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I'm sharing a bit of my "A" material here because the this section needs some juice.

I work food festivals during most of the year selling high end wines, when no-one is buying I do my best to entertain fellow vendors with the odd trick or two. I get good results with a thumb tip as an easy "go to", I have a good and really simple torn bill restoration (but unfortunately anything under a £20 note is untearable now), even the simplest tricks impress in what appears to be uncontrolled circumstances.
 
P.J. Denyer said:
I work food festivals during most of the year selling high end wines, when no-one is buying I do my best to entertain fellow vendors with the odd trick or two.
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I go to festivals during much of the year but the low end beer guys are my usual vendors. Smokers are my favorite target for thumb tip magic.

I have a mistreat a dollar trick that I spent money on when I was an early teen and never used. You pull out this pretty much non gimmicked, maybe a little, hole puncher and ask for a bill. You fold it in eighths, punch it, eight circular pieces of the bill hit the table. Ypu collect 7 (oops, missed one) and resurrect the bill and the missing piece fits perfectly at the end. It's brilliant but requires a real ballsy sleight I wasn't comfortable doing. I'm going to blow the dust off it this summer just to have a new story to post here.
 
It never ceases to amaze me how blatant the trick can be if done confidently and with a modicum of style, I do a paper money restore that a five year old could figure out, but it amazes people. The only problem now is that we have new untearable five and ten pound notes so I have to use a twenty. I'm waiting to see how long it takes before one of my torn twenties finds it's way back to me!
 
P.J. Denyer said:
It never ceases to amaze me how blatant the trick can be if done confidently and with a modicum of style,
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When I was very young I read an ancient magic text that exposed effective but outdated secrets. This particular secret seemed too brazen when I was even nine to ever perform. It's called "One Ahead." It requires you to pass out pieces of paper to your audience and have someone recollect the paper in a hat or whatever after the audience has written questions on them. You pick out the questions from the hat one by one while blindfolded (or just eyes closed if performing while teaching.) You answer the questions correctly and then open each paper after you engaged with the question.

At one point in my life I decided to teach. Sometimes I was a substitute teacher. A few times a long term substitute and then my own class. The truth is I always looked at teaching as a reason to reason. I always looked on a classroom as a place not to be boring. As a place to often perform magic I had no place elsewhere to perform in front of a (literally) captivated audience. I floated a zombie ball several times a day. Every day I had a prepared routine.

Several times I used this one ahead method in a classroom. In third, fourth,fifth and sixth grade. You get a student who you can trust to being an accomplice to say the first paper was theirs. It is easy after that. I always finished the lesson saying there is no magic in my opinion. It's always a trick.

It was fun and educational for both parties. This definitely falls in the brazen category but can work, you have my word.
 
Senex said:
When I was very young I read an ancient magic text that exposed effective but outdated secrets. This particular secret seemed too brazen when I was even nine to ever perform. It's called "One Ahead." It requires you to pass out pieces of paper to your audience and have someone recollect the paper in a hat or whatever after the audience has written questions on them. You pick out the questions from the hat one by one while blindfolded (or just eyes closed if performing while teaching.) You answer the questions correctly and then open each paper after you engaged with the question.

At one point in my life I decided to teach. Sometimes I was a substitute teacher. A few times a long term substitute and then my own class. The truth is I always looked at teaching as a reason to reason. I always looked on a classroom as a place not to be boring. As a place to often perform magic I had no place elsewhere to perform in front of a (literally) captivated audience. I floated a zombie ball several times a day. Every day I had a prepared routine.

Several times I used this one ahead method in a classroom. In third, fourth,fifth and sixth grade. You get a student who you can trust to being an accomplice to say the first paper was theirs. It is easy after that. I always finished the lesson saying there is no magic in my opinion. It's always a trick.

It was fun and educational for both parties. This definitely falls in the brazen category but can work, you have my word.
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Deren Brown has performed (and explained) the one ahead method, I can't recall if it was on one of his TV shows or when I saw him live.
 
Ok, this is really "A" material and I won't expose the method because you can find it on youtube if you care to perform.

This is best done when magic tricks are not on anyone's mind. The trick is you plant a gimmicked soda or beer can somewhere (and i usually use the beer recycling pail at a party) but it is best if you can plant in on the side of the road you anticipate walking on later with friends. You pick up a discarded and crushed beverage can on the road. The can uncrushes right in front of their eyes and you open it and pour/drink the contents. it's mindbogglingly if your audience believes the can was found arbitrarily. A number of times people that saw me pick up and restore the can on the side of the road behaved inappropriate trying to get me to tell the secret. The trick is that good
 
That is "A" material, excellent.


I have an old, fairly easy card trick my dad showed me when I was young. I have used it a few times when the opportunity arises and it always baffled people, not as good as the can though, maybe "B"?


I ask someone whether they have any psychic powers and if we could test them.
I give them a deck of cards (face down) and hold out my hands, asking them to try to place the red cards in my one hand and the blacks in the other.
They deal the cards one at a time placing them in the hand of their choice, until the cards are done.

I combine the cards in my two hands and hand the deck back to the person to check, the reds and blacks are separated.


Anyone know what this trick is called?
 
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Cheetah said:
That is "A" material, excellent.


I have an old, fairly easy card trick my dad showed me when I was young. I have used it a few times when the opportunity arises and it always baffled people, not as good as the can though, maybe "B"?


I ask someone whether they have any psychic powers and if we could test them.
I give them a deck of cards (face down) and hold out my hands, asking them to try to place the red cards in my one hand and the blacks in the other.
They deal the cards one at a time placing them in the hand of their choice, until the cards are done.

I combine the cards in my two hands and hand the deck back to the person to check, the reds and blacks are separated.


Anyone know what this trick is called?
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The only way I know to pull this off is to use a stripped deck. I doubt you used one. In the spirit of this thread I must advocate purchasing a stripped deck for young magicians. I'm clumsy and lazy--yet I used to look like a world class card shark with this gimmicked deck. Amazing tricks can be performed.

OK, how do honest fellows separate the red cards from the black ones?
 
I quickly googled looking for it and the closest I found seems to be "Out of This World". This version seems better and simpler though.

This is how I have done it.

Works best when you are socializing with a group of people at someone's house. Especially if some are open to the idea of psychic powers and the conversion drifts that way. There needs to be a deck of cards around and you need some alone time with the deck.
I excuse myself to go to the loo, grab the deck and separate the reds and blacks. I put the deck back when I return. Everyone who knows me, knows I'm a skeptic, so I argue against psychic powers and eventually demand to test someone to prove they are fooling themselves.
"Ah, a deck of cards!"
Grab the deck, pretend to give it a shuffle or two as you explain you want them to put all the reds in your one hand and the blacks in the other.
Give them the deck and let them do it.
Count the cards.
After half the deck keep the place with one of your pinky fingers.
After the deck has been dealt, instead of putting the two heaps of cards on top of each other, slip the one into the place you kept with your pinky finger.
Hand the deck back declaring that you are not even going to bother checking since psychic powers are obviously BS.

Appear baffled.
Accuse them of cheating!
Demand to do it again.

Fake shuffle, repeat.

Once did it three times in a row.
 
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Cheetah said:
I quickly googled looking for it and the closest I found seems to be "Out of This World". This version seems better and simpler though.

This is how I have done it.

Works best when you are socializing with a group of people at someone's house. Especially if some are open to the idea of psychic powers and the conversion drifts that way. There needs to be a deck of cards around and you need some alone time with the deck.
I excuse myself to go to the loo, grab the deck and separate the reds and blacks. I put the deck back when I return. Everyone who knows me, knows I'm a skeptic, so I argue against psychic powers and eventually demand to test someone to prove they are fooling themselves.
"Ah, a deck of cards!"
Grab the deck, pretend to give it a shuffle or two as you explain you want them to put all the reds in your one hand and the blacks in the other.
Give them the deck and let them do it.
Count the cards.
After half the deck keep the place with one of your pinky fingers.
After the deck has been dealt, instead of putting the two heaps of cards on top of each other, slip the one into the place you kept with your pinky finger.
Hand the deck back declaring that you are not even going to bother checking since psychic powers are obviously BS.

Appear baffled.
Accuse them of cheating!
Demand to do it again.

Fake shuffle, repeat.

Once did it three times in a row.
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hmmm....

You aren't sharing necessary details.
 
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:confused:


No, that's it.


Edit:
Say you hand them the deck with red on top and black at the bottom.
After they have dealt 26 cards, you have all the reds in your hands and they have all the blacks.
Now slip in a pinky above the last red and before the first black.
After all the cards are dealt you have in your hands two stacks with black on top and red at the bottom, one separated by your pinky.
If you now slip the other stack into the gap where your pinky is, the deck ends up with black on top and red at the bottom.


If you are fairly dexterous you can slip both pinkies in. Slip the one stack in where your one pinky is, then cut where the other pinky is and hand over the reds and blacks in separate hands.
 
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Ok, i get it now. There is a payoff there.

How's this for a trick that requires absolutely no skill. You hand someone a deck to shuffle. They shuffle. They hand it back to you. Literally, in less than a second you can have the black and red cards divided in your hands. Welcome to the world of gimmicked decks.

You can't beat the shortcuts. I'm old and wise. Trust me.
 
OK, here is some more A material. Let's say you are a brilliant magician but you have been drinking and have this brilliant trick lined up but it requires you force a card. This is an A material force that doesn't require any skill and you can perform it while staggered. I didn't create it but I perfected it.

The card you want selected is on the bottom of the deck. False shuffles leaves the bottom card as the bottom card. You ask the person across from you to cut the deck. You now have two piles. You distract them with conversation. You then put the bottom half of the deck perpendicular to the top. The card that looks "cut" was the bottom card you planted. You display it as the "fair" cut card. That is so brilliant I would not share this except I want to share A material :)
 
A variation of cross cut? Not sure I see the perfection. I'm a rank amateur and have used it as originally conceived multiple times with great success.
 
Garrette said:
A variation of cross cut? Not sure I see the perfection. I'm a rank amateur and have used it as originally conceived multiple times with great success.
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Hi Garrette, long time no see. You're still modest.

Yes, you can't "perfect" something that requires no skill, but as I've said before, I'm good only good at the misdirection part.

My next offering is put a quarter through a soda or beer can. Wonderful trick even a clumsy guy like me can do after a little practice (this one requires some practice). Videos exist on the internet.
 
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Hah. It's the misdirection for me, too. But isn't that the real work, as they say?

Actually, my skill is in spotting the rare opportunities that such a thing will seem natural to the circumstance so that not only is my performance getting less heat but my misdirection seems part of the normal flow of things.

As to technical, beyond the rare DL or even rarer coin vanish, and the occasional weird count, it's mostly beyond me.
 
I don't perform any myself but once I was watching a Penn & Teller BS episode, they said go pull a card from a deck and I did, from a deck that had been sitting at the back of a drawer in the living room, and it was their card. I'm pretty sure I screamed.
 
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