The Saturday of the 37th International Magic Convention kicked off Saturday morning. The Judges were Domenico Dante (chairman), Obie O’Brian, Tonny van Rhee, Andy Nyman, Jackie McClements, Hank Moorehouse, Joan Caesar, Gay Ljundberg.
Troy Von Schreiber (UK)
First up was an entrant from last year, Troy Von Schreiber from the UK. Troy started his performance with a printing card routine, printing the cards with a caricature of his face, he then produced a large can of hair spray and breath freshened. Before doing a quick change shirt and some his impressions. Last year Troy held the stge really well but didn’t perform much magic, this year was much more magic focused, cannibal cards and a production of a teddy bear closed his act.
Vittorio Beltoni (Italy)
Vittorio started with an ace production, and moving into a one handed matrix, followed by performing the matrix “no handed”, a fast performance sending the coins under one card. He then did a very good very of the matrix using see through cards, turning the silver dollars into Chinese coins, and finishing with the production of a jumbo card and coin.
Woody Aragon (Spain)
Woody looked like a dark horse, a slow start moved into an excellent display of oil and water type effects, with the backs of cards being dealt as red and blue even though the two red and blue packs were shuffled over and over. Every other, sets of two, and even groups of three alternating red and blues were dealt on demand finishing with the deck changing to a rainbow backed pack. A very entertaining set, and our favorite for 2nd place.
Kolos (Hungary)
What looked like a stage routine more than closeup, this music backed set started with manipulations, before performing a jumbo linked card routine. More manipulations resulting in the production of cup and balls cups, followed by the balls themselves. A mix of cups and balls and ball manipulations was then performed before the small balls charged to large.
Igor De Ruitz (Italy)
Igor was very well presented, his outfit, looked fantastic, a mix of toy maker come doctor, but very much let down by his speech, with a heavy Italian accent and broken English, talking about what I think was heavy scientific terms meant that it was almost impossible to follow both the magic and the story. The routine was around coins and coin boxes, but accidentally falling over behind the table to shouts of “Pinocchio Pinocchio” finished the performance for us.
Tatsuya Mishinagi (Japan)
What do you get when you give a lady from the audience a princess crown and fairy wand? A good basis for a “deminishing” routine, Tatsuya did deminishing cards and card cases, coins, coin purses, vanishes and reappearances of the coin, finishing the routine by shrinking himself to a small puppet to pack up his props to his briefcase.
Shawn Farquhar (Canada)
Shawn showed exactly why he’s a multi award winning magician, a selected card from a new sealed deck was signed lost and found in the resealed unshuffled new deck. Shawn then did a fabulous cups and balls, in his unique funny style, finishing with solid cups, and multiplying cups. A class professional performance, an our favourite for 1st place.
Mathew Wright (UK)
Mathew presented a torn and restored card, told to a story of witches and witch hunters, he also performed a very nice three fly, ending with a slow motion coin drifting across to the other hand visibly. Finishing with a magician centric performance of cups and balls, playing on the names of many famous magicians, also a runner for a prize.
Gary Charm (Hong Kong)
Gary started with a bottle production and then a glass from table, a number of ball red balls were manipulated an changed to grapes, before a mobile phone was deminished and finally vanished, unfortuantly the ending didn’t quite come off.
Dynamo (UK)
Dynamo strted by selecting 6 spectators from the audience to name six distint numbers. They were revealed to match a preprinted lottery ticket that had been in his wallet on show. The wallet was them given by a spectator to another member of the audience, in this case Andy Nyman. It was revealed by Dynamo by showing a credit card with Andy Nymans name on it, and in the wallet a photo of Andys wife. It was I think then taken too far by vanishing a signed card that was also then found in the wallet. We predict a merit award for this one.
Toto (Japan)
A number of coin bends were attempted, each one being fantastic misdirection for other items bends, such as a bent light and neck tie). Totos routine was very funny, playing the spectators well with vanishing coins, and cards appearing on top of wine glasses, finishing with a rising card in glass.
Johan Stahl (Sweden)
This was mainly a chop cut routine with some extras in the form of colour changing pens, pen to behind spectators ear, pen to spoon, finishing with a very nice cup cake from chop cup, before pouring coffee out of re chop cup ala David Regal
Giacomo de Carlo (Italy)
this routine was based around the Italy France foot game, cards backs changed colour to match the French and Italian flags, it was an interesting idea and well presented, visually very striking, but not something we found that great.
Kiko Pastur (Spain)
A very nice set where signed cards were slowly vanished in the hands to appear underneath a mirror held by a spectator, a second phase being that card were cut and flourishes our of the deck in order.
Rene Frotscher (Germany)
Rene had a very dry sense of humor, and poked a lot of fun at Germans and their sense of humor (although it seemed to go down well), he did a pen through banknote, and a vanishing ketchup bottle, reappearing the bottle as a mismade bottle. It wasn’t a great set.
The last event from the Friday scheduled events was the comedy show. Compared by Phil Butler who had just returned from entertaining the troops in Afghanistan, we had heard that his comedy was quite “strong”, so it was going to be interesting to see if he toned it down for the London audience. Surprisingly he wasn’t what I expected an started with a signed borrowed note that was burnt.. And just burnt and not restored, before introducing John Lovick as “handsome jack”.
John started with a good bottle production, before involving an audience member in a bet for a birthday surprise, a drawing of a cake, was supposed to have a hand drawn “handsome jack” rise out of it on the paper, although when John looked at the audience and announced “my prop broke”, it didn’t matter as the situation and come back where probably more funny than the original effect. John did a good comedy linking rings routine “just because it was compulsory” and finished with a chosen card to trousers, removed from his fly. 
Next on was David Kaplan, the juggling sensation from the combined IBM/SAM, although I was expecting much more from him given the write ups previously.
Rafael really understood the audience, and played an excellent comedy slot, starting with a reappearing suit tag label, that was a running item through the slot. A wonderful cut and restored rope routine, with lots of magician in jokes and moments that you had to be a magician to understand, as well as some well placed jokes at the expense of some famous magicians, that seemed to strike a cord with the audience. The routine finished with a neck tie and rope transposition before Rafael set up his own encore!
After Richard Turners show Matt Field interviewed Richard, asking about his journey through cheating and gambling.
