UPDATES!
As you are all recovering from food comas and hangovers, here's a collection of bits I've been meaning to blog for the last few weeks - I'm sure any of our regulars with our exclusives will find some good food for thought!
One of the common problems with publishing any material that you perform regularly is that, at some point, you will stumble on some extra touch, improvement or variation that you wish you had included in the finished product - and this has turned out to be true regardless of how long you think about the trick before release. HA!
So here are a couple of updates on our previously published effects that just add a little more BANG for your buck!
THE KICK! - Whilst I’m probably never going to change how I do the Kick (I’ve used it since I was 15 and I’m certainly not stopping anytime soon) I did come up with a cool idea to vary it a bit - it was inspired by the Casino Kick style of thing - I love the fact that with the Casino version, you get an extra phase from the backs matching. So, try this. Take your regular Kick Deck, and on the back of one pair of regular cards, write the words ‘COINCIDENCE’ on the backs on both, and then ‘INTUITION’ on the backs of the other pair. Then, on the back of every blank card, write a different type of magic - as in, different plots, or unexplainable phenomena (like ‘DEJA VUE’ etc) After much thinking, I then found this link, which would certainly have made my job easier. You’re welcome. HA!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_psychic_abilities
Now of course, you can do the trick as usual, but now the deck is much more interesting, and the faces of the two pairs match, then the backs, and then BOSH! The rest are blank. Religions have been formed on less (even the bigs ones!).
THE CASINO KICK - There’s just a small touch with this, but I noticed I used it in the demo video, and a couple of eagle eyed magicians spotted it and asked me. (This would also be great for the version of the Kick described above, so one of the key words is hidden). Set the deck up in the usual way, but then add one more indifferent card on top of everything. Now when you perform, and you start dealing for the first time, just take the top two and deal them as one. You are only casually making a pile, so it doesn’t have to be perfect. The rest of the trick works the same, but it means that the spectators haven’t seen the back of one of your main cards prematurely, so there’s no chance of anyone noticing anything that they shouldn’t before the climax.
ESP BADGES - This is one of those tricks that I deeply love, and I seem to perform it slightly differently each time I do it - the props are very versatile. One of my favourite bits is this, currently - it’s basically a combination of the first and last tricks in the booklet. The effect looks like this - you start off by removing the bag, and tipping out the badges, placing them on the bag and turning them all face up. Then you bring out the ESP deck, shuffle it, and deal five cards in a line. A spectator chooses one while your back is turned, then gathers all five and shuffles them, and returns them to you. Turning your attention to the badges, you say that you will eliminate four of them, zeroing in on their thought of symbol. One by one, you lift off the four incorrect badges, leaving one still on the bag - The Square. The spectator admits that this was their chosen shape! ‘This trick always works as well - I couldn’t have taken the Square badge off if I’d tried!’ Direct the spectator to lift up the badge, and then they find it is inexplicably pinned onto the bag!
One more note about the ESP badges, particularly when performing for magicians - I’ve noticed that they tend to think that the badge isn’t really pinned onto the bag, and suspect magnets, so be sure to have them examine everything thoroughly so they realise the badge is really pinned onto the bag.
THE GAMBLE - The Gamble is currently out of stock, and I’m not sure that it will be back in again, but it was one of our biggest selling tricks last year, so I know a lot of you guys and girls have it and use it. Here’s a fantastic tip from Shaun Mansfield. Let’s say they bring out the Blue chip third, and that’s your target. Shaun then removes FOUR business cards from the wallet as he says he made a prediction, and he flicks through them, pulling one out of the middle that says ‘You will put the Blue Chip down THIRD!’ The kicker comes, of course, when he eventually reveals the other three cards are all BLANK! This is a great bit of business, and well worth trying out if you have the Gamble.
HEROES AND VILLAINS - This is a wonderful trick, and I’ve now got to the point where I have a different revelation for wherever the card turns up. If the spectator shuffles their card to the top, I use the first trick out of Roy Walton’s ‘Complete Walton Volume 3’, which is a combination of the down under deal, and the Finger Print trick. It’s KILLER, and the book is well worth your attention (available from Davenports). If it is second, I do a magicians choice to have them find their own card, and if it’s third or bottom, I use the revelations taught in the booklet and download.
REMATCH - I’ve used Bob King’s REMATCH for literally twenty years, and I’m not convinced there’s a better feature packet trick. The kicker comes out of nowhere, and the ‘game-show’ presentation as described works a treat, with the buzzer and all. However, Michael Critchley (magician and my Friday session buddy!) came up with a lovely touch - he has a prediction envelope that he tables off to one side. Then the trick happens as usual, right up to the point where all the pairs are revealed - four don’t match, but the Kings do. That’s the first effect. Then, Michael opens the envelope, to reveal a photo of some cards laid out - and it predicts the four non-matching pairs! So, the photo shows a two of diamonds on top of a nine of clubs, and an Ace of Spades on top of a Four of Hearts, etc, predicting all of the ‘misses’. Then of course, you carry straight on, changing all the mismatching pairs into matching ones, for a KILLER third phase that finishes everything else off.