4 Stars

Great story line, Great Surprise, and good handling.

This new routine by Paul Mims holds great promise and almost delivers! It has an entertaining poker based story line and a very visual transformation from 4 aces to a royal flush, it is also fairly easy to do, with an almost instant reset.

Unfortunately, for me a couple of the moves to get to the end don’t seem to flow as well which makes the counting seem a bit inconsistent. I’m sure there is a solution to the handling, and I intend to continue to work on it because I really like the overall routine. In fact, I’m quite sure that lay people probably love this routine as it stands, but for me it just seems a bit inconsistent. It could just be me of course!

I am keen to see more from Paul and his good friend Doug Gorman as they do seem to be producing some clean, strong effects that have great visual impact and interesting storylines. Keep them coming guys!

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Simple but Still Effective.

This was a bit of a plesant surprise. The props are very simple looking, and yet without any funny moves at all you can always tell which can the coin is placed into.

There are no gimmicks and everything can be examined before and after and you can repeat it with a different outcome immediately. You don’t even have to touch the cans.

Very nice!

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So close to a real Winner!

El Duco frequently has some great ideas – I am not sure this is one of his however. Unfortunately, not all of his ideas are manufactured to the the standards that I would like. This particular effect is so close to being a real winner but I fould the manufacture only ok. I also think there are at least two other versions of this effect that are basically the same – one in brass and one in wood that probably should be checked also.

The idea is cool since it is the standard Cups and Coins effect, where the coins travel from one cup to the other, one by one. But with this version the coins are normal and the cups look pretty close to normal too. The two main problems I have with this unit are: 1) it should work with half dollars, but sometimes in practice it did not due to the quality of the finishout for the gaff, 2) the quality of the cups is good all round, but inside they are not finished properly and I’m not sure why.

This being said, if you do it with quarters or halves (assuming I just have a poor cup) it is much easier than the other version and there is no banging of the cup on the table, or any such madness!

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An unusual idea and a fooler!

Here we have another El Duco effect that is unusual and a fooler. The props are workable, just not beautiful.

The effect is you show a hand in a stand and borrow a ring from a member of the audience. Under cover of a hanky you then place the ring on one of the fingers – without the spectator knowing which one. They now are given a pen and a small white board with the shape of a hand on it and are asked to circle just one finger. They have a totally free choice, and yet when you remove the hanky there is the ring on the correct finger. This works everytime and can be repeated if you so desire.

Once you have the knack it is easy to do, but does take some practice at first and cannot be done totally surrounded.

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