Ambitious Card (World’s Greatest Magic)

If you could have one set of magic DVDs, this would be it! This benchmark collection features just about all of magic’s most enduring and classic effects and routines. It’s a fabulous compendium with many of the top masters in the world of magic teaching their handlings and routines for some of magic’s classics. Linking rings, sponge balls, mental bending, cups and balls, thumb tips, Zombie, color-changing knives, and many, many more topics are all gathered in this one terrific DVD reference set. Each volume covers a specific subject and features new, old, and sometimes rare footage by some of the top video producers in magic. 

Conjuring historians have traced the origins of the Ambitious Card plot back to a French conjuror named Alberti who performed in the early 1800’s but the idea of placing a card into the middle of the back and having it return to the top almost certainly occurred to card magicians prior to that. It definitely has intrigued magicians since then as just about every performer with cards since that time has included some version of this trick in their repertoire. 

In this volume, you’ll meet a variety of performers who have taken this very basic yet magical idea of a single playing card constantly rising to the top of the pack in some very clever and decidedly different directions. For example, David Regal leads off with his routine which transmogrifies an ordinary playing card into a puppy that always responds to the voice of its master. You’ll see and learn Harry Lorayne’s routine which first saw print in his classic Close-Up Card Magic performed and taught by the man himself. Frank Garcia offers some clever moves that are ready to be implemented into your own routine while Michael Ammar demonstrates a routine that would compliment the repertoire of any card worker. Doc Eason is up next with his take, a high point of his bar set, while Paul Wilson, Al Schneider and the inimitable Tommy Wonder perform and teach their routines which all end up with the card appearing in a totally unexpected and magical place. Finally, Dai Vernon’s reminiscence about the origins of his timeless routine from Stars of Magic is the perfect way to round out this Ambitious Card extravaganza. 

It’s been said that the Ambitious Card may be the most magical thing you can perform with a deck of cards, and with this DVD and the classic routines and performers it offers, you’ll never be at a loss for yet another way to make the spectator’s card come to the top of the deck as if by magic.

Running Time Approximately 2hr 6min