It’s hard to overestimate the impact The Expert at the Card Table has had on the magic world since its first publication in 1902 under the title Artifice, Ruse and Subterfuge at the Card Table. At that time most new magic books were repeating just a handful of established card sleights. With this book a wide range of more complex moves were introduced into the magician’s arsenal.
 
While the majority of the book is dedicated to methods for cheating at cards, with only a brief chapter given to legerdemain, magicians quickly realised the gambling sleights were of greater relevance to magic than the author had perhaps intended. As a result, this book has become a corner-stone of card magic literature, a starting point for countless effects, books and careers.
 
Written under the pseudonym of S. W. Erdnase, magicians and historians have argued since the book’s publication over who the author may be. Many have stated one name or another with certainty, but it is likely there will be no certainty in this case. This mystery, and the potential reasons the author chose anonymity, have only strengthened the book’s legendary status within  magic circles.  
 
Condition: New
 
Binding: Paperback
Year:  2025
Publisher: CollectingMagicBooks.com
Pages: 205
Dimensions (to nearest cm): 22 X 14cm
 
 
 
 
 
The C.M.B. Classics Range:
 
The C.M.B Classics range are high-quality facsimiles of the great classics of magic literature, scanned in-house from original editions and painstakingly manually edited to produce clean and legible pages. These are not to be confused with unedited reprints produced from freely available low-quality scans, or automated OCR editions, available print-on-demand from numerous other retailers. This range is exclusive to CollectingMagicBooks.com.
 
We have worked closely with a long-established commercial printer in London to produce the best quality at an affordable price to bring the classics of magic within reach of all magicians. By producing the files properly and employing a commercial printer, avoiding hands-off automated print-on-demand and OCR technology, we believe these books really are the finest available at this price point.