MAGIC FROM FINLAND

By Juha-Matti Ristiharju
Escorial 25.10-27.10.2013
taikuri@taikuriristiharju.com

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CONTENT

CONTENT 2

INTRODUCTION 3

MAGIC IN FINLAND TODAY by PETE POSKIPARTA & JUHA-MATTI RISTIHARJU 4

SHORT HISTORY OF CARD MAGIC IN FINLAND 6

MATERIAL FROM FINNISH MAGICIANS 10

PETE POSKIPARTA 10

SUPER MEMORY 10

ONE HANDED CARD TRICK 12

CHRISTIAN ENGBLOM 14

KIM WIST 14

PETRI (PETE) PURHO 15

KRISTIAN NIVALA 15

FINAL DEAL (Christack) 16

MIIKA PELKONEN 17

SEIKEN 18

GUESSING GAME 19

JUHA-MATTI RISTIHARJU 20

NOT SO CHEEKY TRIUMPH 20

INEXPENSIVE MARKED DECK 22

FOUR AND HALF SECOND POKER STACK 25

SIMO AALTO 26

KINGS 27

FLASH CARD 29

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INTRODUCTION
These lecture notes are made for Escorial card convention 2013. All the material in these notes was written
during a three week period in October 2013. I am first to admit that these have been written in extreme hurry.
Also since these are written in English and it is not my first language there will be tons of spelling and
grammar mistakes in them. I didn’t have time or budget to get these proofread.

The notes start with a short article on how magic is doing in Finland today. The article is based on a longer
Facebook post written by Pete Poskiparta a few weeks before the convention. I asked Pete’s permission to
include it here, since it summed up the situation of magic in Finland rather well. I just translated the text into
English and expanded it a little bit.

History of card magic in Finland is the next chapter. It describes the history of card magic in Finland. Main
information is from 1950’s onward and it was gathered by interviewing people who have been around in
Finnish magic scene from those days. This is not academically accurate information since it is based on few
people’s stories and views. However these people are extremely respected in Finnish magic circles.

The last chapter of the notes is devoted to Finnish card magic of today. I included short bios of influential
magicians who are considered to be Finland’s top card magicians. Some of them also gave me permission to
describe some of their routines in these notes. Some of the routines have previously appeared in Finnish
Magic Magazine “Jokeri” or in the artists own lecture notes. I just translated them into English.

Juha-Matti Ristiharju
Rovaniemi Finland 21.10.2013

Ristiharju’s rising cards from Nordic Magic competition 2009

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MAGIC IN FINLAND TODAY by PETE POSKIPARTA & JUHA-MATTI RISTIHARJU
In 2013 Magic in Finland is doing better than ever. As entertainment and as art magic has never been in such
a good position in Finland as it is today. Although the economic situation is bad, as it is everywhere in
Europe at the moment, and employment situation is bad the general situation for magicians is still looking
good. We have around 500 magicians in Finland.

Our yearly gathering, Days of magic at Kouvola (Kouvolan taikapäivät), that is arranged by Markku Purho,
gathers up to 200 hobbyist and professional magicians in one place every year. The lineup of the convention
is a world class and the quality of the acts and people that Markku has managed to gather there year after
year is stunning!

M Markku Purho Pete Poskiparta Noora Karma

Most professional magicians have plenty of work in the corporate and private fields. Magic is also getting a
foothold in different stand-up clubs and in the last few years there has also been few different monthly clubs
dedicated to magic opening up in Finland’s major cities.

Jori A. Kopponen Young Simo Aalto

Magic is also well represented in television. Although at the moment of writing this there isn’t any particular
show dedicated to magic in Finnish television, magicians are constantly making visits to different TV shows.
Mentalists Noora Karma and Pete Poskiparta are the two top names that most normal laymen might
recognize. Also Finland’s Celebrity Big Brother was just won last Sunday by “extreme magician” Jori
Kopponen. Magic for children is also seen weekly on Finnish Broadcasting Company’s (YLE) children’s tv
hour by Simo Aalto.

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 Jyrki “Jay” Niemi Marko Karvo

Outside our own borders Finnish magic is represented in Europe by Jay Niemi and Marko Karvo. Both of
their bird acts are considered to be top of the business. Karvo actually won the FISM general magic category
at Blackpool 2012 with his acts. Competition wise Finland has really risen on the map in general as well.
Simo Aalto was the first big winner in FISM 2000 Lisbon with his close-up act. Before that he won also 2nd
and 3rd places in close-up at FISM. Kristian Nivala has been awarded FISM prices in both European FISM
and FISM 2009 at Beijing. Robert Jägerhorn and Kalle Hakkarainen have also placed on prices in FISM
competitions 2000 and 2006. Miika Pelkonen won the European FISM 2012 card magic category. All this in
last ten years or so… Not bad for a country with just five million people.

Kristian Nivala Miika Pelkonen Robert Jägerhorn Kalle Hakkarainen

Also Risto Leppänen, Noora Karma, Joni Pakanen and Pete Poskiparta have worked outside Finland on
corporate events. Lecture wise Pete Poskiparta, Kristian Nivala and Christian Engblom have toured different
conventions or done lecture tours in USA, Japan, China, South America or Europe.

New circus is also well presented and magic is often part of the acts. Kalle Nio (formerly Hakkarainen) is
touring all around the world with his shows and lately also Janne Raudaskoski has toured China and Russia
with his “Outsider show”. New talented people are getting into magic all the time so the future is looking
bright for magic in Finland.

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SHORT HISTORY OF CARD MAGIC IN FINLAND
Finland has been an independent country from 1917. Before that we were part of Soviet Union for around
100 years and before that part of Sweden.

Magic and magicians in Finland have been studied by Finnish Magic circle for their chronicles. Heikki
Harha also wrote a book on the subject of magic and magicians in Finland from 1800 to 1960 named
“Silmänkääntäjiä, konstiniekkoja ja loihtutaiteilijoita (2011). However that book didn’t cover material that
magicians were doing at the time. Since the Escorial convention is mainly about card magic, the information
in that book wasn’t too helpful for making this presentation.

The information offered here is gathered by interviewing people who have been around in Finnish magic
scene since the 1950’s. The main sources are Arto Airaksinen and Markku Purho. Arto Airaksinen is the
older brother of Jorma and Olavi Airaksinen. Olavi Airaksinen is famous for winning magic circle’s young
magician of the year competition in London 1963 (Full story in English here http://magiarkivet.se/the-story-
of-olavi-airaksinen/). Jorma Airaksinen is long time professional magician who also won FISM price in
general magic 1976 with his wife. At the time they went by the name “Finn Aspen”. While Arto’s brothers
were known for manipulation, Arto himself has always been more interested in close-up magic. He has
travelled around the world in many conventions and is well known today for his magic photographs. His
photos are seen often in all the major publications of magic and also in books. Arto is also one of the few
Europeans who, according to himself, had constant correspondence with Ed Marlo.

Arto Airaksinen Jorma Airaksinen Olavi Airaksinen

Markku Purho is the only official magic dealer in Finland and he has also arranged the Days of Magic at
Kouvola -magic festival since the early 1980’s. He is also a professional magician and a person that most
Finnish magicians thank for making magic books, videos and props available in Finland. I also interviewed
Risto Särökaari and Martti Siren to fill up some gaps. Big thanks to all of them for their valuable time.

First book published on card magic in Finland is “Kolmekymmentä sangen sukkelaa ja lystikästä kortti-
konstia (1886)”. Title is common speech and therefore can’t really be translated. Actually it wasn’t really
even a book but just a small booklet but it was devoted completely to card tricks. Next book that covered
some card magic was Sven Linden’s“Sibyllan salaisuudet” (1915) (Sibylla’s secrets).

According to Purho and Airaksinen card tricks weren’t popular in Finland before the 1970’s. Reijo Salminen,
Solmu Mäkelä and Julius Sundman are said to be the pioneers of Finnish card magic. They started to rise in
the fame in the 1940´s and 50´s. There was also some other professional and hobbyist magicians in Finland
at that time but they were mostly stage magicians. If they did something with playing cards it was mainly

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manipulation. Card magic in Finland in the 50’s was mainly from the book by Ilmari Jäämaa“Taikurin
kirja”(1938) (Book of a magician). Also some people did few tricks from Swedish magic books.

In the 50’s also appeared Solmu Mäkelä’s “Suuri taikakirja” (1951) (Big Book of Magic) and Julius
Sundman’s “Suuri taikurikirja” (1959) (Big Book of magicians). Both had some card tricks in them but
mainly they were just translated from German books and were somewhat semi-mathematical. It is still worth
noting that today Solmu Mäkelä’s book is the most wide spread and commonly found magic book in
Finland. There has been more than a half a dozen of printings done on the book. In my interview with
Markku Purho he actually noted that although people tend to say that Solmu Mäkelä was specialized in card
magic, in his opinion Mäkelä was more specialized into displays of skill and flourishes with playing cards.
Mäkelä actually did really few card tricks.

It is worth noting that close-up magic in general was something pretty much unheard of in Finland until the
1970’s. Purho remembers that he saw his very first card trick somewhere in the 1960’s performed by a
Finnish magician Jukka Santanen who later became Finland’s first mentalist. Purho also remembers that
personally the first card book that he ordered was Cliff Greens “Professional card magic”. Other option
would have been Henry Hay’s “Amateur Magicians handbook” but at that time Purho assumed that the latter
was geared toward novices.

There are few different reasons why playing cards weren’t too popular within Finnish magicians before the
middle of the 1970’s. There used to be separate tax that was charged for every single deck of cards in
Finland from 1842-1983. In 1943 that tax was 25 marks per deck. In todays (2013) money that tax alone
would have been around 4 euros. That tax was paid by the manufacturer or the importer and the price of the
deck was then added on top of the tax. As a proof that the deck had its tax paid the ace of diamonds was
stamped with approval sign. The last known amount for playing card tax in Finland was around 75 cents
from 1978. The tax was removed in 1983 but before this the playing cards tended to be rather expensive.

Other reason playing cards weren’t more popular in Finland was the religion. Most people in Finland are at
least nominally members of the Christian church. There are presently two state churches: the Evangelical
Lutheran Church of Finland, which is the primary state religion and enjoys a membership of about three
quarters of the population, and the Finnish Orthodox Church, which enjoys a membership of about one
percent of the population. Both of the churches considered the playing cards as devils playthings or devils
picture book for a very long time. Playing cards were also connected to gambling and therefore they had
somewhat of a bad reputation.

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And last but not least, as already mentioned earlier, there wasn’t too much material available for playing
cards in Finland. Although we have had magic books since the mid 1900 the material in the magic books has
usually been rather low quality. And since people didn’t speak foreign languages too well before 1970’s and
1980’s they had to depend on material that was available for them. In other words good learning sources
weren’t available in Finnish. The people who had the language skills often ordered books by mail from
England, Sweden and Germany, but they were far and few.

According to Markku Purho this all however changed in the late 1970’s. One reason for this was Nick
Trost’s packet tricks that started to appear on the market and that he was also bringing them with him to sell
from conventions that he was travelling. Trost’s packet tricks were impressive and required very little skill.
After packet tricks, different one trick gaffed decks also started to become popular. It was quite common for
magicians to carry around a case of some sort that was filled with different packet tricks and gaffed decks.
When needed the magician would select a suitable trick from his case, perform it and then put it away and
take out the next deck. No one seemed to care or think that there was something wrong with in this approach.

Due to television and advertising people’s English skills started to get better from the late 1970’s onward.
Also Purho was able to translate the instructions to Finnish for all his products and that made learning them
easier for the average magic hobbyist. Purho also said that magic videos played a big part in making card
magic more popular in Finland. It didn’t matter anymore if you understood the language or not since it was
possible to learn just by watching.

Reijo Salminen Risto Särökaari Timo Kulmakko

A minor debate raised from my interviews was who was the first close-up magician in Finland? Many people
say that Risto Särökaari was the first professional magician who did close-up magic for a living in Finland.
However, in Purho’s opinion it was Reijo Salminen who really brought close-up magic into Finland and that
Timo Kulmakko was the first perform to perform close-up magic commercially. Salminen is still the person
to thank for bringing the Elmsley count, short corners, card warp and other common routines and techniques
into Finland. He was a common name in larger conventions around Europe and he brought lots of books
about tricks from his travels.

Whether the first close-up magician was Särökaari or Kulmakko doesn’t really matter. They both started
about the same time. In an interview with Särokaari he told me that they both started in the early 1980’s.
Särökaari remembered that he used to do lot of Slydini stuff with coins and such but also a lot of magic with
cards that he had learned from books like Royal Road to card magic, Harry Lorayne’s close-up card magic
and Jinx magazine that he had gotten from some magic convention in Europe. Särökaari also remembered
clearly the early 1980’s and Paul Harris fever that also was somewhat visible in Finland. This was also noted

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by Tom Ogden in Genii March issue 1986. Ogden was invited to lecture at Days of magic at Kouvola and he
wrote about his experiences in the magazine. Ogden specially mentions magician Mika Leskinen who
“performed the collected works of Paul Harris endlessly”. Actually Mika Leskinen was the first magician
ever from Finland to receive international price in card magic from Nordic Magic convention 1985 where he
won the junior category of card magic. Card magic had been its own category in Nordic Magic conventions
since the early 1960 so it is clear that Finland was far behind of its neighbors in card magic for a long time. If
Purho’s memory doesn’t fail him he thought that there wasn’t even Finn’s competing in the card magic
category before the 80’s. In general the close-up and card magic categories were dominated by Swedish and
stage magic by Norwegians.

In the Genii article mentioned above Ogden also makes an interesting notion that Purho had told him that at
that time in Finland there was only around 200 magicians. Yet Purho had managed to sell over 100 Michael
Ammar topit books to Finland. I personally find this rather funny since in my +20 years in magic I have seen
or heard only two magicians using topit in Finland.

Sometime in the 1970’s there was also a strong interest in gambling type of material with cards in Finland.
There were also two books published on the subject; Markku Tapio Sarastamo’s “Korttitaituri”(Card whiz)
(1972) and Timo Klemola’s “Korttitekniikkaa” (1980) (Card technique). Sarastamo’s book was the first
book in Finland that was totally dedicated to playing cards. There is an interesting story going around in
Finland about how that book came to be. According to some people Sarastamo needed money fast so he sold
the idea of the book to publisher before he even had one page written. When the book was suddenly
approved he panicked and pretty much just translated some material from Lewis Ganson’s books as his own.

From 80’s everything started to move in much faster pace and advances were clear. By the early 90’s we had
already people placing on prices on FISM and people like Iiro Seppänen and Christian Engblom had come
into magic scene. Seppänen became famous from his own prime time TV show where magic was performed
pretty much for the first time in prime time television for adults. His shows contained a lot of close up and
card magic along with international guests like Aldo Colombini, Eugene Burger, Lennart Green and so on.
The early 90’s also had David Copperfield specials airing on television and holiday season around Christmas
had lots of circus, variety and magic shows. This quickly raised the amount of hobbyist to over 500. This is
also the area when most of Finland’s top card magicians of today got their magic bug bite.

Iiro Seppänen Christian Engblom

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MATERIAL FROM FINNISH MAGICIANS

The following chapter contains short bios of influential card magicians in Finland. That said, there is a lot of
other good and even few great magicians with original material working in Finland today. These notes are
just focused on card magic and this was the main reason why these people were chosen. Some people
presented here were kind enough to let me use some of their routines in these notes as well.

PETE POSKIPARTA (http://www.peteposkiparta.com/)

Pete Poskiparta (aka. Peter Burnside) is the
number-one mentalist in Finland. In Finland he's
well known for his numerous TV-performances,
his own TV- and radio show and several
performances at international corporate events. In
addition to Finland, he has also performed in the
US (Las Vegas, Boston, Washington D.C), Spain,
Estonia and Sweden. Pete is also the first Finnish
to be accepted as a member in PEA (Psychic
entertainers association) and he has lectured in
their annual convention and also at Mindvention,
Sweden and London.

He has also written a book called “IHMEITÄ” 2010 (Miracles). His own TV-show was released on DVD in
2005. Pete has won Finnish championships in restaurant magic 2002, stage magic 2003, 2nd in close-up 2003.
Pete is one of the most sought-after performers for corporate events in Finland. As a performer, he is
charismatic and he really knows how to captivate his audience, whether big or small, domestic or
international.

Peter’s style with cards focuses on common commercial material and in the last few years his focus has been
with stacked decks. His thinking is heavily inspired by Bob Cassidy and Richard Osterlind.

SUPER MEMORY from “Overpriced lecture notes – Mindvention 2011”

I got the original idea for this routine from the Finnish magician Markku Purho. The audience is always
interested in card memory tricks and memory acts in general, because a good memory is something that
attracts everyone. If you are well versed for example in Harry Lorayne’s memory techniques, you will be
able to perform the following act without shortcuts or tricks after some practice. It also makes for an
effective performance with small preparations, however.

Progress of the act:

Shuffle and cut the deck of cards. Ask an audience member to come to the stage as an assistant, and to cut a
small pile of cards, say 15–25, from the deck. Then the assistant should distribute the cards to whoever they
choose in the audience, keeping one card. Ask each audience member with a card to stand up and, when you
click your fingers, to lift up the card so that it faces you. When you click your fingers again they should turn
them down again. Look at each card in a flash and click your fingers to show they can lower the cards. Say

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“I will now read the cards out from memory. When you hear your card, please sit down. That will show the
audience that I got it right.” Read out the cards correctly to demonstrate your superb memory.

The audience members can keep the cards for now, to allow for an excellent ending to your show. Imagine
you carried out the abovementioned memory trick at the beginning of the show. At the end, call out the cards
once again, but this time wander among the audience collecting them: “Could I have the three of spades, the
seven of diamonds, the five of clubs…” In other words, not only do you commit the cards to memory in a
flash, but you remember them even half an hour later. Impressive!

Explanation:

This memory test is based on a routine known as Card Calling, which is very popular among mentalists. In
card calling, a viewer selects a pile of cards and the performer reads the viewer’s mind by listing what the
cards are. In this trick you create the illusion that you can learn the cards in a flash (which is actually
possible using memory techniques), although in reality you have already memorized the deck. It can be done
using any memorised deck.

Start with a false shuffle, one which does not shuffle the cards at all. You can select your preferred method
from dozens of options. Now ask the assistant to take a small pile of cards, around 15–25, from the deck.
Demonstrate the size of a pile of 20 cards by taking it from the top; this is important because most people
don’t know how thick a pile of 20 cards is.

For this to be an effective illusion, there should be more than ten cards in the pile. Fan out the cards and ask
the assistant to take a set of cards from anywhere in the deck. Be careful in giving instructions, so that they
know exactly what to do. The place where the assistant takes the cards out is the place where you should cut
the deck, putting the ones from the top of the deck on the bottom. That way, by looking at the lowest card in
the deck you will know straightaway where the cards picked by the assistant start. For example, in the
Osterlind system, if the lowest card is the jack of diamonds, the first card of the assistant’s pile will be the
king of spades, then the ace of spades, the three of spades, etc. In Si Stebbins, if the lowest card is the six of
diamonds, the first card of the assistant’s pile is the nine of clubs, then the queen of hearts, etc. In other
words, you already know quite a lot about the cards in the assistant’s hand. Ask the assistant to distribute the
cards to different people in the audience, keeping hold of one. Because the cards were pre-shuffled and they
were allowed to draw their pile from any place in the deck, it is not necessary to re-shuffle them. However, if
they do, it is not a problem (more on that later). Once the cards have been distributed, ask the card-holders to
stand. When you click your fingers, they lift the cards up. Actually look at each card to create the illusion
that you are really learning them off by heart. The cards are very likely to be in the right order, so when you
call out the cards you’ll be able to point at the right people as you do it. When you look at the cards you’ll
notice right away if the cards are not in order. If they aren’t, it is not a problem – just point at the people
whose cards you remember and call out the rest of the cards. After all, you told them to sit down when they
heard their card. In the worst case scenario, the assistant completely mixed up the pile they picked. Then you
will know the cards, but without memory techniques you won’t be able to memorise who has which one. In
that case, change the act slightly and draw attention to how quickly you memorised the cards. Ask the
audience members to sit when they hear their cards, but don’t point at anyone. List the cards as fast as you
can. This is easy if you have memorized your deck properly. If the cards are distributed to the audience in
order, as they often are, you can use the ending described above for your show – i.e. fetch the cards from the
audience, naming them as you go. If the cards have been shuffled, I don’t recommend using this ending.
Instead let the viewers keep the cards or just go and get them back.

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BONUS

The above memory illusion is incredibly effective if you add to it the Amazing Memory Test taught in the
book 13 Steps to Mentalism (p. 61). Believe it or not, if you have learnt the memory test properly and know
your memorized deck, you can easily combine the two. It only changes your act a little bit. Ask the audience
members to say the name of an object when they turn up their cards. Because you already know the cards,
you only have to remember the objects, which is pretty mechanical if you use the system described in the 13
Steps. You don’t need to write down the objects’ names, because when you say the name of the card and the
object, the person will sit down. This way everyone will know you got it right. Think about the possibilities
that this gives you during your performance. You can go back to the cards and objects whenever you want to,
or list them all again at the end.

ONE HANDED CARD TRICK from Jokeri 5/2001

In the early 2000 Jokeri used to have reader competitions. The idea was that someone described and effect
and then readers had to invent method for that trick and send it to Jokeri. The best solutions would be
published and awarded. Following are solutions to problem that was proposed by Max Maven. Maven
described card trick where magician would state that he would perform a routine with only one hand.
Therefore he would place his other hand in the pocket. Card would be selected via peek or any other one
handed method and magician would fail to find the card. When the deck is searched for the selection it is
however seen to have vanished. However at this point magician would ask for the name of the selected card
and state that in the beginning he said he would do a trick with one hand… But he didn’t say which hand…
He would take the hand out of his pocket holding one card… The selection. Of course Maven didn’t tell his
solution but Jokeri had two versions that were all workable.

FIRST METHOD by Pete Poskiparta

For Pete’s method you need gaffed playing card. The card is actually made out of two cards. First of all you
need a force card and it’s duplicate. Let’s say this force card is four of clubs. Make corner short on one of the
duplicates. This way when you riffle thru the deck the deck you will automatically stop on this card. Now
take any other card and glue the two cards together from bottom quarter of the deck. The corner that was cut
short should remain on the non-glued end. This is common gaffed card that is also used in Franklin V.
Taylor's Peek Deck (Phoenix No. 25 & J.G. Thompson's My Best, 1945)

Put the duplicate in the pocket and double card approximately in the middle of the deck. Depending on what
sort of deck you are using, you must make sure that you can riffle the deck from index corner and your
gaffing has to be done on index corner as well. Because of this you might have to riffle thru the deck with
other hand that you are used to. Basically all you do is a riffle force on the short card. Tilt your hand enough
so spectator can see the selection and then release your thumb. The force card coalesces on the other card
that it was glued to and therefore vanished. Only thing left is to reveal the duplicate in your pocket.

Method is extremely workable, easy to do and for lay audiences the effect is a real fooler.

Note by Juha-Matti Ristiharju

The double gaffed card could easily be changed for miss indexed card with short corner. By just turning the
deck from end to end before spreading it to table the peeked card could vanish. Pit Hartling uses something
like this in his time travel card trick in Flicking Fingers “The Movie” DVD.

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SECOND METHOD by Jari Santala

Jari’s solution was similar to Pete’s. He also relied on duplicate in the pocket and his force was also similar
but his way of getting rid of the card from the deck was different.

Jari’s solution was to make the force card that is attached to elastic that runs up the magician’s sleeve. The
card is also a corner short for easy riffle force. However the shape of the card had to be altered in order to
make sure that it would enter the sleeve easily. Following photos taken from the Joker magazine should be
self-explanatory.

THIRD METHOD by Petri Purho, Juha-Matti Ristiharju & Miika Pelkonen

This method was developed independently by three of use. The method would rely on gaffed deck known as
Monte Christo deck or Mastermind deck. The decks in question are basically same deck with different
names. They are one way force deck that are all made of same card, usually two of spades or three of hearts.
The other end of the deck has all of the card indexes replaced with normal deck. In other words you can fan
or spread the deck on the table to display the false indexes and show 52 different cards. However if you
gather up the deck you can do extremely clean fingertip peak force where spectator can open up the deck at
any point and see only the force card.

Today Christoph Borer is marketing smiliar effect “Get Sharky” (http://www.penguinmagic.com/p/2541).

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CHRISTIAN ENGBLOM (http://www.christianengblom.com/)
Engblom is a long time visitor of Escorial
convention so he should be familiar face to most
attendees. Christian started magic at the age of three,
and had his first public performance at the age of
five for a Finnish-Swedish radio program. His hobby
followed him throughout his childhood, until it fully
awakened during his exchange year in USA, when
he received a very good magic book for his
Christmas present. Magic turned into a profession in
1992. Engblom studies the field of magic and makes
study trips around the world attending conventions
as performer and lecturer. Engblom has won Close-
up Finnish Championships in 2003 and was the host
of Finnish tv show “King of magicians”.
The multi lingual magician can perform in his mother tongue, Swedish. He also speaks fluently English and
Finnish and good Spanish.

KIM WIST (http://www.kimwist.com/)

Wist is a professional entertainer and all around
magician from Finland. He is also a founder of the
biggest magic society in Finland; Suomen Taikurit
(Finland’s magician’s society). He has been into
magic for 25 years now, and the last 17 as a full
time professional. He has performed for the
biggest companies in Finland, and even for the
president! Wist has also participated in the well-
respected Fecter’s Finger Flicking Frolic (4F)
convention. Wist has won Finnish championships
of restaurant magic twice and received many other
awards in Finnish championships of magic, both
on stage and close-up.
Wist is the co-creator with Christian Engblom on the “Oil over troubled water” routine. Recently he has also
published few moves like one handed pass thru Joshua Jay’s and Andy Gladwin’s Vanishing inc. Wist’s
style with cards varies a lot and he doesn’t mind showing off some skills in his performances as well.

PUBLISHED MATERIAL

KW One handed Pass (http://www.vanishingincmagic.com/magic-downloads/card-magic-downloads/kw-

one-hand-pass/)

Oil over Troubled Water along with Christian Engblom (http://www.vanishingincmagic.com/magic/card-

magic/oil-over-troubled-water/)

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PETRI (PETE) PURHO
Pete is the son of Markku Purho, the biggest
magic dealer in Finland. Pete followed his father’s
footsteps and got interested in magic in very
young age. Unlike his father however Pete
decided not to pursue magic as a full time living
but to focus on making video games instead. In
September 2006, he made a promise to himself,
that he "will create a new game every month"
based on the experimental gameplay development
model. This effort eventually ended in the creation
of Crayon Physics Deluxe , which was nominated
for the Seumas McNally grand prize from the Independent Games Festival in December 2007 and
subsequently won this category at the 2008 IGF Awards on February 20.

Pete has travelled all around the world in magic conventions for all his age and he has seen a lot. He is also
extremely well read on magic, especially older books and magazines. Thru his father he has managed to get
to known many top names in our industry. Only few are lucky enough to have seen Pete’s creations in action
but people like Armando Lucero and Michael Weber speak very highly of his thinking. In card magic Pete
likes to combine everything from sneaky mathematical principles to gaffs to achieve his goal. Sadly Pete
hasn’t published any routines to highlight here but some of his travel journals have been published in Finnish
magic magazine Jokeri and few theoretical essays were published in the Finnish edition of Magicscript.

KRISTIAN NIVALA (http://www.taikuus.fi/)

Kristian Nivala is a Finnish magician specialized
on card tricks and gambling material. He has won
Nordic championship in close-up and card magic
2007 and 2008. He was also 5th at card magic in
FISM 2006 at Stockholm and he won 2nd in
Beijing. He also was 3rd in European FISM at
Blackpool 2013. Nivala has also performed in the
Magic Castle, participated in 4F convention and
he also did a lecture tour in Japan.

Nivala admits that he doesn’t like to read or watch

too much of other people’s material. He prefers to
find and discover things himself. This way he
avoids getting too much outside influences and his
material reflects himself.

Nivala’s material can be quite flourishy and constant displays of skills are mixed with strong moments of
misdirection where a card case that was on the table for instance is stolen multiple times back to the deck.
Nivala is also well trained in various gambling based moves such as false deals and stacking.

15
FINAL DEAL (Christack)

Christack is method where deck of cards is in such order that you can deal any poker hand called for from
the deck when dealt for five players. However don’t make the mistake of mixing this up with other poker and
memorized stacks on the marked. What makes Christack original is that once you have done the deal, the
order of the card changes, but you are still ready to repeat the effect. In other words, you can continue
dealing poker hands over and over again without rearranging the stack.

I (Juha-Matti) was one of the first to get the original bookled from Kristian and I had seen some stack where
first deal arranged the second deal but newer a stack where one could continue to deal round after round.
After that Kristian has told me that he has shown this to people like Bill Malone, Darwin Ortiz, Max Maven
and others and they haven’t seen one like this either. The stack is now sold as full routine thru Kristian in his
lectures. The notes contain 3 complete routines with the stack. This is just the basic explanation of the stack
and its possibilities.

Setup

Cards are arranged into following order.

QS, JS, AS, KS, 10S, 8H, 8D, 8C, 9S, 8S, AC, QC,
AD, AH, QD, JH, 7H, 10H, KH, 9H, 9C, QH, 10C,
KD, JD, 9D, 5H, 4C, 3C, 2H, 6D, 3H, JC, 3S, 2C,
3D, 4S, 5C, 6S, 5S, 4D, 7S, KC, 6H, 2D, 7D, 10D,
7C, 6C, 2S, 5D

Cards from Queen of Spades to Jack of Diamonds make up the “big cards pile” (P1)
Nine of Diamonds is the key card. You may wish to make this corner short on both ends.
Cards from Five of hearts to five of diamons are the “small cards pile” (P2)
Four of hearts didn’t fit into the stack and you can remove it from the deck.

Deck while stacked

Christack is basically deck of 51 cards that is divided into two groups; big and small cards. Both of those are
composed of 25 cards. These two stacks will never be shuffle into each other’s. The two stacks are divided
by nine of diamons (9D). Both stacks are capable to be dealt into two different configurations of poker
hands. Two of these are made of weaker hands and two are made from stronger poker hands. When dealing
cards always deal for five players draw poker. So everyone receives five face down cards, one by one.

Straight dealing demo

After false shuffles and cuts cut the nine of diamonds to the bottom. This places five of hearts to top. Deal
five player draw poker in such a way that you deal five rounds. Every card dealt goes on top of the previous
round cards. You can now display the hands. First player should have nothing, 2nd player a pair, 3rd one has
two pairs, 4th one has three of a kind and the dealer has straight.

Gather up the cards in such a way that lower ranked hands are picked up first on top of the deck. So you pick
up the first hand on the left first. After that pick up the new lowest rank hand from the table on top of the
deck. Continue this way picking up all the piles. In all deals you gather up the cards from your left to right,
picking up each hand and putting it on top of the deck. Once you have picked up all the piles, without
chancing cards order, you are ready to deal em again. This time the first player should have nothing, 2nd
player has flush, 3rd one has full house, 4th one has four of a kind and the dealer has straight flush.

16
When you gather up the piles this time the stack resets for the first deal. Basically you are having two
interlocked stacks that when dealt prepare the next deal. This can be repeated as long as one wishes.

After you have done the deal twice, you can continue by cutting the deck. Basically you riffle to the short
card and let it drop off your thumb getting a break under the 25 card you just used to deal. Now cut the cards
above the break to table, cut only single card (9D) from top of the deck to table and then cut rest of the deck
from your hand on to top of those. Basically you reverse the stacks keeping nine of diamonds in between
them.

The first deal of stack two gives out first player ace high, 2nd player has a pair, 3rd one has two pairs, 4th one
has three of a kind and the dealer has straight. Resetting this stack by picking up the piles the same way
prepares the stack for second deal that deals out 1st player straight, 2nd player flush, 3rd player full house, 4th
player four of a kind and dealer royal flush.

What’s else there is in the original “Final Deal notes”

It is possible to deal the winning hand to what any of the players. This is done with slipcutting 1-4 cards
from top of the deck to above the key card. There is also certain way to gather up the cards so that the stack
resets again to original position. This of course also requires one to remember the order of the hands and how
they appear and on what deal.

The stack also allows one to deal any poker hand called for from A high to royal flush. Unlike in some other
poker demonstrations the flush, straight, straight flush and royal flush are all different hands. In some poker
routines they are demonstrated by just dealing straight flush.

MIIKA PELKONEN (http://www.miikapelkonen.com/)

Miika Pelkonen is the European Champion of considered to be most talented magician to rise
Card Magic from Blackpool 2011. He is also the from Finland in the last decade.
Nordic Champion of magic 2011 and has multiple
Finnish Championships (Card magic 2011,
Restaurant magic 2009&2010, juniors 2008)
under his belt. He works as a professional
magician in Finland.

Miika has had the passion for magic for his entire
life. He was barely eight years old when he first
discovered magic and soon realized that it could
be something more than just another hobby. From
there on intensive studying of the art of magic has
been an integral part of his life. Miika is
specialized in card magic. When he was younger
he was influenced a lot by the “cardistry style”
and gained a lot of attention on his skill on the
Internet. However in the recent years he has
changed his style a lot due to influence of Juan
Tamariz, Lennart Green and Dani DaOrtiz. For
his age, Miika is extremely skilled and widely

17
SEIKEN from “Kyseenalaista toimintaa” lecture notes
Magician promises to find three different selections by tossing ace of spades into the air and catching it in the
deck. Ace is tossed into the air and caught between two of the selections. The ace then changes into the 3rd
final selection.

Method
This effect was inspired by routine done by Michael Weber on his visit to Days of Magic at Kouvola.
Weber’s effect was really similar but his method was totally different and it wasn’t impromptu. This lead the
creation of Seiken. Finding two of the selections is nothing new but the change where the ace suddenly
changes into third selection tends to caught even magicians off guard.

Take out ace of spades from the deck and have three spectators select a card. Take the first selection back
and while you do so make a minor crimp on the lower right nonindex corner of the card. Also after you have
done the crimp control the card under the spread via spread cull. Keep the card under the spread and take
back the second and third selections as well and control all three cards to bottom. While squaring up the deck
reverse the bottom most of the selections with half pass.

Take a left little finger break above the three selections on the bottom of the deck. This is made easy because
of the crimp. Cut about half of the deck to the table. Cut all the cards above the break to the tabled portion.
Continue with same rhythm and cut only one card from the three in your left hand to the tabled packet and
finish up by cutting the last two remaining cards to the packet. To spectators it should look like just if you
had just given the deck couple of cuts.

From top of the deck you have second spectators selection face down, third spectators selection face up and
first spectators selection, with a crimp, face down.

Take the ace of spades face up with other hand and other hand picks up the deck in charlier cut position.
Toss the ace into the air and at the same time start charlier with the deck. Your goal is to catch the face up
ace in the face down deck as the charlier is completed. Depending on your skill level you can vary how high
you want to toss the ace.

When the ace is landed in the deck square up the deck completely. From your end you should be able to still
spot the card with a crimp. Get break above it. Spread the cards until you see the face up ace. Be careful on
not to expose the face up selection above your break. When you come to ace separate the deck one card
above the ace and set all the cards above it aside. Spread the face down card and face up ace to right and
grasp all the cards above the break into your right hand. Spectators see ace of spades sandwiched in between
two cards. In reality the lowermost card is double that is held together.

Make a gesture with the three (four) cards and at the same time left hand gets break under the top card of its
cards. Bring right hands cards to left hand and with Zarrow add on turn over all the cards in the right hand
and add the top card of the left hand cards into them. This reveals two face up selections and face down card
that is apparently the ace of spades. Everthing looks as it should but the ace has been actually switched for
the last selection. Take the three cards and put rest of the deck away. You are left dirty because there is face
up card hidden under the top card of the deck. Show that the face down card has changed into the last
selection. If you wish to clean up the deck half pass or KM move will do the job.

18
GUESSING GAME from Jokeri 3/2012

Three spectators select card from wide tabled ribbon spread. Rest of the cards are put aside. One of the
spectators shuffles the three selections. Magician takes the cards and shows first card to spectators and is
able to immediately tell who it belongs to. This is repeated with second card. The last card however isn’t
even turned face up but magician is still able to tell what card it is.

Method

The deck is set up in memorized deck order. However the order doesn’t have to be sequential. Lets put it this
way. Imagine deck set up into three sections. On the bottom of the deck are all red cards, on top of the deck
are all black cards and in the middle are all court cards. So the deck has three distinctive groups of cards.
Basically the deck can also be shuffled with variation of Ireland red black shuffle but instead of running
singles in the middle of the deck you run them at 1/3 and 2/3 of the deck.

Three spectators take cards from three different places in the deck. One is asked to take one from the top, one
from the center, one from the bottom. The deck is then put aside. At this moment you already can separate
who had what card since they came from different parts of the deck.

Have the three cards shuffled and take them back. Ask if anyone knows what card is on the top. They should
say no and you can follow that up with notion that if they don’t know the card you certainly wont know it
either. Turn over the top card openly on top of the packet. Show the card to spectators by raising the whole
packet their eye level. This will expose the bottom card of the packet to you. Remember this card since it
will be the last card. Everything is basically now done but for spectators eyes the effect hasn’t even started.

Put all the cards to table and start to emphasize that you don’t even touch cards. Your goal is to ask them
funny questions and such in order to apparently read whose card is face up. In reality your goal is to make
them forget that you touched the cards.

After you have revealed who the first card belong to ask the owner to take it away. Again this is done purely
to emphasize that you don’t touch the cards.

Ask the second card to be turned over and since it is only fifty-fifty, one out of two, bet who the card belongs
to, you might want to add some sort of wager to make finding out its owner more interesting.

Last card of course doesn’t have to be guessed, since everyone knows who it belongs to. So instead of
“reading whose card it is” you end up reading “what card it is”. After you have apparently revealed the last
card ask spectator to turn it over and show it to everyone. This is again done to mess up with their memory
on what happened and that they forget that you handled the cards.

19
JUHA-MATTI RISTIHARJU (http://www.taikuriristiharju.com/)
Juha-Matti is the northernmost professional
magician in Finland living at Rovaniemi, right
next to the Arctic Circle. He has been interested in
magic for over 20 years and has received
countless of awards at Nordic and Finnish
championships in card magic.

Juha-Matti has also a university degree from

education and marketing. His master’s thesis
(MA) studied the role of social media for
magicians. Also his Bachelors thesis studied
magicians self-learning methods. Juha-Matti also
wrote and self-published a book “Magic of the
Arctic circle” 2009. The book is out of print.
Countless articles and routines by Juha-Matti have been published in Finnish journals for magicians. Juha-
Matti is extremely well read in magic and jokingly he is called by his colleagues in Finland as a “Walking
dictionary of magic”. In card magic Juha-Matti considers himself to be a “fixer”. He likes to take an old
classical routine and update it for today’s audiences or he selects an effect he likes and then finds out what
has been done before on that plot and from all the information gathered he builds up the best version for
himself.

NOT SO CHEEKY TRIUMPH – Unpublished

Extremely clean triumph similar to cheek to cheek deck. However in the end, you can show the cards both
sides and everything looks completely normal. Old video performance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhw-NAhN9OI

HISTORY

Basically what you have is half gaffed deck. Instead of double backers as in normal cheek to cheek you have
cards that have split faces. Other half of the face of the cards is normal but other half is a back of card. This
allows you basically to do cheek to cheek style triumph effect, but in the end you are clean to show both
sides of the deck. I am the first to admit that for lay audiences one could as well use normal cheek to cheek
deck, especially with Engblom’s additions or even do Vernon’s original. But for magicians and video my
version can fool most people since they expect it to be something until the very end when I am able to show
the underside of the cards as well.

We discussed this method with Christian Engblom, John Houdi, Markku Purho and Roberto Giobbi at
Kouvola 2009 and although all agreed that the solution is so obvious that someone must have thought of it
before no one had seen it published. Apparently Marlo had some work with half split face/back cards in
some of his books but not a triumph. And of course Michael Weber and Dean Dill have had half deck split
face red/black cards for their routine “New World”. Actually I came up with exactly the same method of
doing out of this world with split cards 10 years before new world was published but also thought of it as
“obvious solution” and didn’t think too much about it. However I have shown my solution since to Armando
Lucero, Steve Beam, Eric Mead, Richard Sanders and few other guys as well and none has seen it published

20
so I include it here as my own until someone corrects me that the method is actually found in 100 year old
book.

ROUTINE

I have couple of different ways to set up the deck. Some require half passes and such but this is the easiest
way. Have the split cards face up. On top of them have half of the normal cards face down and on the bottom
of the split cards also add one face down card. This card acts as a cover so you don’t flash the bottom card by
accident. Note what side of the lower part of the deck shows backs and what faces. You must have the deck
oriented in such way when spread only backs will show.

Display the deck casually by taking cards from top in spread into the right hand and casually turn over both
hands. Keep cards in left hand in quite tight group so you don’t flash backs. Gather up the deck and give it a
short shuffle to remove the cover card from bottom. Do this by doing overhand shuffle where you first milk
both top and bottom cards together to left hand. Then follow up shuffling around 20 cards and stop before
you risk of running into your gaffed cards. Throw the shuffled cards back to top or cut em there. The deck is
in same position except the bottom cover card that is removed.

Have card selected from the top half of the deck and control it so that it keep returned to bottom half. You
can do any of the common cheek to cheek deck controls of have the card returned to the spot where it came
from and move it little further down the deck with spread cull.

There is natural break in the middle of the deck in the spot where the gaffed cards meet the normal cards.
You can easily get a break here. Once you get the break you split the deck in half for shuffle. However
before the split allow one of the normal cards to drop on top of the gaffed half. Sometimes I am lazy and I
just make this card a short card. Since the deck is gaffed up anyway why not make it easier for myself In this
case I just riffle for my short card. Split the deck and turn upper half (normal cards) face up and keep lower
half face down. You can now spread both halves to table to display face up and down cards. Gather up the
spreads and shuffle the halves together. I like to shuffle the card in the left hand gaffed half to top and one
card from right hand normal cards underneath it. This allows easy clean up for the top card. Just spread the
cards to display their up and down condition and while explaining that what you will try to do is to turn em
all back same way you casually pick up the top card of the deck and use it to display what you mean. While
doing this you just turn it from face down to face up. Gather up the cards and turn em 180 degrees and show
that all are now facing same direction except the selection in the middle. I like to spread the cards until I
come to selection, then outjog it and continue spreading until I ran out of cards. I keep cards in loose spread
and then raise the spread up to my face that reveals the selection and other side of the fan. Everything looks
as it should be.

Reset for the deck takes few minutes or just made the deck stripper deck as well and reset in seconds

BONUS IDEA by Pete Purho

Durind our finnish gathering “El Borga” early august 2013 Pete noticed that one could do rather interesting
triumph with split cards. One would do triumph as usual and show the mixed condition of the deck. Then
you could make all cards face same way except the selection. All would be as in my version so far. However
you could also add final kicker where the mixed up deck would now arrange into numerical order. This
would be done with all split cards and heavy setup. The shuffle to mix the cards had to be either common
triumph false shuffle like strip-out, push thru or zarrow or faro but it wouldn’t matter too much since because
how the cards were made you still could show them all mixed up and down and no order to be seen. Just turn
the deck 180 degrees to reveal the triumph. Turn the deck over and show the deck in new deck order. Is it

21
worth the trouble to get highly gaffed deck made just for this effect??? On video, competition or magic
session maybe but not otherwise…

INEXPENSIVE MARKED DECK from Magic of the Arctic Circle

HISTORY

Marked deck is fascinating tool, but for some reason magicians tend to shy away from it. I feel that there are
many reasons for this.

- Using marked deck is felt by many to be cheating. Especially many so called purists don’t like to use
any gaffs at all.
- Magicians also rarely know any use for marked cards besides the obvious ones.
- Good quality marked cards have been hard to get and rarity until last few years. Ted Lesley’s
working mans marked deck was one of the first ones to hit the marked and it was rather popular. The
marks in Lesley deck are very easy to read but also in quite noticeable place. Lesley marks can’t be
read from the fan or spread.
- Boris Wild designed his system from the basic idea of Ted Lesley deck. Boris Wild moved the
Lesley marking system to the edges of the cards and made the marks readable from spread. This
opened some very nice possibilities with marked decks. At the same time however Wild’s system
made the markings slower to read because you had to scan the whole side of the card in order to spot
the cards suit as well.
- The biggest problem with both of these marketed versions for me however is the price. I like to keep
a deck with me in everywhere I go. That means I have deck with me at pubs, restaurants, bars, at
beach and so on. In those environments decks tend get dirty fast and I don’t want to replace my 20€
gaffed deck once a week.

That in mind, I decided that I will try to find more economical way to mark a deck of cards cheaply. It is
commonly known that you can buy red of blue sharpie type markers and fill in some spaces on the back of
the playing cards and mark cards that way. The problem I found out with this method however was that there
simply wasn’t a place at the edge of the cards to place the marks so they could be read from spreads.

The next thought was to find some kind of good quality white permanent marker... I bought all sorts of
markers from internet stores and finally found out a note from Sharpie manufacturer’s webpage that stated
that with current technology it isn’t possible to make good quality white markers. It had something to do
with the construction of ink inside the pen.

My next solution was to try to get hold on the FAKO-sheets or rub in numbers used originally by Ted Lesley
and Boris Wild. I made around dozen phone calls and same amount of emails and I simply couldn’t find a
company that manufactured small enough numbers for my needs anywhere from Finland or Europe. Also the
transfer letters tend to sometimes rub off the card.

Only solution I had left at this point was to scratch mark the cards. However it takes lot of time and it’s very
hard to make curly shapes by scratching so there had to be a way to mark the deck with less work.

MY SOLUTION

Keeping all the above in the mind I set myself a goal: ”Find out the least number of marks that would allow
me to mark any card in the deck and it still would be easy and fast to read”.

22
After few days of thinking it suddenly came into my head in the middle of the night. A CLOCK!!!! Hands of
the clock can tell any number from one to 12. So basically it would be possible to mark any card with just
two lines. What follows up is supposedly my original system to mark the deck up using bicycle style card. I
have send this to few dozen people around the net and no one has seen it published before.

THE MARKING SYSTEM

When you look at the printing of the bicycle back, you notice little above the center of the edge of the card,
spade style symbol. Above this symbol is other curly shapes that look little bit like a flower. We don’t really
care about the other parts of these shapes besides the center points. Just imagine these two shapes as the
faces of two clocks.

KELLOT = Clocks in Finnish (This document was originally published in Finnish magic magazine “Jokeri”)

For these two ”clocks” you can mark any card of the deck with any sharp object. I use very sharp surgical
type X-acto knife.

For example, the first clock face would tell you the suit of the card in simple formula. Line to up would tell
that the cards suit is club. Line to right would tell the cards suit is hearts. Line down would be spades and
line left would be diamonds. Easy, right?

Now the other clock left would tell the cards numeral value just like clock hands would. Risti = clubs Hertta
= hearts Pata = Spades Ruutu = Diamonds

Nelja = Four Yhdeksan = Nine Jatka = Jack Kuningas = King

23
 CARDS SUIT CARDS VALUE

Because there are only 12 spots on the back of the cards I decided that the way to mark the last value would
be to left it unmarked. In my system this card would be the kings. Beneath are few examples:

Four of clubs Nine of clubs Jack of clubs King of clubs

Marking cards with this system is very fast with good tools. Marking whole deck might take about 30mins
the first time you do it, but once you get better with it, you can easily do it in 10-15mins right after you open
new deck. Also depending on your eye sight you can decide the size of the markings yourself. You can
scratch the marks more bold if you have bad eyesight and make them longer. If you have better eyesight,
make them smaller. My eyesight is little below average, but I don’t wear classes and I am able to notice these
marks rather easily for over 3 feet away in rather bad lightning conditions as in shady pubs for instance.

All the marks are in one place but require little more time to get comfortable to read when compared for
instance to Boris Wild deck. However, when you get comfortable with the system, this actually becomes
even faster than Wild system, because you don’t have to scan the card. Marks are always at the same place.

I also figured out by accident, but the placing of the marks actually makes the deck pass the basic end riffle
test. I was pleasantly surprised when one of my decks passed the examination of few fellow magicians.
However, it doesn’t really matter because laymen have never noticed these marks, and I have had them on
every deck I use for almost two years now.

MARKS IN MEMORIZED DECK

There is other system I use for memorized deck. Instead of marking the value of the cards I mark the cards
position in the stack on the backs of the cards. The suit “clock” tells the tens and the other one tells the
number from 1-9. When stacked this creates rather nice system where by just spreading of the cards you can
identify where in your stack you are by just looking at the faces of the “clocks”.

This is the system I use myself and I find it to be even faster than the first one because I know my stack cold.
Spreading the deck is like seeing a row of small clocks. Also its very fast because when your looking for, lets
say five of clubs (30 in Tamariz stack that I use), I simply estimate and push over about 25 cards and start
spreading the cards. Now I glance at the spread and focus on any card. I don’t care what the card is. I only
care about the stack number. If its not 30th card, no problem. I see what it is, for instance 28th, and I can look
up because now I know that when I spread two more cards, I am at my five of clubs.

In other marking system I explained earlier I would see a card code. Instead of telling me a familiar number
like clock, I would have to transfer the information first to card, telling me I looked at 3 of hearts. Then I
would have to think what number is 3 of hearts in my stack. Its 28th in Tamariz stack. In the end this system
works better with memorized deck than with the original system.

24
To be honest, I have had just around 5 decks made the original way ever. Few of those went to my good
friend who doesn’t use the stack. I have always used my system like I am explaining in this chapter along
with memorized deck. I just find it so much faster and easier.

FOUR AND HALF SECOND POKER STACK by Barry Price and Risto Särökaari
Särökaari used to be one of the first close-up
magicians in Finland. He was also good friend
with people like Jerry Andrus and Tommy
Wonder. However around ten years ago Risto was
suddenly diagnosed with MS disease (Multiple
sclerosis) and he got out of magic. He still keeps
up with some people in magic community, but he
hasn’t practiced magic for years. However his
inventions and variations used to be well
presented in Jokeri so I asked him if he was okay
if I included one his routines to these notes.

This routine is basically short gambling demo where magician puts four aces to the bottom of the deck and
stacks them for normal draw poker in under five seconds. It is based on stack shown to Risto by Barry Price
at his lecture in Finland 2001. Price idea was based on work of Ed Marlo.

Take out the aces from the deck and put a crimp to the bottom card of the deck. Breather or Martin Nash
infinity are actually even better. To prepare for the stack for five handed game take the deck in overhand
shuffle position and run four cards from top of the deck and then toss rest of the deck on top of them. Repeat
this run of four cards from top to bottom but this time keep a break between the later four cards and rest of
the deck with your left little finger.

Now take out the aces face up and spread them in a small fan in a way that topmost ace is spread more than
the others. Insert the aces apparently to the bottom of the deck. In reality however your goal is to insert the
topmost ace into the break and rest of the aces to the bottom of the deck. Square the deck up and prepare for
simple over hand run up.

Start by doing milk shuffle where you drag top and bottom cards off the deck at the same time. Continue by
shuffling three cards singly. Repeat the milk shuffle by taking top and bottom cards together again and then
run three more cards singly. Toss rest of the deck on top. Cut at your break and deal honestly. The aces are
automatically distributed into 5th hand.

Notes

The setup for the first two aces is done before spectators even know what the effect will be. Also the amount
of players could be varied since it would be easy to run few more or few less cards. This isn’t perhaps the
most elegant stacking demo out there but it is really fast and really easy to do.

25
SIMO AALTO (http://www.simoaalto.com/)
Simo Aalto is maybe the most well-known
magician of this presentation for lay audiences.
He is more known in Finland as children’s
entertainer. However Aalto has always had a
passion for close-up and card magic. In the Nordic
Championships 1985-1990 he won the close-up
competitions. In Lausanne 1991 FISM
competition he got the 3rd prize and in Dresden
1997 2nd prize in close up and finally World
Championship in close-up magic in Lisbon 2000
with his act “Arctic Bells”.

Aalto was also one of the first magicians in Finland who really was interested in card magic in the early 80´s.
His original ideas have made him a popular artist among other magicians and he has lectured all around the
world and participated in 4F convention and performed also at the Magic Castle.

Following few pages contain two card routines from Aalto’s lecture notes Hot Arctic Magic

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