Malcolm Bromwich opened the competition with Classic Aces from The Big Book of Magic by Patrick Page, including growing the cards to Jumbo size. Roger Hindson showed us Kane’s Variant, which gave Kerry Scorah three chances to win a twenty pound note by counting on a five card layout. Rex Stott used a silk routine from Paul Harris’s The Art of Astonishment Volume One, that gave rise to an interesting discussion during the show and tell session.

Domanic Li also used Paul Harris’s Art of Astonishment to show Edward Victor’s Eleven Card Trick, and Brian Wilson used Karl Fulves Astral Thoughts to predict a year, by a seemingly impossible free choice of coloured discs followed by a selection process. Alan Johnston performed a torn and restored newspaper from Gene Anderson’s Newspaper Magic. Eddie Dawes went back to The Magic of Louis Histed for a version of the Pom-Poms, that could be cut and showed the cords were still intact. Finally Brian Waltham used an item from Magigram Volume 12 number 1 – Two Times Too Many. This allowed several attempts to count two black and two red cards, each time giving an extra card. Finally Brian agreed that he had two extra cards, but produced from his pocket an all red card and an all black card – not what we were expecting. Lecture notes were available. The first session was concluded by a fluent display by Mark Shortland, demonstrating his card skills.

After the interval the result was declared, with a win for Brian Waltham and Domanic Li in second place. The Show and Tell session followed, demonstrating the usefulness of the library.