On my recent lec­ture tour, I spent a won­derful evening after the lec­ture dining with my fri­ends. Sud­denly a small dis­cus­sion about Denis Behr’s new full evening pro­gram came up. Some guys had seen it alre­ady, and the talk was about Denis’ ope­ning effect, which see­med to be quite strong (at least to me). I was told the fol­lo­wing: Denis would spread a red backed deck face down onto the table in a wide rib­bon spread, each and every card visi­ble. Then Denis would intro­duce a single…

If you’re aiming to infuse a sense of genuine anti­quity into your pre­sen­ta­tion mate­ri­als – whe­ther it be an old-style let­ter con­tai­ning cards, akin to those used in the Gipsy Curse, or per­haps a calen­dar resembling an anci­ent lea­­ther-bound tome – here’s my pro­ven method for excep­tio­nal results. Begin with the most eco­no­mical recy­cled paper you can find. News­pa­pers, now available in note­pad form, are a great option, as is hand­made paper, which can also pro­vide excel­lent results. To give the paper an…

As a magi­cian, I’m usually reluc­tant to reveal the secrets of my craft to fel­low con­ju­rers, pre­fer­ring to keep these mys­te­ries close to my chest. Howe­ver, given my pro­mise to you, I’ll make an excep­tion this time. While I have a gene­ral fond­ness and respect for wizards, I must admit, there are aspects about them that trou­ble me. Throug­hout my career, my moni­ker has become sur­pri­sin­gly popu­lar, appearing on various magi­cal parapher­na­lia like hand­ker­chiefs, card decks, gim­micks, and more. Intri­guin­gly, a so-cal­­led card expert even named…

Subt­le­ties are fine in magic rou­ti­nes, but they will not always work as inten­ded. Much depends on the audience’s level of atten­tion and intel­li­gence, and their inte­rest and focus on the per­for­mance. So you can’t always be sure that the subt­le­ties in a rou­tine will work. Some­ti­mes they will, some­ti­mes only par­ti­ally, and some­ti­mes they will pass unno­ti­ced. What can you do about it? Not­hing. Just try to include as many fines­ses as pos­si­ble that make sense for the routine.

R.I.P. With him, magic has lost one of the major crea­tive forces and an out­stan­ding per­for­mer, crea­tor, his­to­rian and ambassa­dor of the art of magic. A truly out­stan­ding, ori­gi­nal per­for­mer and per­so­na­lity. Thank you for all you have given to us. You will live on in our memo­ries fore­ver. ~~~o O o ~~~

An intro­duc­tory pre­sen­ta­tion for the Fred Kaps $11 Bill Trick: First tell the old story about the restau­rant and the 3 guests. The bill for the 3 cus­to­mers is $30. Each pays $10. Later, in the kit­chen, the owner explains that the bill is actually only $25 and not $30. A mistake has been made. So the chef gives the wai­ter 5 $1 bills to give back to the guests. But the wai­ter is disho­nest and puts 2 $1 bills in his pocket. He gives $1…

One thing that sad­dens me when I see con­tests at (many) magic con­ven­ti­ons : the tables of the close-up, card magic and par­lour cate­go­ries. How often have we seen a simple, plain table deco­ra­ted with an ugly piece of mate­rial? “Atta­ched to the table with gaf­fer tape, or not. U‑G‑L‑Y and thought­less, wit­hout love, cheap. You know it, you have seen it. Just a few thoughts: Magic orga­ni­sa­ti­ons spend a lot of money on many things: adver­ti­sing, flights and hotels for important per­son­nel, cate­ring, prize medals, figurines,…

In the past years, the SO (stan­ding ova­tion) seems to have become a “regu­lar” at magic con­ven­ti­ons. The most recent exam­ple is the FISM in Busan. Wit­tus Witt remarked on his blog that maybe this FISM-con­­ven­­tion will enter history as the “con­ven­tion of the stan­ding ova­tions”. A thoughtful and very inte­res­t­ing article on this phe­no­me­non (which spreads throug­hout almost all art forms, not only magic) is this: See the article Is it a “mob acti­vity”? Is it a way for modern audiences…

It is not uncom­mon to see the phrase “easy to per­form” used in adver­ti­se­ments for magic items. As some of my rese­arch in the magic com­mu­nity has shown, the majo­rity of magi­ci­ans (ama­teurs and pro­fes­sio­nals alike) are attrac­ted to adver­ti­se­ments that use this or simi­lar copy. Under­stan­da­ble, because who isn’t inte­res­ted in taking the shor­test and easiest route to a trick? And if easy to per­form means that I can “con­cen­trate on the pre­sen­ta­tion” because I don’t have to worry about the technique/​mechanics of…

In recent years, there seems to have been a trend in the magic of adver­ti­sing: the way in which adver­ti­sing copy is worded. More and more often we read words and sen­ten­ces like these: “This will fry your brain!” “This is a kil­ler effect!” “Des­troy them with this!” “This will leave your audi­ence com­ple­tely devas­ta­ted!” “This is magic that will kill any audi­ence!” You know it, you’ve read it. But then — have you taken the time to think about it? What are adver­ti­sers try­ing to tell…

One of the inte­res­t­ing things for me is to ana­lyze my buy­ing habits. As most of us, I went through the tedious pro­cess of being remote con­trol­led by the dea­lers’ cata­lo­gues, the ads in the maga­zi­nes and, of course, the inter­net and their online shops. After being into magic actively for more than 35 years, many of my buy­ing habits chan­ged out of neces­sity for the bet­ter. I hope this little rambling will do for you the same. I focus only on get­ting the…

Recently I acqui­red a very inte­res­t­ing read: John Naish’s book ‘Enough’. It’s main topics are about get­ting the idea of ‘having enough’. Whilst being a ’non-magic’ book, it is a very inspi­ring and thought pro­vo­king read for us magi­ci­ans, who are facing the same pro­blems of over-satu­ra­­tion, infor­ma­tion over­load and ‘I‑need-that-new-gim­­mick-trick-gadet’. Never before in the history of magic has the magic mar­ket been so huge. The digi­tal age also makes it so easy for the mar­ket­ers in this bran­che to bom­bard us with…

Peo­ple like giz­mos and gad­gets. So do I. The cra­zier, the bet­ter. I want to share with you my one of my ’idea techniques’.The photo shows my typi­cal idea workspace. I use the light­bulb, which actually is a con­tai­ner with a screwa­ble lid. This is always bes­i­des my note­book on my workspace. I use small bil­lets or post-its to jot down ideas or stuff I want to work on. This has a lot of advan­ta­ges: It is a fun thing to play with and makes my ideas…

Scrip­ting is very important for magic. It is an art for its­elf and depends lar­gely on good ideas and novel slants story wise. When wri­ting a script for a magic trick, it is some­ti­mes not so easy to find an effec­tive intro line. Some­ti­mes a ques­ti­ons can be used, some­ti­mes a state­ment, some­ti­mes a little joke. What to use depends on the trick in ques­tion. Here is a little hack, which could be useful. I dis­co­vered this many years ago when sit­ting in front of the blank paper…

One of the most important things for a pro­per thea­tri­cal per­for­mance piece in magic (or Men­ta­lism) is the plot. Many rou­ti­nes lack of a plot. They seem like a use­l­ess demons­tra­tion of cle­ver prin­ci­ples, desi­gned and put tog­e­ther to show­case the performer’s cle­ver­ness, dex­terity or ‘skill’ – or wha­te­ver is good to ful­fill this wish of some ego-dri­­ven indi­vi­du­als. Many magi­ci­ans expe­ri­ence dif­fi­culty in fin­ding and iden­ti­fy­ing plots for their rou­ti­nes in order to create an effec­tive pre­sen­ta­tion. But the whole thing is…

It is the little things that really make the dif­fe­rence. This post is to make you aware (or remind you, if you have for­got­ten) of some bril­li­ant ana­ly­sis and thin­king by Asca­nio regar­ding the Ham­man Count. Usually this count is done in a ste­ady rhythm: 1 — 2 — 3 — 4 — 5 — 6 — 7 — 8 — 9 Let us assume that we are going to show/​count 9 cards and make the change on the 5. The chall­enge is to make a per­fect change on the 5, kee­ping the rhythm. If there is a slight delay in…

Since my youth I was addic­ted to the ‘cut­ting the aces’ by Dai Ver­non (see Stars of Magic). Espe­ci­ally when I lear­ned of the thea­tri­cal pre­sen­ta­tion of PUNX, which is descri­bed in his book ‘Setzt euch zu mei­nen Füßen’. What a gem! But then the method was too unsure for me, also I always felt it did­n’t look ‘right’. So I went on to deve­lop some­thing to fix that. Wit­hout the help of Mark Elsdon’s ‘Hid­den Gems’ eBook this rou­tine would­n’t have been pos­si­ble. In this…

If we believe rese­ar­chers and sci­en­tists, we all have the mind of a mon­key. This ana­logy, slightly humo­rous though it may be, is actually an inte­res­t­ing one. Con­sider that we have around forty thousand sepa­rate thoughts each day, many of them on the same topic. As magi­ci­ans, thoughts about magic are com­mon and take a lot of space and time. So our mon­key is a very spe­cial ‘magic mon­key’. You might ima­gine that each thought is a branch, and you, or at least the atten­tion of…

Whilst wat­ching the expl­ana­tion of Rubia­les’ genius ‘Blindside Deck’, this idea occur­red to me. You might find it inte­res­t­ing to play around with. The BSD is set-up as fol­lows: 26 cards from Eddie Joseph’s Pre­mo­ni­tion deck (bank 1), 26 cards (bank 2). A blue deck set-up with 51 cards (Pre­mo­ni­tion): 2 x 26 cards (bank 2), minus one card. If spec­ta­tor thinks of one of the 26 cards of the bank 1 of the BSD, then this card will be miss­ing in the…

Cuando Lenn­art Green publicó su rutina comer­cial llamada ‘Sto­len Cards’, resultó ser un éxito inme­diato en el mundo de la car­to­ma­gia. Como muchos, com­pré inme­dia­ta­mente el juego. Sin su inven­ción y su rutina, esta humilde ofrenda no existiría. El truco es muy fuerte y bastante fácil de rea­li­zar. Con esta pre­sent­a­ción, he cam­biado un par de cosas, que hacen que toda la rutina sea más lógica (al menos en mi mente). Se basa en un tema de juego, car­tas de la suerte…

This is my ver­sion of the clas­sic ‘Diary Effect’ as inven­ted by Ted Dan­son. It was inspi­red by and is loo­sely based on ideas by Patrick Page, Eddie Joseph, Mark Els­don, Mike Born­stein, Richard Webs­ter and Bob Cass­idy. I wrote up the workings of this in an article in my blog. See the article here, so you know what you are deal­ing with. I had some dia­ries prin­ted in Spa­nish and Ger­man lan­guage for my lec­ture tours, now finally it is available…

Many magi­ci­ans are very fond of Juan Tamariz’s bril­li­ant rou­tine “Neither Blind Nor Silly”, published in his won­derful book SONATA. I did it for a very long time and still use it as descri­bed for lay peo­ple. What an effect this trick has! I some­ti­mes do it dif­fer­ently for magi­ci­ans and it has cau­sed a lot of puz­zled looks, espe­ci­ally when the card experts know the Tama­riz rou­tine. Some­ti­mes it is quite easy to fool experts… Basi­cally, what I do is exactly the same routine…