The Expert at the Card Table: About This Edition

This digital edition of Erdnase has been prepared with the express purpose of making the material easier to learn. The typesetting has been updated, and the formatting made more consistent. A few small errors in the text have been corrected; otherwise, the content remains largely unchanged from the 1902 original. As a result of the new layout, the page numbers do not match the original text.

The odd copyright notices present on some of the illustrations have all been removed. Diagrams have been kept as large as possible and placed directly after the relevant reference in the text. I’ve purposely kept Smith’s illustrations big to aid learning. However, this means that the document has a large file size. In the future, I aim to replace the diagrams with vector artwork to resolve this issue.

If you would like to download a PDF version of the book to your device, you can do so by selecting File > Download > PDF document (.pdf). You can also download the file in other formats, including Microsoft Word (.docx). Finally, if you have a Google Account, you can select File > Make a copy to duplicate the entire document. Doing this is helpful if you want to make your own edits to the text.

I’ve used an A4 page size (21cm by 29.7cm) because I’m British, and it is the most suitable format for my purposes. At some point, I’ll create a letter-sized version to make it easier for magicians in the US to print out pages of the book.

Please feel free to distribute copies of this ebook to your friends (or simply share the short link: bit.ly/teatct). I hope you enjoy reading this classic of card magic.

Marty Jacobs