Dice Mysteries by Steve Drury

Description

Note: This a pre-owned hardcover book with dust jacket. It is in very good and clean condition.

A wonderful treasure trove of ideas, history and effects with dice! And at 582 pages it is huge! It is very detailed and thorough and is jam packed with useful information with almost everything to do with dice and taps into related areas such as runes and even mentions Brian Watson’s Sim Stones.

This book is not really aimed at the casual performer but if you want to take your dice effects to the next level there is so much in here to find and use.

The first part of the book is all about history, etymology, cultural and scientific impacts of dice and their alternatives – any number of nuggets can be used to amp up your patter and bizarrist stories.

Then next part of book is concerned with using dice for divination with sections from Les Cross, Richard Webster and Stephen Ball.

The next section gets into gambling with dice pretty seriously and the author includes a very interesting reproduction of H.C. Evans Secret Blue Book (1932) which is a wonderful catalogue detailing all manner of gaffed dice and gambling devices.

Then various other types of dice and dice boxes are discussed including: Anverdi’s Mental Die, Magic Wagon’s Crystal Mental Die, Richard Gerlitz’s Oriental Die Box, and the Sure-Shot Dice box, to name just a few.

In the final sections the author details over twenty full-blown routines with dice from an impressive line-up of guest contributors to please every palette.

There is pretty much something for everyone here and if you want to know anything about dice you’ll probably find it in this wonderful book.

It initially delves into its journey from the shaman to the layman, then through history into its roles in society, religion and science, including various cultural and indigenous perspectives. Many types of dice are reviewed, alongside their varied uses, from reading systems to gambling and cheating plus performance applications and routines.

Steve Drury’s own ideas are included throughout, plus there are varied supporting contributions from:

Les Cross,
Richard Webster,
Stephen Ball,
David Berglas,
Lior Manor,
Mark Chandaue,
Richard Osterlind,
Ronald J. Dayton,
Pablo Amira,
Docc Hilford,
T.C.Tahoe,
Seamus Maguire,
Dale Hildebrandt,
Danny Proctor,
Kenton Knepper,
Craig Conley,
Steve Cook,
Scott St Clair,
Neal Scryer,
Jackie McClements,
Cara Hamilton,
Vito Gattullo
and Sudo.

Contents include:

Foreword – Ronald J. Dayton 10
Introduction 13
Etymology 16
From Shaman to Layman 22
Pathway to Statistics & Probability 50
Dice in General 60
Historical & Cultural Alternatives 82
Other Random Number Generators 126
Dice Symbolism, Dreams & Association 154
Dice Specific Divination 179
Geomancy with Dice -Les Cross 201
Dice Throwing – Richard Webster 238
Elemental Divination -Stephen Ball 274
The Longer you Play, the More You Lose 280
Other Distinct Dice 342
Fortune Formula – Steve Drury 348
Light Detector – David Berglas 383
Dice Matching – Lior Manor 388
Dicing with Death – Mark Chandaue 391
Mental Dice Boxes 402
Whisper Vision – Richard Osterlind 412
The Black Sarcophagus – Ronald J. Dayton 414
Insane Cube – Pablo Amira 419
Concepts & Creations 426
Die Dream – Steve Drury 446
Devils Dice – Docc Hilford 452
Decipher Bars – Docc Hilford 458
Crazy Dice – T.C. Tahoe 464
Tyche’s Dice – Seamus Maguire 467
Dice Control – Seamus Maguire 474
Bunco Branching Matrix – Dale Hildebrandt 479
Die-Fecta – Danny Proctor & Kenton Knepper 485
Rolling Blank Dice – Craig Conley 492
Die-Ceptive – Steve Cook 494
Die-Abolical -Scott St Clair 500
Dancing with Dice- Neal Scryer 509
Dicychometry – Jackie McClements 511
Casino De Monte Carlo 1900 – Cara Hamilton 519
Affinity – Vito Gattullo 528
Needful Things – Vito Gattullo 533
The Diceman – Christian Chelman 539
Cho-Han Bakuchi – Christian Chelman 542
Astragalomancy ACAAN – Pablo Amira 546
Kismet – Sudo 548
Chapter Specific Resources 566