Mike Powers Lecture

To begin our March meeting Kevin Owens announced the sad news that two of our past members, Ginny Aronson and Ron Volk, had both passed away. They will be missed. Ethan Schleeter announced that the Magic Study Group would be going over Bobo's Coin Magic the second Saturday of each month, 2 PM, at Magic Inc.

Kevin then introduced our guest lecturer for the evening, Mike Powers. Many are already familiar with Mike from his long running card trick column in The Linking Ring. Mike first became interested in magic from watching Doug Henning perform on TV when he was a kid. " Early in his career Ed Marlo showed him a great card trick and Mike's reaction was, "That's impossible!". "I know," replied Marlo, "That's why we do it!”

Mike's first effect began with four blue-backed Jokers which changed, one at a time, into red-backed cards. He placed one on top of the blue-backed deck and the whole deck instantly changed to a red-backed deck!

Mike next had three volunteers pick cards. He found the first and placed it face up in the deck where it was found sandwiched between the other selected cards.

Next Mike showed the four aces and put them separately back in the deck he then found them with four different methods!

Getting away from card magic, Mike switched to coins. He got two volunteers and magically produced three Morgan silver dollars, one at a time, and then caused them to vanish. Next Mike did a Coin Matrix routine but he used four different types of coins: Chinese, English Penny, Mexican Centavo, and a Kennedy half dollar. This was an original effect that he created.

Following this Mike did a prediction trick involving three colored dice and a deck of cards. A volunteer rolled the dice to get a 3, a 4, and a 6. Mike counted cards down to the number on each die and then dealt down the sum of the three dice. The card at that number matched his prediction.

As an added bonus his original prediction was Queen of Clubs which he crossed out and changed to the to a Two of Diamonds. After revealing the Two of Diamonds Mike turned over the deck and showed that all the other cards were in fact the Queen of Clubs!

Mike finished with a unique version of the 21 card trick called "The Knowing". Basically it allowed the magician to instantly identify which card had been picked without going through the elaborate counting procedure in the original trick

After the meeting, members were invited for food and fellowship at Primo Chukies restaurant.