Thinking the impossible

Ramón Riobóo holds a doctorate in deception. He is the 1992 recipient of  the Ascanio Award and winner of the 1993 First Prize in Card Magic from  the XIX National Magic Congress in Barcelona. He will yank the mental  carpet from under you without your seeing him reach for it. It is only  as your sense of reality falls away that you begin to understand you  have been the target of a cunning structure designed to baffle the most  analytical mind.

Cards are chosen and lost without the magician touching the deck - yet he finds them.

Cabalistic rituals reveal cards freely thought of, without a question being asked.

Signed cards become magically stapled to a Joker...

Or become cards isolated before the signing or even the selection was made.

And  during all this and much more, principles and tools are taught that  enable you to build amplified levels of deception into your magic. Some  of these principles seem impossible, even as you are performing them. In  Thinking the Impossible, Ramón Riobóo reveals with clarity and detail  many of his prize secrets - secrets with which he fools both the public  and his peers in magic. 

When Riobóo takes a worn deck from his  pocket and gives it a somewhat ham-handed mix, looking all the while a  bit distracted, prepare to have everything you know about how things in  the universe work shuffled into impossible conclusions.

Ramón  Riobóo is a retired television director and close friend of Spain's  premier magician, Juan Tamariz. From his profession he learned about  drama, concision, entertainment and focus of attention. From his  friendship with Tamariz he learned how to be disarming and ruthlessly  cunning. When you think you have him figured out, that is when you are  the most vulnerable to his magic. No one leads people down the garden  path more skillfully than Ramón Riobóo.

Riobóo's specialty is  the artful use of mathematical principles and psychological subtleties,  concealed and designed to produce experiences that defy understanding.  And when you least expect it, he may throw in a judicious touch of  sleight-of-hand or a prepared card. The combination produces slack-jawed  wonder and a sense of delight.

Among English-reading magicians,  Riobóo's work has been gaining increasing recognition from its exposure  in Steve Beam's Semi-automatic Card Tricks series. In Thinking the  Impossible, he delivers everything his reputation promises: thirty-nine  tricks and routines steeped in cunning and cleverness, with three lumps  of psychological persuasion stirred in to make a heady brew of genuinely  amazing card magic.

The White Queen once told Alice, "Sometimes  I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." When  Ramón Riobóo is done with you, you will regularly exceed her record.