I’ve been playing around with cards for the last year or so and I was wondering if there were any other dopers who shared this marvellous little hobby. What are your favourite tricks (that you can perform) and which tricks do you aspire to learn? What are your favourite effects, sleights, and bits of kit? Do you perform professionally or just for fun? Who’s your favourite magician?
For my part, my favourite magician is Derren Brown, not just for the mind-control stuff, which is excellent, but also because he’s devised what are, to the best of my knowledge, commonly agreed to be some of the most impactful card routines ever performed. In particular, is Smoke, which I’m very glad to say I can perform and which always gets an amazing reaction. I’m trying to learn another one of his called Zamiel’s Rose but the sleights involved are so difficult that I think it’ll be a good couple of months before I get it down. Another trick I would love to learn is David Berglas’ famous “Any card at any number” routine.
As for equipment, my absolute favourite, probably because it was my first “real” trick, is a Svengali deck. I know magicians tend to look down their noses at these simple gimmicks but I always get a great reaction with them.
I love magic. I started doing coin magic when I came down with arthritis, in order to help keep my fingers flexible. I’ve learned some card magic along the way.
I ain’t Lance Burton by a long shot. But I can amaze the hell out of my students with the occasional coin pulled out of an ear, or by reading their mind with a card deck. And I love learning how the more complicated illusions, like Metamorphosis, are performed because I marvel at the skill level of the people presenting them.
I had an interest years ago, and I’ve recently been thinking about getting back into it. I’ve joined a couple of magic forums but haven’t done much else just yet.
I always liked card tricks and closeup. I think I might like to do some mentalism.
I am an amateur magician. I do mentalism primarily, but do fool around with some closeup with friends and students. My favorites to perform are the Invisible Deck(with a mentalist presentation) and Bob Cassidy’s Name and Place routine. A favorite of my students is Richard Osterlind’s spoon bending, which I had the good fortune of having him demonstrate personally to our local IBM Ring.
If you have one nearby, I would recommend joining a local ring of the IBM (International Brotherhood of Magicians). I know the atmosphere of local rings can vary, but ours is very supportive of amateur and beginning magicians. And there are almost always some professional magicians that are touring the clubs to give lectures and you can learn a lot from them. I was unable to attend, but just last week Aldo Columbini and his wife presented a lecture to our ring.
I wouldn’t say I am a great magician, but I think I am a pretty decent amateur. I will help in any way I can and would appreciate other’s reflections on specific tricks or magic in general. I will switch to PM conversation if necessary.
Clothahump, I grew up watching Doug Henning and his metamorphosis has stuck with me. I believe he also repopularized the torn and restored newspaper by doing it so well, though I can’t find a video of that.
davidm, mentalism is a blast to perform. Done well, you leave a bit of doubt in the mind of the spectator’s that maybe what they are seeing is actual mind power and not a magic trick.
Magic is one of my many hobbies. I’m mainly interested in cards, ropes and mentalism. I rarely perform, but I am a member (for over 20 years) of the local IBM ring.
Part time professional magician here. I’ve been studying the art since 1992 and have been performing for hire since 2000. I’m a SAM (Society of American Magicians) member and attend about 4 magic conventions per year, including Abbott’s Magic Get-Together.
Some of my favorite effects to perform are:
My own version of Michael Close’s “The Pot Hole Trick”
Lazy man’s handcuffs (unlinking rubber bands)
Eugene Burger’s “Thought Sender”
A version of the Ambitious Card (Where the card keeps coming to the top of the deck)
Dai Vernon’s, “Twisting the Aces”
As for my favorite magician, its hard to pick just one. I really enjoy Eugene Burger and Max Maven, but I also like Lennart Green, Jeff McBride, Mac King, and others. There are just so many really REALLY GOOD magicians out there… and I like them all.
I do coin and card tricks. I have wide hands and nimble fingers so its easy for me to palm stuff. They are just party tricks, tho. I love watching other people do elaborate magic.
I used to be a semi-pro, and making as much on Saturdays as I was on my day job. I was young and had my heart set on being a pro, when I saw a guy who blew me away, and he was doing the same set of shows I was. It was shock because I thought that if I were just a little better, I’d be making a lot more money and here was proof that that wasn’t going to happen.
Someone once said that music was a great hobby but a sad profession (or something like that) and I have to agree. Looking back, I’m an OK performer, but would never be a great one. I still really like it, though, and now as a hobby.
When I did do shows, I had several illusions, including the floating woman and shoot flaming arrows though a body. I do have to say that performing before larger crowds is a hell of a trip.
Most of the jobs were street magic or stages at events and not illusions. Typically, there would be three 20 to 30 minutes sets in a day, and often two or three days in once place.
I haven’t worked for money for more than 20 years, but still can do the basics like coins, cards and others. It was a lot of fun.
My daughter is still too young to appreciate magic (at 2 1/2, the world still is magic) but I’m looking forward to her getting older to be able to teach her.
I have a repertoire of four tricks. If I chance upon a deck of cards and an easy-to-impress audience I might launch into one. To wit, one of these:
Don’t know the name of it but you go through the deck nudging the top cards one at a time and you tell the mark to tell you when to stop. They say “Stop” and you do so and reveal the card, pause for a second deep in thought and identify it (without looking obviously). If someone in the crowd knows how the trick is done, they usually can’t help themselves in revealing it, so off to…
I can do a very good double-lift. You can pull off a couple of tricks with this alone but if the deck of cards you chance upon is one of the cheap-o plastic coated cards, you run the risk of revealing that second card. If your cover is blown you’ve no choice but to beat a hasty retreat.
Using a double-lift, I can do a trick involving the four jacks in which you seemingly place the two red ones in one pile and then reveal them to be the two black ones (or vice versa). The explanation here sucks but this post is going on long enough.
Haven’t done it in years but it involves using 21 cards, three stacks of 7, some quick shuffling and eventually coming down to one card that person already selected. Again crappy explanation but I can elaborate later if anyone’s still interested.
With the exception of the double-lift, the above tricks can be mastered with about five minutes of practice. Oh and I can do two different one-handed cuts which sometimes is often a crowd-pleaser in and of itself.
#4 is just a math trick. If you can’t master that, I kinda feel sorry for you.
I used to be into magic when I was younger, but I never really went anywhere with it. I was only really interested in finding out how it was done, and wasn’t too interested in learning the patter.
The only reason I even commented in this thread is that response above.
I’m a second-grade teacher, and as a reward for my students I’ll teach them a few magic tricks through the year. I’m going to be running an after-school magic club starting this week, and I have about a dozen or so tricks to teach, including:
Students think of a number. I write it and their names on a piece of paper, put it in a hat. They tell me the number, and I confirm that’s what I thought of. At the end I goofily guess a number myself, write my name, put it in the hat, tell my number, and confirm that’s what I thought of. I pass out all the scraps of paper at the end, and it turns out I wrote down everyone’s number correctly.
I hold up a deck of cards so I can’t see the top card but the audience can, and I guess what the card is. I shuffle them behind my back and am able to repeatedly guess the top card.
Via a double-lift (which I’m not very good at and do when folks aren’t watching) make a card jump from the middle of the stack to the top.
I make a loop of string pass through my neck, through student’s arms, etc.
I make a penny pass trhough my fist.
Students perform a series of operations on a number they choose, eventually circling a digit of their choice, and I guess the digit they circled.
A student writes a letter on the board. I ask another student to guess the letter, and they do so successfully.
The Uncle’s Palm (I don’t know what it’s really callled, but it’s great for pulling quarters out of ears).
Students and I take turns choosing cards to eliminate until there’s only one card left–say, the seven of diamonds. I reach into my pocket and pull that card out.
Students cut a deck of cards into four roughly equal piles and then mix them up (in each deck putting the top three cards on the bottom and then taking the next three cards and putting one on each of the remaining piles). One student puts their hand on each pile and wills the highest-value card in the pile to rise to the top. They turn over the top cards and discover that each of them is an ace.
In other words, I look for tricks that require a little bit of manual dexterity sometimes, but mostly tricks that rely on setup and careful patter. These tricks work better on kids than on adults. If anyone has more tricks along these lines, especially uncommon tricks (the 21-card one is pretty common, unfortunately), I’d love to hear them!
Son of a magician, former I.B.M. convention attendee and recovering ventriloquist here.
My dad did mainly kid’s magic, although he also had an adult act and even a “blue” one that he used to do in nightclubs. My middle name is after my godfather, Gene DeVoe, the owner of DeVoe’s Magic Den in St. Louis.
As a non-magician in a hotel packed with magicians, I was that most desired of all things - an audience. So I got to see a lot of magic by some really talented magicians. Personally, I tend to have more respect for someone who can entertain for hours with a deck of cards and a handful of coins than someone who requires a trunk full of equipment.
Non-magician here; just dropped in to say I love this stuff, especially close-up, tabletop magic. One time I had the opportunity to spend an evening at the Magic Castle, and it was one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done. There’s a fairly large auditorium for bigger illusions and tricks, but the best part is the number of tiny performance rooms that seat only a dozen or two people, who can watch magic being performed at close quarters.
I do have a lengthy detailed book aimed at the would-be self-taught magician–maybe one of these days I’ll buckle down and to it.
I used to love learning about magic tricks as a kid, and even tried to learn how to do a few of them. The problem is that I am a klutz, so I could never handle even the simplest slight-of-hand move. So I gave it up when I became a teenager.
