice and dice boxes are discussed including: Anverdi’s Mental Die, Magic Wagon’s Crystal Mental Die, Richard Gerlitz’s Oriental Die Box, and the Sure-Shot Dice box, to name just a few.
• In the final sections he details over twenty full-blown routines with dice from an impressive line-up of guest contributors to please every palette.

There is pretty much something for everyone here, and I found it very useful indeed in researching my History Project – in fact I wish I’d read it sooner.  If you want to know anything about dice you’ll probably find it in this wonderful book.  Great job Steve!

Details: Dice Mysteries is a study into the world of dice aimed as a resource for the mystery – psychic entertainer As a hardbound, dust-jacket covered book – it runs at over 580 pages!

It initially delves into its journey from the shaman to the layman, then through history into its roles in society, religion and science, including various cultural and indigenous perspectives. Many types of dice are reviewed, alongside their varied uses, from reading systems to gambling and cheating plus performance applications and routines.

Steve Drury’s own ideas are included throughout, plus there are varied supporting contributions from:

• Les Cross,
• Richard Webster,
• Stephen Ball,
• David Berglas,
• Lior Manor,
• Mark Chandaue,
• Richard Osterlind,
• Ronald J. Dayton,
• Pablo Amira,
• Docc Hilford,
• T.C.Tahoe,
• Seamus Maguire,
• Dale Hildebrandt,
• Danny Proctor,
• Kenton Knepper,
• Craig Conley,
• Steve Cook,
• Scott St Clair,
• Neal Scryer,
• Jackie McClements,
• Cara Hamilton,
• Vito Gattullo
• and Sudo.

Contents

• Foreword – Ronald J. Dayton 10
• Introduction 13
• Etymology 16
• From Shaman to Layman 22
• Pathway to Statistics & Probability 50
• Dice in General 60
• Historical & Cultural Alternatives 82
• Other Random Number Generators 126
• Dice Symbolism, Dreams & Association 154
• Dice Specific Divination 179
  • Geomancy with Dice -Les Cross 201
  • Dice Throwing – Richard Webster 238
  • Elemental Divination -Stephen Ball 274
• The Longer you Play, the More You Lose 280
• Other Distinct Dice 342
  • Fortune Formula – Steve Drury 348
  • Light Detector – David Berglas 383
  • Dice Matching – Lior Manor 388
  • Dicing with Death – Mark Chandaue 391
• Mental Dice Boxes 402
  • Whisper Vision – Richard Osterlind 412
  • The Black Sarcophagus – Ronald J. Dayton 414
  • Insane Cube – Pablo Amira 419
• Concepts & Creations 426
  • Die Dream – Steve Drury 446
  • Devils Dice – Docc Hilford 452
  • Decipher Bars – Docc Hilford 458
  • Crazy Dice – T.C. Tahoe 464
  • Tyche’s Dice – Seamus Maguire 467
  • Dice Control – Seamus Maguire 474
  • Bunco Branching Matrix – Dale Hildebrandt 479
  • Die-Fecta – Danny Proctor & Kenton Knepper 485
  • Rolling Blank Dice – Craig Conley 492
  • Die-Ceptive – Steve Cook 494
  • Die-Abolical -Scott St Clair 500
  • Dancing with Dice- Neal Scryer 509
  • Dicychometry – Jackie McClements 511
  • Casino De Monte Carlo 1900 – Cara Hamilton 519
  • Affinity – Vito Gattullo 528
  • Needful Things – Vito Gattullo 533
  • The Diceman – Christian Chelman 539
  • Cho-Han Bakuchi – Christian Chelman 542
  • Astragalomancy ACAAN – Pablo Amira 546
  • Kismet – Sudo 548
• Chapter Specific Resources 566

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