Full Transcript:
Pete Lane:
Introducing Richard Turner. He is a world-famous card shark, a card mechanic.
Speaker 2:
A mechanic is somebody who can fix something. An auto mechanic fixes a car. I’m a card mechanic. I can fix a card game.
Speaker 3:
Ace of cards, Richard Turner.
Speaker 4:
He can do things with cards no one else can do. He’s a trickster.
Pete Lane:
Reaching the top of his profession, the pinnacle of success.
Speaker 5:
When I saw Richard Turner perform, I was in the presence of greatness.
Pete Lane:
All the time, concealing a secret.
Speaker 6:
About halfway through the show, you can see different members of the audience realize it.
Pete Lane:
Denying a reality.
Speaker 6:
This guy can’t see!
Richard Turner:
I was very mad and a little bit of rebellion was starting to fester.
Speaker 8:
Part of his lifestyle was being not blind.
Speaker 9:
He did not want to be treated any differently.
Pete Lane:
Yet, rejecting the impossible in virtually every element of his life.
Speaker 10:
Don’t tell him he can’t do something.
Speaker 11:
He’s on the crazy end of obsessive-compulsive.
Speaker 12:
He never puts the cards down.
Speaker 13:
He never takes a break.
Speaker 14:
He makes that little sound all the time.
Speaker 15:
Don’t let anyone tell you it’s impossible.
Pete Lane:
Finally, accepting the inevitable.
Richard Turner:
We all have something that we need to deal with and that we have to accept. I didn’t want to accept it, but now I happily accept it. I actually consider myself very blessed with the way I see and what I have been able to do with the other senses.
Pete Lane:
Blind Abilities presents, Richard Turner, a phenomenal story of a man who achieved unbelievable success on his own merit through persistence and hard work and by taking possible out of impossible. Please join Jeff Thompson and Pete Lane and their special guest, Richard Turner.
Richard Turner:
Find out what you love. Find out what you love first of all, what you’re passionate about, something that you don’t have to try to do, something that you can’t stop doing.
Jeff Thompson:
Welcome to Blind Abilities. I’m Jeff Thompson.
Pete Lane:
And, I’m Pete Lane. We have a very special guest with us this morning. Richard Turned is a world-renowned card mechanic, which we’ll explain in the course of this interview. First, I want to say good morning, Richard. Welcome to Blind Abilities. Can I start by asking you is it okay if we call you Rick?
Richard Turner:
My name is Richard Turner, but you’re welcome to call me Rick. All my friends call me Rick.
Pete Lane:
Excellent.
Richard Turner:
And, I’m happy to be here with you too.
Pete Lane:
Great.
Jeff Thompson:
Glad to hear you, Rick. Glad to meet you finally.
Richard Turner:
Technology’s an amazing thing.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah.
Pete Lane:
Rick, let’s kick it off. In the intro, we set up your credentials. You are a world-renowned card mechanic, but let’s first start off by telling us the starting point. Talk about your early childhood and what gave you the passion for cards?
Richard Turner:
Well, I was the oldest of my family, a family of four. We were very poor. We had four games, Monopoly, checkers, chess, and a deck of cards. Because I was oldest, I didn’t like to lose. So, I started figuring out ways so that I didn’t lose. When we would play poker or gin rummy or I Doubt It or whatever poker games, we would play for M&Ms. Of course, the reds were the most valuable and then they went down to the browns for the least valuable.
Richard Turner:
Not only did I want all my M&Ms, I wanted all my sister’s M&Ms, so I started figuring out ways of manipulating the cards in such a way that I got the M&MS. That’s how it got started. Then, of course, the interest for manipulating the cards came from a TV show that was one of my favorites at the time called ‘Maverick’ starring James Gardner. There’s a line in the end of the film saying, “Natchez to New Orleans living on Jacks and Queens.”
Richard Turner:
I wanted to live on Jacks and Queens.
Pete Lane:
Living on Jacks and Queens. What a motto.
Pete Lane:
Why don’t you tell us a little more about your childhood and what fed that fire?
Richard Turner:
Let me back up a little bit. First, I thought I end up being an artist. When I was in kindergarten, I did a finger painting that was a replication of a photo I saw in National Geographic and my teachers and everyone just went nuts at how amazing it was. I thought I was going to end up being an artist and then when I was nine, my sister and I both contracted a disease that caused the retinas in our eyes to begin to degenerate. That took away my ability to paint and draw and then partly refocused it on everything having to do with touch. The cards are touch.
Jeff Thompson:
Yes, they are.
Jeff Thompson:
Richard, when you first started losing your eyesight, did you go through some type of school? Did you get specialized teachers or anything to get involved in your vision loss?
Richard Turner:
Yes, I went to Carlton Hill, which was a city next to the city I grew up in. I had to be bused to school, which meant I had to leave all my friends and the kids I grew up with on my own street and in my own neighborhood which was a scary thought for a nine-year-old. The school had what was called at that time, a visually handicapped department, VH department. The person that ran it was a wonderful man named Ed Bryan. He was an attorney and he devoted 70 years toward working with people with visual impairments of all levels.
Richard Turner:
He had, in his room, the encyclopedia on Braille and I thought it was impractical because it took up the entire wall. He had all kinds of three-dimensional puzzles and games to, once again, work on tactile things and then large-print typewriters and Braille typewriters. He had an assistant names Mrs. Smith, who at the time, I thought she probably was between 120 and 140-years-old, but I could have been wrong about that. Just the sweetest lady ever.
Richard Turner:
Ed Bryan, the VH instructor, was an amateur magician, and he would show my friend who was in the VH department with me, Reuben, tricks like restoring a piece of rope that I would snip and have you put the two pieces in his mouth and then we would pull on them and it’d be restored or turn a stack of nickels into a stack of dimes. Very simple magic tricks, but at the time, I didn’t understand how simple.
Richard Turner:
They would see me playing with the cards and Mrs. Smith had this giant seven-inch reel-to-reel tape recorder. This was in the middle of the 60s. She recorded parts of a book called ‘Expert At The Card Table’ by S. W. Erdnase. She recorded parts on how to false shuffle, how to deal seconds, how to deal bottoms, different types of palms and shifts. That started giving me things to work on and an edge and that’s really what got that passion with the cards stimulated and going.
Jeff Thompson:
Richard, what inspired you to say, “Hey, this vision loss, I can overcome it?”
Richard Turner:
A lot of rebellion. In fourth grade, is when I started losing my vision. Fifth grade, the school I went to had no facilities so I really did nothing for the entire year except for art. There was rebellion and when I got into high school, first day of high school, I got in trouble because the kid next to me, I said, “Let’s play a little poker while we wait for the teacher,” and I beat him out of a quarter, which, at that time, was a mass fortune. That was more than the price of a lunch. That was a price of a lunch plus a nickel.
Richard Turner:
The teacher comes in, she takes my cards away from me, and sends me to the back of the class.
Patrick:
I want to introduce today very special guest Richard Turner. Richard, thanks for being on with us on Valuetainment.
Richard Turner:
I am so honored to be with you here, Patrick. It’s very cool.
Richard Turner:
I’ll show you some moves.
Speaker 18:
As Richard prepares to show him the moves, he places the deck of cards in his left hand. With his right hand, he casually deals nine to 10 cards on the table to show the motion of his dealing.
Patrick:
There’s your king of spades, yes.
Richard Turner:
Now, I want the king of spades. We deal cards around the table. Watch face up. See how the card stays as the second card is dealt, but see, this particular second deal is actually named after me. It’s called Turner Sweeps Second.
Speaker 18:
He then flips over just the top card on the deck showing a king. He then shows the interviewer that the top card remains and the second card on the deck is what is being dealt.
Richard Turner:
What I have to do is my left thumb must apply the precise amount of pressure to push over exactly 22.6 thousandths of an inch. That is the caliper of two cards, see? Exactly two cards.
Speaker 18:
He slowly moves his thumb across the top of the deck showing that two cards on top of the deck are moving.
Richard Turner:
Then, my right thumb, it only has a 64th of a second as it’s sweeping across the deck here to engage that second card and then deal it out.
Speaker 18:
With his right hand, he gives a quick motion across the top of the cards and only grabs the second one on the deck. Even when he slows the motion down, it’s almost impossible to tell that he is not dealing the top card.
Patrick:
Oh, my gosh!
Richard Turner:
I’ll do it real slow, really need to slow it down.
Patrick:
It’s all based on finger control.
Richard Turner:
You do it really, really slowly.
Speaker 18:
With his left thumb, he again pushes only two cards off to be grabbed by his right hand.
Richard Turner:
Turn it face up so you can see a little more clearly. See. Relaxed grip, natural grip, and see? Here’s one-handed.
Speaker 18:
Even begins to deal seconds with only his left hand. With the top card flipped over showing the king, he does a casual twist of his left hand and dropping a card face up. The king remains in place and only the second card falls from the deck.
Richard Turner:
Now, when the card’s face down, it’s hard to tell that you’re being taken. That’s dealing seconds.
Pete Lane:
You’ve used the word rebellion a couple of times, so essentially I’m seeing that as you’re rebelling and refusing to acknowledge the fact that you are blind. You are rejecting the whole idea and you did pretty much everything you could during that period of time to distance yourself from it. Is that pretty accurate you think?
Richard Turner:
That would be accurate and that was the status for quite a number of years of my life.
Pete Lane:
Your entire professional career almost, right?
Richard Turner:
For 30 years of it, yeah.
Jeff Thompson:
Talk about why you did that. Eventually, you’re getting into your profession, which is professional card mechanics because you actually did everything you could to conceal your blindness and act as if you were sighted. Talk about your career and how that went when you were rejecting that blindness.
Richard Turner:
Well, what turned me around from rebellion against things was a friend say, “Hey, come to church. You’re not here by accident. You’re here by design.” I started going to church and I believe there’s a God. We’re not here by accident. I stared in a karate class March 5, 1971. My karate instruction, Master John Murphy, would say, “We don’t care if you’re blind, Jeff, or dumb, we beat everyone equally.” He laid the foundation for me to believe it doesn’t matter what your situation is, you can fight your way through. He laid that foundation for me to believe in myself that if there’s an obstacle there, it’s just one more thing to blast through.
Richard Turner:
That’s the first mentor. My angels are my mentors. Then, two years later, I was going to a bible college, the chancellor there introduced me to an actor who was looking to form a theater company. He was an actor, TV, movie actor, during the 50s and early 60s and his name was Steve Terrell. When we would rehearse for plays … My macula was gone, which is the center part of the eye, the center part of the retina. So, I’d have to look out of the corner of my eye to see anything. Out of the corner of my eye, was 20 over 400 so it was a blur.
Richard Turner:
On stage, I would be interacting with the actor, but I’d be looking out of the corner of my eye. If you can picture this, the actor in front is at 12 o’clock in front of me, but I’m looking at two o’clock. From the audience point of view, it looked very strange and he finally said, “Rick, you’re looking off to the side and it just doesn’t look right on stage.” He taught me how to square my head towards the voice.
Richard Turner:
Over the years I learned how to change the focus of my eyes ’cause there’s the lens. You can zoom out far for stuff in the distance and you can zoom in for something close. I taught myself how to picture things four feet away, eight feet away, 20 feet away, 100 feet away, and changed that focus so it looked normal. He’s the one that taught me how to look people in the eye and give them the impression that I could see them.
Pete Lane:
I think a lot of our audience can relate to that. Now, you have Charles Bonnet Syndrome or Charles Bonnet Syndrome.
Richard Turner:
Charles Bonnet, yeah.
Pete Lane:
It started in the center of your macula, which is the center of the retina and then it worked its way out. A lot of people have a similar condition. They try to focus toward whoever they’re talking to, but then it makes it difficult to actually pick up their body language and actually see them. Did you have to deal with that on stage? I’m wondering if you’re directing your gaze straight into their face, how did you know when they were moving to a different area if they’re still in your blind spot? You follow me?
Richard Turner:
Yes, I do. At that time, one of the ways I knew I was looking at them is I couldn’t see anything. You figure, wherever you’re looking, that’s where the blind spot is. Yeah, I’d have to look to the side to see the shadow or image or whatever. If I knew I couldn’t see them, I was looking straight on.
Pete Lane:
Yeah.
Jeff Thompson:
That transfers well in job interviews or when you’re having discussions with people too. I’m the same way. If I can’t see them, I’m doing pretty good.
Richard Turner:
Yeah, yeah. You know what I’m talking about.
Pete Lane:
You parlay that talent, moving forward into your career and into karate. That was one of your basic tools to help disguise your blindness.
Richard Turner:
Right. There’s a movie we were forced to watch when I was in second and third and fourth grade called ‘Lord of the Flies’. It was about a group of kids that were stranded on an island. They became savages and one of them, his name was Piggy, and he was a blind, asthmatic, chubby guy. He was picked on. They called him Piggy. I thought, the only difference between Piggy and myself is I was skinny, blind, and has asthma. I was always afraid of turning out like Piggy. That’s one.
Richard Turner:
There was another show, it shows the impact that TV had on me, another show on television called ‘Lost in Space’ where Johnathan Harrison played Doctor Smith in this goofy series and Will Robinson, the young, 10-year-old boy was always the hero fighting this goofy monster, paper mache monster, while Doctor Smith was hiding behind a rock somewhere. I was afraid I’d turn out like Doctor Smith.
Richard Turner:
Then, the third influence was watching Tarzan movies. The guys are running across a tree that it fell between two cliffs. Someone would always stop and say, “Whatever you do, don’t look down.” Then, they’d start running and there’s always that person who stopped, looked down, fall to their death. I was always afraid I was going to be that coward that looked down and fell to my death. That just in overdrive stimulated me to push the envelope way beyond what others did. Not only did I overcompensate, I had to take everything that I did to the far and to the extreme.
Speaker 19:
Now, the final point. You’re legally blind.
Richard Turner:
Yeah, and I don’t see very well either.
Speaker 19:
How could you possibly fight?
Richard Turner:
I don’t know. We’ll find out. Sit there and watch.
Richard Turner:
My first fight is with John Douglas. His punches measured at 1,700 pounds per square inch.
Jeff Thompson:
When you’re talking about, we’re not just talking getting involved in it, you are now a sixth-degree black belt.
Richard Turner:
That is correct and I had earned my black belt under this crazy man, Murphy. He had, at the time, what was considered the most difficult black belt in the country. The class of 57. Chuck Norris was the class of 58 and he started his school in 1960. He started across the border in Tijuana because he didn’t want to deal with lawsuits.
Richard Turner:
To earn my black belt, I had to fight ten men in a row, each round was three minutes like a boxer would go. You had a fresh opponent, so it would be the equivalent of Muhammad Ali fighting Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes, one after the other, fresh fighter, where they’re fresh and you’re not. You get pretty beat up.
Speaker 20:
Fight.
Speaker 20:
Kick, block
Richard Turner:
In fact, I got pretty beat up. I managed to survive. All you have to do is come out alive, alive with spirit. He defined that as even if your teeth had punched down your throat, you’re still smiling. I had smashed bloody nose, ruptured right eardrum, the groin was an open shot. I had it kicked a number of times.
Richard Turner:
One time after they yelled ‘yame’, which means stop fighting. We were in the clinch and he took his knee and rammed it up between my legs. You can see me on the tape, a standing eight count trying to get my brain back up to the aim. Then, I also caught a roundhouse kick and he snapped my right arm, so I fought three and a half rounds with a broken right arm.
Speaker 20:
Cover, Rick. Cover!
Speaker 21:
Strong! Strong!
Speaker 20:
Hands up, Rick. [crosstalk] battle. Last time, Rick. Let’s go. Let’s go.
Richard Turner:
Took me 13 years and three months of training before I was ready to take on the 10 men. Most people, in our school, fight four or five years if they even made it. Only one in 20 would move past the green belt in this school because of how rough it was. By that point, they wanted to give me an honorary black belt and I said, “Nope. I want to earn it the same way all the other guys did. I’m going to go the 10 rounds.”
Richard Turner:
I did it. It’s done. I’ll never do it again. I never have to do it again. I never could do it again. I’m an old man now.
Jeff Thompson:
That tenacity, that fight that you have, that’s what you’ve taken into most of your challenges.
Richard Turner:
Yeah, oh yeah. Tenacity is what breaks down the barriers that stand between you and your dream.
Richard Turner:
Say a number 10 to 20.
Patrick:
10 to 20?
Richard Turner:
Yeah, pick a number.
Patrick:
Okay, 17.
Richard Turner:
Okay, I’m going to try cut with one hand 17 cards.
Speaker 18:
As Richard cuts the deck, he picks up cards off the top of the deck, separates it from the rest of the deck and hands it to the interviewer to count them.
Patrick:
Come on.
Richard Turner:
Well, we’ll count them and we’ll find out.
Speaker 18:
The interviewer, with an extremely amazed look on his face, takes the cards and slowly counts them out.
Patrick:
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17. Come on.
Richard Turner:
Do we-
Patrick:
Come on!
Richard Turner:
[crosstalk] face down. Okay.
Patrick:
How could you do that?
Richard Turner:
Okay, we-
Patrick:
One handed, and I just said it one second, you gave it to me.
Speaker 18:
With an extremely sensitive feel of his fingers and amazing muscle memory, he easily removes 17 cards from the deck. He then takes the deck, puts it back together, and splits it in half.
Richard Turner:
Let me try this. Four and 10. Two different numbers at the same time.
Speaker 18:
With each hand, he grabs two different numbers of cards at exactly the same time.
Richard Turner:
One, two, three. I got that one. See if that’s 10 cards.
Patrick:
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10.
Richard Turner:
Okay, good. Put them back on the deck face down. Okay.
Speaker 18:
He picked up four cards with his right hand and 10 cards with his left hand.
Pete Lane:
This whole time when we’re in the karate progression, you’re still working on your cards and you’re practicing, practicing, practicing. In fact, we’ve heard you say you practice your card mechanics between 10 and 20 hours per day and averaged about 14 hours per day. What drove you to that? You said tenacity, but you’ve also acknowledged that you have an obsessive-compulsive streak. Do you think that entered into it as well?
Richard Turner:
Yes, all of the above. As we’re sitting here talking, I’m sitting here practicing seconds and I have been the whole time. That’s what Steve Terrell would say. I’m practicing before my scene. I go on stage. Do my scene. The second I get off stage, I pull the cards out of my back pocket and go back to practicing. He said something to me that stuck. He said, “You love cards. If you become the best in the world, you will earn the respect of others and that will open doors for you.” He told me that back in 1972, 73.
Richard Turner:
That is true. I do put in a lot of hours and in fact, if you calculate, I probably put in more hours than anybody on the planet ’cause it really boils down to Gladwell’s rule of 10,000 hours to become a master which is basically three hours a day, seven days a week for 10 years straight. I have that times 15 at last count. One move, the move I’m doing right now, I’ve done over 100 million times. Right around five million times in front of a live audience.
Jeff Thompson:
Wow.
Richard Turner:
Your question was how did you get that tenacity; how did you get that discipline? I’m one of those high-wired people to begin with and if I grew up today, they would probably put me on all those drugs. You guys got too much [crosstalk].
Pete Lane:
Yeah, Adderall and all that stuff. Yeah.
Richard Turner:
That’s new [inaudible]. Yeah, exactly. ADD and all those-
Pete Lane:
And, the world would have been deprived of the card mechanic called Richard Turner. Tell us briefly, what is the difference between a magician and a card mechanic?
Richard Turner:
That’s a very good question, a very good distinction. There a pyramid of magic. There’s illusionists like Siegfried and Roy where they move big giant illusions where people appear and disappear and turn into a tiger. That’s really more of what people call in the industry furniture moving. They’re very expensive pieces of apparatus. Then, there’s the parlor magician, which is for a medium-sized audience where they link rings together or three ropes that are different lengths so they make them all the same length.
Richard Turner:
Then, there’s what’s called the close-up magician where it’s done right at a table. It has to be an intimate setting or audience and they make coins jump from one hand to the other or they’ll do card tricks. They’ll put a card in the middle of the deck, and it comes back to the top. The card mechanic is probably the tip of the spear as far as levels of training and difficulty because the card mechanic is somebody who can fix a card game. That’s what the turn mechanic means. Somebody fixes something and, in other words, controls the outcome.
Richard Turner:
At a card table, you cannot use the fix that a magician [inaudible] like misdirection. Any kind of misdirection, or any kind of action that breaks the normal flow of the game will instantly put you under suspicion, and, depending on the circa, the time period, they would shoot you or [inaudible] on, they’d break your hand. Other times, they’d just throw in their cards and won’t play with you. You have to do all your, I’ll just use the word dirty work, without using any kind of misdirection.
Richard Turner:
Then, it gets down to the techniques. To be able to deal a card from the middle of the deck and have it look like it came off the top is a skill that a handful of people can do. Some of the moves that I do, there are two or three people that have been working on some of those moves for 20 and 30 years and they still haven’t got them down ’cause it just takes that many hours. It’s just that difficult to acquire.
Jeff Thompson:
I take it your sister doesn’t play for M&Ms against you anymore.
Richard Turner:
No, but she’s a cheater. We played massage poker growing up where you’d have a foot massage or back massage. She said, “I wish I didn’t have to massage his stinky feet.” Then, one time we’re playing and then I found she had the aces hidden under the carpet because we’re laying on the floor so we can lay out and get the back massage. She was the darn cheater. I said, “Laura, you’re the one cheating.” She goes, “Well, that’s ’cause I don’t trust you for a second.” She laughs about that.
Pete Lane:
You said earlier that when you lost your vision, you think your brain rewired itself to redirect the focus to your sense of touch, to your tactile sense. That’s really where you live in your card mechanics. You have such a sensitive touch for the cards that you can actually detect the caliper, the width or the depth of a card, which is exactly 11.3 thousandths of an inch thick.
Pete Lane:
You can precisely deal one card. You can cut the deck to precisely any number of cards. If I say, “Rick, cut the deck to 10 cards, you can do that.” And, it’s all based on your sense of touch. You think that truly developed as a result of your blindness?
Richard Turner:
Yeah, here’s ten cards. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. There you go. I was on a television special in Japan a few months ago and they actually timed it. Someone asked for 33 cards and they put a stopwatch out and I did it in a second and a half, 1.5 seconds. Anyway, yes, that is true.
Richard Turner:
I’ve been interviewed for two Harvard projects, one neuroscientist, who’s the head of the project, said that the reason why I see the things that see ’cause I see my subconscious in external space. Doctor Oliver Sachs probably did more studies on this than anybody. He had one book called ‘Hallucinations’, another book called ‘The Mind’s Eye’ where he found a number of cases of people with Charles Bonnet Syndrome, Charles Bonnet in English. So, I see my subconscious in front of me.
Richard Turner:
The reason for that is that my haptic and tactic neural network, which is the part of the brain that relates to touch, is hungry and it’s looking for other places within my brain to colonate. It’s basically bullied its way into my visual network and the neurons that were dead there have regenerated and reorganized themselves around the tactile neural network. Just because something is gone doesn’t mean it’s really gone, so I’m kind of a strange case.
Richard Turner:
Of course, the fingertips, there are more nerves. The density of nerve ending in the fingertips is higher than pretty much anywhere else on the flesh. Not only did the brain get refocused, at the same time, I’ve spent my life working with something on a microscopic level. I’m working with cards and, like you said, the deck that I’m holding in my hand is 11.3 thousandths and it could have been 11.1 thousandths. It could have been 10.9 thousandths. I’ve been measured by the director of research and development U.S. Playing Card Company, the biggest card maker in the world, measuring things down to a thousandth, sometimes a tenth of a thousandth of an inch.
Richard Turner:
The two things combined is what really helped. Well, actually, three things. One, got rid of sight. That refocused the brain on the tactile neural network. Two, working with something on a microscopic level in my hands, and the third is that nature that I have of not being able to sit still. I would go to three to six packs of cards a day. I did a quick experiment one time. I had a number of surgeries from injuries from the martial arts, and I told the anesthesiologist, I said, “You mind if I hold cards in my hand while you do the surgery?” He said, “Sure.”
Richard Turner:
One time, I maintained the deck. The other time I lost about 13 of the cards. The fell out of my hands even though I was medically put under. It shows you the power of the subconscious.
Jeff Thompson:
Something comes to mind when you were talking about this. I know a deck of cards when you pull them out, you remove the two jokers, but they’re usually in a typical order. That’s one thing. The other thing is the amount of ink that would be on a king compared to an ace. I don’t know if that’s detectable at all. Tell me about when you open up a brand new deck of cards?
Richard Turner:
Well, I guess I must be a card snob. I’m very picky about my cards and a B deck, B92, is the best-made pack of cards, in my opinion, in the world. The next best is a Bicycle deck, all made by the same company. Just about 80, 90% of the cards available are made by U.S. Playing Card Company. I will take the cards out. I’ll feel the edges, how sharp the blades were when they punched them, when they cut them out, the caliper, the snap, if it has a good snap to it, how long are they going to last.
Richard Turner:
I’ll have the same run and the same brand and I’ll go, “Nah, I don’t like this one. Ah, oo, yeah, I like this one. I like this one,” even though they’re from the same run, the same caliper and everything, all cut to my specifications. I’ve worked with them for a couple decades, so they will run the card to the specs that I say that are best to make a good, long-lasting, user-friendly deck for the people that want to manipulate cards or just gamers.
Richard Turner:
If you look at Bicycle’s the most recognized pack of cards in the world, then there’s one called Gold Seal Bicycles. There’s actually a card in there that says tested and approved by Richard Turner.
Jeff Thompson:
Is there a difference between a king and an ace by feel?
Richard Turner:
Well, there’s 2.4 milligrams difference in weight, but that’s microscopic.
Jeff Thompson:
Ah, because of the ink.
Richard Turner:
Yeah.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, the ink, yeah. Interesting.
Richard Turner:
People are always asking, why would you waste your time developing a touch like that. I’ll show you one of the purposes. Give me a number of players in a card room, three, four, five, pick a number.
Speaker 18:
Richard is told that there will be four players in a game and the second player is the one that he’s going to cheat for.
Richard Turner:
You’re my partner. You must hit a one, two, three, or four.
Patrick:
Two.
Richard Turner:
Four and two, okay. Once again, as we mentioned earlier, the way you’re allowed to shuffle in the casinos, the deck has to stay face down on the table, riffle shuffle because it’s the hardest way to control it if you’re going to control.
Speaker 18:
He takes the deck of cards and shuffles it in a very standard way.
Richard Turner:
Four players, second position, take the deck. You don’t think I’m doing anything dirty. Deal the card off the top face up, player one right here.
Patrick:
Okay.
Richard Turner:
I think you chose kings and you’re player number two. Face up with card right here. What’s the card?
Patrick:
That’s the king of clubs.
Richard Turner:
Player three, right here.
Patrick:
Okay.
Richard Turner:
And, player four.
Patrick:
Okay.
Richard Turner:
Start here again, player one.
Patrick:
Okay.
Richard Turner:
Number two is you.
Patrick:
Okay.
Richard Turner:
What’s that card?
Patrick:
Come on!
Richard Turner:
Player three.
Patrick:
Okay.
Richard Turner:
Player four.
Patrick:
Okay.
Richard Turner:
Keep circling the table. Player one, tell us what number two is.
Patrick:
Oh, my king again.
Richard Turner:
Start betting big time there, Patrick.
Patrick:
Oh, my gosh.
Richard Turner:
Make some money off the producer.
Patrick:
Oh, my gosh.
Speaker 18:
After the interviewer deals out all four hands, Richard was able to place two kings in the exact spot so the second player would receive them. It looks like magic. It’s absolutely incredible.
Richard Turner:
Here’s what I do. Some people say, “How can you tell this or that?” That’s only a small fraction of what they’re watching. Here’s what I’ll do in my show. What poker game do you want to play? Let’s say they say Seven Card Stud. I’ll say, “How many players do you want?” Five. I say, “Where do you want the sit.” Number three and sometimes I’ll go to the point of saying, “What poker hand do you want? Do you want straight? Do you want flush? Do you want full house? Do you want four of a kind? Tell me what you want.”
Richard Turner:
Okay, now, I give them the deck. The shuffle it up, and I tell them, “Don’t give me the whole deck now. Just give me any random part of the deck.” They give you 12 cards. I’ll deal around. I’ll start in slow motion at about third position, deal the card, pass those cards back to them. I’ll say, “Shuffle them all together and then hand me any part to deck you want.” Now, continue. I’ll stop again, have them shuffle them up.
Richard Turner:
Even if the deck was face up and had a giant embossed ‘K’ on the back of the K and an ‘A’ on the back of the A, how could it be conceivable to have down what I just described? You can go watch it a dozen places on many shows that I’ve done. I take all the things that people will try to figure out. Well, yeah, there’s a difference in weight, but it’s minute. Yes, he tells by the thickness, but yet, I’m stopping, I’m taking those cards out of his hand, I’m shuffling them up, and I’m just handing him a random stack. Then, there’s the hand I just asked for is sitting right where I just asked for it to be dealt.
Richard Turner:
Do you understand what just happened? No. Well, I shuffled Pete’s cards back in the deck exactly where Jeff chose and Pete dealt them to prove that I did. The identification is just a small fraction of what’s going to make that happen because as I’m shuffling those cards, my thumbs are having to feel exact number of cards as they’re interlaced between exact number of cards. If I miss any shuffle by the thickness of a single card, 11.3 thousandths in this case, I messed up. The whole thing just doesn’t work. It won’t happen.
Richard Turner:
Sometime I can just miss one shuffle by the thickness of one card depending on where it is and get three out of the four. That’s another for instance so your audience can visualize what it is we’re talking about that I’m doing with the cards. Here’s another for instance. I can deal cards from anywhere in the deck, and I do this as a demonstration. I did it when I did it on Penn and Teller.
Speaker 22:
Tonight, anyone who fools Penn and Teller wins a slot performing in their long-running Vegas magic show. Let’s see if our first performer can do the trick.
Speaker 22:
Please welcome the amazing Richard Turner.
Richard Turner:
Penn and Teller, can you join me at my table, please.
Penn Jillette:
Certainly.
Richard Turner:
Penn over here. Teller on this side.
Richard Turner:
You have your cards there, Teller. You can let go. He was afraid I was going to steal them. Now, once again, you shuffle and cut, shows six players.
Penn Jillette:
Yes, we did. Yes, we did.
Richard Turner:
Let’s see what Teller had in the pocket. Penn, what is that?
Penn Jillette:
That’s a king.
Richard Turner:
And, what is that?
Penn Jillette:
That’s another king.
Richard Turner:
Well, gentlemen, you can now go back to your huddle and see if you can reconstruct leaving off the 13 different methods, techniques that he controls it took to take that once-shuffled deck to deal that pat hand to my partner.
Penn Jillette:
We’ve got nothing to say. He fooled us.
Speaker 22:
Oh, my goodness! That’s fantastic! Oh, my goodness.
Richard Turner:
I’ve never seen [crosstalk] with us.
Penn Jillette:
I want to make this very clear to you, Richard. This trophy we’re giving you, it says on it, “… …” from the bottom of our hearts, Richard, from the bottom of our hearts.
Richard Turner:
Well, thank you. Thank you. Oh, my …
Speaker 22:
There you go. There you go.
Richard Turner:
Oh, wow. Yeah, heavy. Thank you.
Richard Turner:
Teller wanted to bring down the trophy before I was done with my segment because I fooled him before I even got to the part to the show that I was going to do to fool them. It’s because I can deal … I’ll turn the card face up, and I just start dealing. You can’t see the cards below it coming out or out of the middle of the deck or off the bottom of the deck or the second from the bottom of the deck. I’ll even do it in super slow motion for people.
Pete Lane:
That second deal was actually named in your honor, wasn’t it?
Richard Turner:
The Sweep Second, the Turner Push-Off Sweep Second, yeah.
Pete Lane:
There was a funny line in that Penn & Teller video where they’re walking away after you had demonstrated and you turned your head and said …
Richard Turner:
“Oh, and Teller, if I perhaps fooled you do you want to communicate with me? My right ear reads lips.”
Richard Turner:
Teller doesn’t talk for those that are wondering. Penn’s the talker. They both talk but Teller in their show, he never talks.
Pete Lane:
Let’s move on. We’re into the later years in your career. You have reached the pinnacle. By that I mean you are now widely recognized as the best card mechanic, not one of the best, but the best card mechanic on the face of the globe and many have even referred to you as the best card mechanic who’s ever lived. So, you are clearly at the pinnacle in your profession, but in recent years, your blindness has caught up with you. Talk a little bit about that and how this reckoning came to pass that you finally chose to change your mindset and you’ve now accepted your blindness. I know Kim, your wife, played a big part in that recognition, in that acceptance.
Richard Turner:
Okay, and I’ll preface it by just giving you my attitude. In 1981, I was asked to be on a show called ‘That’s Incredible’. At the time, one to highest rated shows on network television. Back then, there were only three stations, ABC, NBC, CBS. They wanted me to walk with a white cane. I said, “Forget it. Not doing the show.” They said, “Oh, but it’s so impressive.” I said, “No.”
Richard Turner:
Then, they came back, they said, “How about we just interview your eye doctor?” I said, “That I’ll accept.” I turned down the biggest show on television because they wanted me to walk with a white cane and my thought at the time was, I want to be recognized as good at what he does on its own merit not saying, “Hey, not bad for a blind guy.” Yeah, so that was my attitude. That was my thing and then other shows, as they went through the years, same thing. I had been on dozens of shows.
Richard Turner:
They would, “Oh, tell us a little bit about your blindness.” I didn’t know this, the movie ‘Dealt’ I was the subject of, they had clips from these old shows and I didn’t know this at the time, but you could tell my face was like I was getting ready … I wanted to kill the guy. What does that have to do with anything that we’re doing? That was my attitude. Then, other times, I’m having dinner with a group. I’m on the road and then they find out later that I have a vision … Then, all of sudden, “Oh, here. Let me help you with that. Here’s some of this. Here’s some of that.”
Richard Turner:
I’m going, “Okay. Yesterday you treated me just normal. Now, you’re treating me like I can’t think or function on my own.” Then, as the retina continued to degenerate where it encompassed my whole field of vision, in other words, my whole field of vision was gone, I started running into more and more things and that started becoming painful because what do I [inaudible] about. I just had my haircut yesterday and my haircut lady said, “You have a black eye. This is your third black eye in a row.” I bent over at a hotel and bashed my head on the counter.
Pete Lane:
We’ve all done that.
Richard Turner:
Before I could walk alongside somebody and be able to see their image. Then, when I had to have somebody touch or me touch, I had trouble with that. For me, it was like going from an abled to disabled person to a needy disabled person. My wife finally, one day she said, “People want to help you. Let people help you. You don’t need to be running into these brick walls. One of these days, these pillars are going to break, and our house is going to fall down like Samson when he pulled down those pillars.” I thought, “Oh, yeah. I guess that makes sense. I do have a hard head.”
Richard Turner:
Let’s back up a little bit. Charles Bonnet Syndrome. That’s a condition. I can see the subconscious. So, I see thousands of colors and patterns and every subconscious image you can imagine in front of me, eyes open, closed, lock me in a vault pitchback I still see vivid colors and patterns. The thing is, I could write in the air … That’s how I memorize phone numbers or names. I write it in the air. I see it. Take a picture of it. I have what’s called eidetic memory. I don’t forget it.
Richard Turner:
I could take my hand and wave it in front of my face like a pendulum, and I see it. Now, if I close my eyes, I see the exact same thing because my brain creates the image. Then, I finally realized one day, there is really nothing left. It’s all my brain creating the images in front of me. It took me probably a year before I would accept the fact that there was zero left. There was nothing left peripherally. I just was constantly damaging my body by running into things. Like I said, my wife said, “Just let people help you.”
Richard Turner:
She said some good sayings. You can’t conquer what you’re not willing to confront. I realize okay, this is my new reality. I’m going to have to have an arm or an elbow. My wife, I can feel it in her hands. I can feel her thoughts with hardly no movement in her hand at all or her arm. I realize I’m old, I don’t care what people think anymore. At first, I wanted to be known for my skills alone. I didn’t like the theme handicap makes good. I like the theme, he’s good because he’s good.
Richard Turner:
Now, I know that it’s encouraging to people, and I’m happy to share or say or tell or talk about anything. It was basically, as my wife said, “Get over yourself. Yeah, your Mr. Toughie, but you’re not Superman.”
Jeff Thompson:
You’ve got a smart wife there.
Richard Turner:
We all have something that we have to deal with and that we have to accept. I didn’t want to accept it, but now I happily accept it. I actually consider myself very blessed with the way I see and what I have been able to do with the other senses.
Richard Turner:
My mentor was a man named Dai Vernon.
Speaker 24:
Dai Vernon is the guy that tricked Houdini in front of his wife.
Richard Turner:
Yes, Houdini.
Speaker 24:
His wife initialed on the car and he … By the way, this is what he said about you. Having seen countless number of card experts execute for over 80 years, I consider Richard Turner to be by far the most skillful. He performs the most difficult moves with the greatest ease. I doubt if anyone can equal him. He does things with cards that no one in the world can do. No one.
Speaker 24:
This is Dia Vernon saying this about you.
Richard Turner:
I know. It’s pretty darn cool, I have to say. Those in the business know who he is. For a century, the whole 20th century, he was the most influential person in the whole area of magic, sleight-of-hand, close-up magic, gambling work.
Richard Turner:
When he would describe moves to me, he tricked me. He didn’t describe them in a way that he could do them or the way that anyone else has ever been able to do them. He showed me, this is how it should be done. It wasn’t until years later that he admitted to me that he made them up. He did not think they were possible to do that way. He did it just to see what this obsessed kid would come up with. He goes, “It’s not possible.” He said, “Your brain can’t work that fast. Your hands can’t be that sensitive. You break rhythm, it won’t work. It can’t be done.”
Richard Turner:
All of a sudden I thought, “Hold it, but I can do it.” Watch my show with the castle there and [inaudible] goes, “I don’t understand how you can do that.”
Jeff Thompson:
Richard, with all that acceptance and stuff, what advice would you have for someone who is, let’s take the transition age like 14 to 21 that is facing their blindness and accepting it? What advice would you give them?
Richard Turner:
Find out what you love. Find out what you love first of all, what you’re passionate about. Something that you don’t have to try to do, something that you can’t stop doing. You want to be a teacher. You want to be a gymnast. Whatever find out what it is that you love and then let that be part of what drives you ’cause it’s our dreams that fuel the fire in our belly. Find out what your dream is and let that fuel your tenacity.
Richard Turner:
Then, when people tell you something’s impossible, I say have healthy disregard for anyone that tells you something’s impossible. I say take possible out of impossible. I understand that we’re all dealt different hands in life and sometimes they’re good and sometimes they’re bad. Every person out there that’s listening and all the people that are not listening. Every one of them has some issue. Don’t let anyone tell you what you want to do is impossible.
Richard Turner:
I look at life A to Z. The B, C, D, E, F, I don’t let them get in the way. All they become is part of the adventure. For me, one of the worst disabilities is laziness or procrastination. Again, we get back to the point that we all have something that we have to deal with, everybody. It could be just insecurity, it could be doubt, it could be I had a tough time growing up, my parents weren’t too loving, I couldn’t do this and I couldn’t do that. There’s just something that we all have to deal with.
Richard Turner:
We’re all human and we’re all frail and we will all, at one point, break down in one fashion or another and slowly go back to where we came from. In the meantime, go A to Z, look at every letter between A to Z as part of the adventure. If it’s a good part of the adventure or challenge, it becomes part of the adventure.
Pete Lane:
Good point. We’re speaking with Richard Turner. Rick, as we wind this interview up, you’ve spent the greatest part of your life focusing on cards, karate, what you have referred to again as your obsessions and compulsions, but you’ve changed your life. So, what is your day-to-day routine like now? I know you’re working on assistive technology. Jeff and I worked with you earlier on working with your iPhone and getting into the Zoom conference here to do the interview. You’ve adapted yourself to using technology, but what’s your daily routine like?
Richard Turner:
First, let me say, the technology out there is so amazing. The iPhones, I was a keynote speaker at Apple and Facebook and all these places. The things that they’re creating that are available to us. I love my Stream, my PC, and I’m also learning the Mac, which is another challenge for me as I’m going from PC to Mac. I have both of them here at my desk. My sister said, “Oh, once you go Mac, you never go back.” I like them both.
Richard Turner:
We have nothing to complain about. Everything’s available to you. Every book, every magazine, everything you want is available. In that regard, it’s the coolest thing. Do I perform? Last year I circled the world four times. I’m constantly doing television specials. I was on a show in Germany called ‘Showdown: The World’s Greatest Magician’ filmed live at the Porsche Arena in Stuttgart, Germany. I had 77% of the audience vote. That means I won.
Richard Turner:
Here’s something you never do.
Speaker 25:
[German].
Richard Turner:
Never do this when you play cards for money.
Speaker 25:
[German].
Richard Turner:
Never shuffle with one hand.
Speaker 25:
[German].
Richard Turner:
It makes the other players get up and run away!
Speaker 25:
[German]!
Richard Turner:
And, on that note, I hope you all had fun.
Speaker 25:
[German].
Richard Turner:
Danke schoen. Danke. Thank you very much. Danke Schoen.
Speaker 26:
[German], Richard Turner!
Richard Turner:
Thank you, Kathy.
Richard Turner:
I was on in it Japan as the Greatest on the Planet, which was a surprise. I didn’t know it was an hour special about me. I didn’t what it was happening until it unfolded before me. I’m a keynote speaker for a Fortune 500. I’m getting ready to leave to somewhere Friday. Come home, leave again, and then I’m off to do another special in Japan.
Richard Turner:
In other words, I’m very, very busy and I love it. It’s all fun. The only part’s that the challenge is sitting on the airplane or sitting in the terminal. Fortunately, I have my Stream and my audiobooks and my iPhone where I can communicate with people through text, email, or call.
Jeff Thompson:
You probably have that pre-flight take off from the flight attendant memorized.
Richard Turner:
Oh, big time. Half of them know who I am. When I’m walking through the airport, “Hello, Richard. Hello, Mr. Turner.”
Pete Lane:
My goodness.
Richard Turner:
Yeah, anyway … Did you guys watch the movie ‘Dealt’?
Pete Lane:
Yes.
Speaker 3:
Ace of cards, Richard Turner.
Speaker 4:
He can do things with cards no one else can do. He’s a trickster.
Speaker 27:
He is demonstrating the moves used by cheaters. The most difficult things you can do with a deck of cards.
Richard Turner:
You know it has audio description on it too.
Pete Lane:
I did not know that.
Richard Turner:
Oh, yeah. Wherever you watch it, it has audio description on it. Michele Spitz did it and she’s done dozens of films. Michele Spitz, S-P-I-T-Z. She did a great job. It gives you a whole different flavor or experiences. Now, you’re with the rest of the audience.
Pete Lane:
Yeah.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, it’s really neat. I just got to say, this is really interesting. My brain works very concrete, true/false, left/right. I like that type of stuff. Plus, the artistic, so it’s a combination. Just listening to how you manipulate the deck or understand the deck, the physical characteristics of the deck. It’s just so intriguing and interesting. I don’t think I could take the time that you’ve taken to do that because I’m already getting older.
Richard Turner:
If I would have had any idea how long it would have taken me, I would have never got started.
Jeff Thompson:
But, your passion, your fire, it just kept on going.
Richard Turner:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I never knew how long each of those things would take. As we talked, the whole time, I never stopped practicing but I was never conscious that I was practicing until you brought it to my attention. That’s why I’m able to put in so many hours is I would take it, figure out what it is that I want to accomplish, analyze it until it’s the way I want it to be or it needs to be, and then I’ll turn it into a subconscious act.
Jeff Thompson:
My wife probably wishes I could do that with housework, subconsciously.
Richard Turner:
Yeah. Yeah. Put your Stream on, get your headphones on, and listen to a good book as you vacuum. That’s what I do, or dust.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah, on the Victor Stream, you can actually download or enable the Blind Abilities podcast if you go to the podcast section. We’re on their favorites list.
Richard Turner:
Oh, there you go.
Jeff Thompson:
Yeah.
Pete Lane:
There you go.
Richard Turner:
Just to let you know what else I’m doing, I’ve created a series of board and puzzle games over the years, and I’m in partnership with some of the biggest game app developers in the world actually. So, I will have some other things coming out, and I’m going to do everything I can to make it playable for the visually impaired. One of them will be called ‘Richard Turner: Texas Showdown’, the other one’s ‘Richard Turner: The Shark’, and the other one’s called ‘Batty’, B-A-T-T-Y ’cause it drives you batty. I actually came up with that game in the VH department back when I was 11 years old.
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, that’s awesome.
Pete Lane:
Rick, why don’t you share some of your contact information. You’re all over social media. You’re on YouTube. You’ve got your own website.
Richard Turner:
Just Google Richard Turner or Richard Turner magician or Richard Turner cards, anything like that. My website is richardturner52.com. My YouTube channel is, I named it after my son, youtube.com/AsaT52, capital A, small s, small a, capital T, 52. All that comes up just by Googling it. Then, if you want to see the trailer to the movie ‘Dealt’, spelled D-E-A-L-T as in dealt a hand of cards, it’s dealtmovie.com. I’ve done many, many, many shows in many, many places. You’d make yourself sick if you start watching all that stuff.
Pete Lane:
Yeah, you’re all over the web. Richard Turner, thank you so much for taking time out of your still busy days to talk to Jeff and me and our audience. We want to thank you and wish you all the best of luck moving forward. If you ever want to come on and chat with us and share any new information, any new games, any new endeavors, you just reach out and let us know.
Richard Turner:
That would be fantastic. I may just do that as we do have some big announcements that’ll be happening sometime in the next year. I’m honored to be with you and you guys are great. You have great voices too.
Pete Lane:
As do you. You’ve got the gift of gab.
Richard Turner:
Oh, yeah. Let me say bye to all your audience members. We’ll see you at the card table.
Pete Lane:
Well, thanks again.
Richard Turner:
Bye now.
Jeff Thompson:
Thanks, Richard.
Pete Lane:
Bye-bye.
Jeff Thompson:
Bye-bye.
Richard Turner:
Well howdy.
Crowd:
Howdy.
Richard Turner:
Howdy!
Crowd:
Howdy!
Pete Lane:
This concludes our interview with Richard Turner. Jeff and I want to thank Richard for taking time out of his busy schedule to chat with us, and we certainly hope that you found him to be as fascinating as we did. Be sure to check out Richard’s website at www.richardturner52.com. Of course, there’s lots of videos over on YouTube. His channel is www.youtube.com/AsaT52. That’s A-S-A-T-5-2.
Pete Lane:
Of course, you can find more podcasts with a blindness perspective on our website at www.blindabilities.com. Be sure to enable the Amazon Skill on your favorite Amazon device. Just ask Lady A to enable the Blind Abilities podcast skill. Thanks so much for listening and have a great day.
Richard Turner:
You give them what’s called a strip cut or a box cut. It’s a running cut just reverses the top and bottom. Another riffle, and a cut. That is basic casino procedure. Are you having a little trouble there? Oh, it’s your right hand. It’s screwing you up. I can fix that for you. Put them in your left hand. Take them, break them to where they’re even like this. Lace them up and give them a one-handed bridge.
Richard Turner:
Now, I have shown you half-a-dozen ways of shuffling and cutting the deck. They should be pretty evenly mixed, yes? Poker Annie, would you hold your cards off the table in your hands. Let’s see if this deck is pretty evenly mixed. Do we have ace, two, king, ace, two, king, ace, two, king, king two ace? I shuffled the deck back into perfect numerical order.
Pete Lane:
For more podcasts with a blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com.
Speaker 29:
We’re on Twitter. We’re on Facebook.
Pete Lane:
And, be sure to check out our free app-
Speaker 29:
… in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.
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