I’ve been using video to review my magic for maybe three years now, and I remain constantly amazed at its power.

I’m adding some old coin routines back to my repertoire, which I had never before had seen myself do — and it turns out that some coin moves I had never considered problematic were telegraphed like crazy. While I may have done them better in the past, I’m pretty certain the structural issues I noticed have always been there.

It makes me cringe to think of the years I’ve wasted doing things the wrong way. Of course video doesn’t instantly improve anything, but at least it makes it a bit harder to deceive myself.

It’s been ages — or at least over 10 years — since I last had an ace twisting routine in my repertoire: I used to do Elmsley’s Hoftwister and for some reason never learned the Vernon original.

The Ganson description has the initial order as diamond, spade, heart, and club reading from the face. The cards turn over in order heart, club, diamond, and spade. My head is too leaky to keep this straight.

Mnemonic Setup

A trivial change makes things easier to remember for me. Setup is heart, club, diamond, and spade reading from the face: the same order the cards will turn face up in.

The only change in handling is to place the right hand cards under the left hand cards as the hands come together — which places the cards in the correct order.

I suspect many people who do the routine have adopted something like this.