I want to share with you a time when, during the most important sleight of a long routine, I flashed the move to the spectator helping me.

When you're a professional magician, you've performed enough times that you have ways to recover from different disasters or outs you can use. If you flash, maybe you have a repertoire of patter you can dive into, or you know how to recover so that it's not the end of the set. Unfortunately, I'm not a professional and in this specific case I was performing for an audience of about 30 people -- the biggest I've ever done.

Background About the Trick

A few years ago, when I restarted my journey in magic, I put into effect one of many effects I had created "in my mind" over the years. During my absence in performing magic, I always daydreamed about routines or performances, so I had many like this. This one special routine was an expanded handling of the "secret" routine from Drawing Room Deceptions that adds a little more flare to it -- especially given the use of a lighter!

It turns out, Chris Ramsay had a very similar idea and marketed his effect a few years ago:

I had performed mine only a few times before seeing his and while they're pretty identical in handling and effect, I actually really liked his concept of it being "voodoo". My original version was more of a do-as-I-do type of thing where I tried to tie it into my career (engineering) and how nano-bots can replicate actions. Yeah, it makes more sense during the presentation =P

Anyways, I gave Ramsay's presentation a whirl and it ended up getting a much better reaction than mine so there's another case in history where just changing the way you present the same handling can have a huge impact on a routine and practically make it a new routine altogether.

Performance, and Flash

This routine doesn't involve a ton of sleight of hand. There is some, don't get me wrong, and you have to pull it off really well unless you want the routine to be over before it begins.

So, there I was...

I was at my office in New York, showing a smaller routine or two to a few friends in the kitchen area. A group of coworkers all left a meeting and passed by and saw me doing a trick and started gathering. Next thing I knew, there were at least 30 people crowded around and I'm on the spot, unprepared because I was only meaning to show a single trick I had recently been working on.

And then, I remembered, I had everything necessary to perform "Voodoo". I called over someone to assist and started laying out the premise for what was about to happen. I gave an introduction to help get the audience's mindset into voodoo magic, and then had the assistant select a card via a riffle force.

That's when I flashed the gimmicked card, necessary for the routine's finale.

It all happened in an instant. The card dropped onto the selected face-up card. Only the assistant-spectator who was standing right next to me would have been able to see it before I was able to quickly grab it back up, but the damage was done.

If the person I'm doing the trick for saw the gimmicked card before anything happened, they're not going to be surprised or impressed or mystified by anything that takes place. The audience will read their reaction too and, well, the trick's ruined.

The Out

I froze for what felt like a solid 10 seconds, but I think it wasn't really any more than 1 second. I thought the trick was over, I screwed up and of course, all eyes were on me.

And that's when I remembered something from Card College:

I made up my mind right then and there to bring him into my confidence. With half of the deck in my left hand, his selection face up on top, the other half of the deck in my right hand, I turned to look at him and his stare met mine. I smiled, he smiled, and we proceeded on with the trick.

Before the smile, I felt nervous like you wouldn't believe. I felt ashamed that I screwed up and embarrassed that one of my first real performances, and with so many people, was a flop. And as soon as he smiled back the weight was lifted from my shoulders. I became a performer once again and carried the trick all the way through the finale.

I'm going to say that it got a standing ovation, but in fairness, everyone was already standing since, I mean, they were crowded around a table in the office's kitchen =P

In Hindsight

To this day, I still don't know whether he saw the flash or not. If he did, he was the better performer that day because I completely believed his reaction. If he didn't, I don't think it would change anything overall.

I've reviewed the handling of the trick time and time again to come up with a better way to help prevent flashing in future performances but honestly, I think it's just a practice thing. The handling is streamlined and effective, changing anything would add additional moves and increase the risk of flashes in my opinion. It's just one of those things that happens.

I don't know if I've read, or watched, or otherwise heard of any other guidance on what to do if you flash during a performance, other than what I quoted above from Card College. If I hadn't had that tip, or if I didn't remember it in the moment, what would I have done instead? What would you have done?

Do you have any fun, scary, or just plain sad experiences with tricks going sideways? How did you get out of it? Or how did you end it abruptly?

I'd love to know, and hey, maybe I can share your story here too! Let me know <3

A little more than a month ago I wrote about wanting to find another up-the-ladder false running cut. While I knew of many, my mind was stuck on the memory of one in Principia, a book by Harapan Ong. I first read Principia in March 2020, shortly after receiving it. Cover to cover, I spent a full week going through the contents of that book and for a full week, I was mostly over my head.

I had been learning card magic for a little over 2 years at that point. As a hobby magician with two little kids and a full-time job, just starting to learn, those 2 years didn't equate to anything more than reading a book or two and watching YouTube. By the time I received Principia, I was still very much a beginner and was excited from the hype of Instagram (where I learned about the book). Fast-forward to now where I consider myself a lot more read and, while not an expert, still more than a beginner.

What is Advanced Magic?

Beginner magic, intermediate routines, advanced and expert level effects -- these are all just labels, right? To a point, yes. And, for the most part they do hold an in-the-eye-of-the-performer (or spectator) bias. Something that might be "beginner magic" to me might be "intermediate" for someone else. Or maybe I think something's a bit expert-level and Dave Buck thinks it's beginner-easy.

It's rare, in my experience, to find a book or video with a label that says "advanced". However, I have seen plenty that directly say they're for beginners, or they're more intermediate.

When I say "advanced" here today, I mean anything that's intermediate or harder. If a routine requires you to know a sleight that's not available in the book you're reading, the expectation is that you've been doing magic enough to be exposed to that other sleight. Similarly, if there is a required sleight that will take weeks of practice to be decent at it, well, that doesn't sound very beginner-level to me.

Self-working tricks can also be more advanced, but they do tend to fall more into the beginner category. Why? Because they're mostly presentation. Yes, I know, not all fall under this rough description, but we're being general here. If they require a lot of crowd control, multiple outs, or don't end clean, that's a little more than a beginner trick. Luckily, most self-working tricks don't =]

At the end of the day, it's up to you to decide what level the magic is for you. If you're comfortable with the level, it's at whatever level you consider yourself to be at. If it's easy to pick up, congratulations, you're a notch higher than "beginner". If it's too hard to pick up, well, let's call it advanced.

Studying Advanced Magic as a Beginner

When you're a beginner in magic, especially in today's age, you have access to a lot of material. With free content like YouTube, you could be learning 10 different color changes, false shuffles, and full routines a day for weeks and never see the same thing twice. Sites like Ellusionist, Penguin Magic, and Vanishing Inc give you access to paid content -- streaming and downloadable -- that's more in-depth and structured too. If you include Gumroad and Patreon and dozens of other online magic shops, video content is through the roof. And then, there are books. I am a card magic book collector and have over 100 myself... and yet not a week goes by without me seeing a reference to at least half a dozen books that I don't own.

The point is, as a beginner, it's very easy to be exposed to a very large variety of magic that can cover the entire range of skillsets from beginner to advanced to knuckle-busting-impossible. Yeah, I'm looking at you If an Octopus Could Palm.

So, as a beginner, should you even bother with reading, or watching, or let's just say studying magic that's more intermediate or advanced?

My Experience, As a Beginner

I mentioned the book Principia. Is this an expert-level book? Maybe. It's at the very least intermediate. But, before this book I had read another named The Card Classics of Ken Krenzel and this book is definitely expert-level. It, like Principia, contains a lot of difficult routines, audience control, and requires you to have existing skill with several sleights. I love many of the routines in Krenzel's book... but, I haven't ever performed them because at the time, they were beyond my capabilities. The same thing went for Principia. But why?

The reason is fairly simple: I never performed any of the routines from these books because at the time that I read through them I needed to learn more foundational material before I could actually perform the routine.

We could argue that that's not a good enough reason and I could have still practiced those routines and yada, yada, yada. My opinion on the matter is that I couldn't.

For example, the On Producing a Four-of-a-Kind routine in Principia requires Fisher's "One-Handed Popover" move, Thompson's "False Cut", Lorayne's "HaLo Bottom Slip Cut", Vernon's "Chinese Second Deal", "A Flourish and Pass" by LePaul, and a "Stuart Gordon Double Lift". One routine required 6 moves that I didn't know how to do.

You know what I did though? I added this routine to my list of keepers, bought LePaul's The Card Magic of Le Paul, got a video tutorial of Fisher's move, and finally opened Inner Secrets of Card Magic. Today, I can say that I know how to efficiently perform all the requirements for the routine. It's been 2 years, but those foundational sleights and flourishes can be used with so many different things that I really wouldn't have wanted it any other way.

So again, as a beginner should you even bother with studying magic that's more intermediate or advanced? I 100% fully believe that you should. In my case, I do it because it provides me with not only references for other foundational pieces of magic, but it also gives me ideas and inspiration on other ways to use sleights that I already have in my skillset.

The key, in my opinion, is to be able to understand when something is out of your current reach. You can practice it right now, definitely. However, you have to know that it will take much longer to be really good at it than other routines that are more of a "beginner" level. That's not a bad thing mind you, but if you're only practicing really difficult sleight of hand and it's taking longer than expected or just not working out, the chance that you'll give up and stop being interested is much higher.

Studying Beginner Magic as an Expert

What about the other case? If you're already someone who can pull off knuckle-buster sleights or you have a repertoire of hundreds of routines and can easily jam or jazz on demand, should you bother with studying beginner magic?

To reiterate from up above, when I'm saying "beginner magic" here I don't mean that magic kit you get on Christmas from your grandma. But, something like Royal Road to Card Magic, yes.

When I got back into magic, even though I bought Royal Road, I didn't want to read it at first. I wanted to learn the harder things, the more advanced material. "Royal Road is for kids," I was thinking. "I know how to do a double lift, I got this!"

And then I read it, cover to cover. I also read Card College 1 through 3 (I have 4 and 5 too, I just haven't read them yet). The material is much easier in these books and the routines are more practical. Things that I, as a beginner, could actually do. I don't need to rely on equivoque or card forces or other convoluted misdirection. I can perform routines that will get a positive response from the audience and help boost my confidence while I practice the harder things. It was great!

But, again, I was a beginner still... would an expert or professional bother?

I can't say. I think that it's something only each person, individually, would be able to answer. I do want to make one observation though and that's that a very, very large portion of YouTube magic -- even from the more famous performers like Chris Ramsay and Alex Pandrea -- are directly from books like Royal Road. The comments on those videos are nothing short of "the crowd goes wild", and yet, they're performing what's deemed "beginner magic". Hmm... I guess performance makes a huge difference!

When Should You Come Back to Older Material?

When you're ready, of course! I want to say "just kidding" here, but really, that's the answer.

In my case, I keep a list of routines that I want to perform and the required sleights for each. In the example up above for On Producing a Four-of-a-Kind, that routine required 6 sleights and I knew none of them. I had written down this routine in a list of "keepers" that I maintain and went off to learn the sleights before coming back to it. The idea being that after I learn most of the sleights I can come back and knock out the routine. In this case, that was the idea...

In my experience so far, normal routines don't require this many sleights -- normally, you'd look at only one or two sleights max (not including self-working routines). I would learn the sleight and then go back to any routines that were in my "keepers" list that required it and start practicing them in rotation.

Because I read books cover-to-cover, after going through one I might end up with a list of 5 to 10 routines and just as many sleights to learn. While practicing those sleights, I'll be reading the next book already and the lists continue to grow.

Eventually, I do get to a point after 3 or 4 books where I look at the sleights I've picked up along the way and that's when I'll go back to a book that I've previously read. I'll skim through the routines that I jotted down and start practicing! In Principia's case, and Card Classics of Ken Krenzel, this hasn't happened yet unfortunately. I love both books, but they both have so many "keepers" that it's daunting just thinking about it.

Maybe I'm not ready for them yet...

It's Monday and you know what that means... Monday Mail Call!

Each Monday (give or take), I use this feature to highlight a few of the things that have made their way in over the past week or so. Packages, purchases, and emails -- oh my!

Today I will only be highlighting one of the packages I received this week, a book by Meir Yedid. After that, I will be talking about a product email that landed in my inbox that's worthy of a mention.

Up first, Forks Full of Appetizers, a book by Meir Yedid but a collection of magic routines by 73 magicians in total. Each magician is a member of the 4F club, or Fechter's Finger Flicking Frolic. I already had The FFFF Book which has decades worth of routines from 4F, but when I saw this one pop up for sale I just had to grab it.

Before buying, I did check to see if it's just an expansion on the other and from what I could tell by the magician list, there isn't a huge amount of overlap. I haven't had a chance to read much yet, but I did skim through and I expect to find some goodies in here! My first big takeaway though is that for a book that was printed this year, the ink is pretty faded already. Rather than nice rich and black text on the page, it's a dark gray, as if the printer was running low on ink. I doubt it will fade much more before I get a chance to pilfer its secrets, but I find it odd that such a new book has such an old vibe. Maybe that's a good thing?

But yeah, the book contains 98 close-up routines that are mostly card magic and coin magic, but there's other neat tricks with small objects too. The description says that the difficulty level ranges from easy to hard and is good for hobbyist or professional and everything in-between. Being a hobby magician myself, it's sometimes hard for me to tell if a routine would be a good "worker" routine or not but I think I'm getting the hang of identifying the characteristics of them. I would, however, like a good way to measure the difficulty of a routine -- kind of like how Talk About Tricks did.

Up next, an email from Vanishing Inc announcing a new product, Vélo. Vélo, in short, is a beautiful wooden cabinet for deck storage. You're able to customize the number of draws it has, and whether it comes with a glass top display too. Each customization adds on to the price, of course, but you can't tell me that this doesn't look pretty:

Each of these photos are from Vanishing Inc.'s product page for Vélo.

I saw the email maybe 2 minutes after receiving it and figured I would check it out. The product itself launches on September 21st (Wednesday), but the email is an invite to the pre-sale event. Coincidentally, the same link is available on Vanishing's homepage.

I'm not sure if it was an accident, or if I clicked something special that first time around, but the first time I went to it I was able to see the actual product page. The whole product description, photos, even the add-to-cart and customization options. The price for the basic option was $99 and adding drawers upped the cost. I think I remember the highest price being $399 for the whole kit and caboodle but it's been a few days so I don't know 100%. The pics above aren't accessible on the site right now either (I'm sure they will be on the 21st though), but I have my ways =]

I have towers of decks stacked up right now and something like Vélo would be perfect! It looks amazing and I'm sure that the quality is above my own expectations. Unfortunately, last year I had backed TCC Wooden Display Shelves & Display Boxes on Kickstarter and got a lot of storage pieces. Because of these, I don't really have anywhere to put something like Vélo -- even though it looks amazing. If I didn't have them already, I would 100% spring for it.

For reference, the TCC cases I have are:

• 8 Deck Wooden Storage Box
• 15 Deck Wooden Storage Box
• 35 Deck Wooden Display Shelf

I also have an 8-deck wooden display shelf, but I'm not using it. The first two in the list are unbelievable quality. Beautiful wood and a soft flannel lining. The display shelf however, the quality leaves a little to be desired. But hey, it displays the decks so that's what's important.

I know I don't own one, but if you're a magician, cardist, or card collector, I would highly recommend checking out Velo for some top quality storage solutions: Vélo on Vanishing Inc.

Whelp, that's it for today folks. A sweet magic book and an email about a storage cabinet. I can't wait to dive into the book, especially after writing about it here. Also, looking at Vélo makes me remember how much better having a nice display case for my decks is. I'm not a collector, but it's pretty great to be able to show off some of the decks I really like.

Stay tuned for the next iteration of Monday Mail Call, there's a lot more to come!

Oh also, if you'd like to offer suggestions for books, tricks, decks or if you have questions about magic (performing, routines, sleights, etc.), just reach out here.

This month's issue of Genii finally arrived! Only 2 weeks late, but at least it's here. My morning coffee has been missing its periodical companion. I know that I have other monthly subscriptions too, but they're digital and I really don't want to spend all my waking time staring at a screen... you know?

The cover of the issue features Fenik, a magician from Mexico. The name sounds familiar, but I can't for the life of me remember how or where I know it from. I just cracked open the magazine this morning and am only a few pages in, but soon I'll hopefully know more about him.

I read the intro and it spoke of FISM. I hope I'm able to attend it myself one day, either as a spectator or even a performer. We'll see!

The winner and now-titled World Champion of Card Magic is Markobi. His routine, haptic and disorganized, has tells of Lennart Green all over it -- except, his projected lack of care or even interest. He controlled cards without the appearance of possibly being able to. He demonstrated actual skill, "for technical points", and his kicker ending was enough to make anyone's jaw drop! Check out the whole performance here:

I don't know why but I've been doing a lot of color changes lately. Color changes are, in my opinion, a fun fidget style thing to practice every now and then and can add a bit of fun to a routine -- and they are always nice for video -- but I've been practicing them with no regard to utility. Simply, just to do them.

If you're interested in the specific ones (with names) that I've been fidgeting with, here's the short list:

• Candle Change by Patrick Varnavas (@patch.god), taught by Chris Ramsay
• 3P by Alan Rorrison, taught by Chris Ramsay
• Stiletto Change by Chris Ramsay
• Fabien's Change by Fabien Desfaucheux (@fabiendefaucheux), taught by Chris Ramsay
• Savant by Dennis Kim

Not including the last in the list, I think you may be able to spot a pattern =P

Speaking of Savant though, I started tinkering with it because of a move I came up with a few years back that uses a pinky-clip to steal the bottom card of an out-jogged double. This routine, which is less a color change and more a routine of color changes, also leverages that pinky-clip so when I started practicing my move, this one naturally followed. I play around with this move (the steal, not Savant) off-and-on as a fun fidget.

Here's a peek at said move that I recently posted:

Matt Baker is this month's MasterClass lecturer on Vanishing Inc. I really enjoy The Buena Vista Shuffle Club and am looking forward to seeing his lectures. I've rarely ever been able to tune in live, as is still the case this month, but it's all good because the videos are added to my account to let me watch whenever I want. The bad part about it is that I miss out on the chat with the other folks watching; it would be neat if the chat history was saved for others to read -- at least for those who are subscribers at the time of the recording.

Vanishing Inc sent an email, as did Matt, that there's extras added to my account for the lecture too. I took a quick look and wouldn't you know it, 2 ebooks! How cool is that?! Video lectures and written material to come along with it. Color me old fashioned, but that's a real class right there! =P

I don't know when I'll finally get around to watching everything, but when I do, I'll add a review here. There's already close to 4 hours of video material and there's still one more video to release (live streamed this coming Sunday), so it'll be a lot to go through.

I just registered for Google's AdSense to put an ad on the blog. I have it configured to be super lower annoyance, I think it is based on how long the individual page is and Google will automatically put a couple of ads, but for the few I spot-checked there will be only one or two in-line. I'm not going crazy with the whole overlay video and sticky ad stuffs -- just a simple one that's in the middle of the text.

"Why ads?!", you ask. I know, it sucks. In all honesty, I don't need to put them on the site yet. However, I figured that there's enough content here now that it might be better to have them now instead of later when there's even more traffic. I only pay for the server that the site's running on which, currently, runs me about $5 a month. I put in a lot of time working on the site though -- not just writing posts and entering content, but also writing code and whatnot to make the site run.

If the ads were able to cover the monthly cost, I would be ecstatic. As the site grows, the number of users will grow and I'll need to bump up the server specs, which will cost more so having that tiny bit of income helping towards it now will help towards it then too. I ran some preliminary numbers, and I don't think they'll actually get me enough to cover the monthly bill but we'll see. If they end up bringing in more than the monthly bill, I still have a little wiggle room in their settings that I can scale them back too so there will only be one on each page, regardless of the length of the page! Only time will tell though.

I was thinking that, in the future, I will publish a book or two (or routinely) and that will be the income stream to help cover the costs here. That's in the future though, so for now, a fun little Google Ad.

I started reading through Less Is More again this weekend and this time around, I have a different opinion of the book. This got me thinking about the flood of magic effects on the market and how, even in books, I often see identical effects left and right but with just some minor tweak to make it not 100% like the others. Is... is that really a new routine?

Let me start with a little background about my initial impression of Less is More, and how it evolved.

The first time I read the book, I feel like I had a pair of biased "against the content" goggles on. I had spoken to a friend right before reading and he gave me his opinion of Benjamin Earl (the author) and how he thought the writing style was. This left a negative impression on me which, unfortunately, carried over while reading the book. I felt like everything I read was the exact same as the previous routine explained, but with one slightly different variation. After all, that's the basic premise of the book; to keep refining a trick so that less is required which effectively makes it that much more of a trick.

Don't get me wrong, the routines are really nice. Some are hard, but nice. But does replacing a double lift with a double undercut and having the exact same presentation and reveal at the end make it an entirely different trick? No. It's the exact same routine, just done with a different sleight. And this is how I read the book the first time through -- albeit I didn't read past the 3rd (of 5) chapters last time because of this bias.

So this weekend, when I picked up the book I started on the 4th chapter titled Classic Simplicity, my opinion was changed. No, I still think that just replacing a single sleight and having the overall routine be the same makes it the exact same routine. However, Classic Simplicity's context was the exact opposite. Using the same setup, same sleights, and same reveal at the end -- but changing the presentation itself -- does make it a completely different trick.

Finding the four Aces, if presented as a gambling routine would leave a completely different impression than if presented as a magic routine. That is what makes it a different routine. The audience doesn't see the sleight of hand of a routine (or they shouldn't), so swapping sleights but keeping the presentation the same means it's the same trick from their perspective so it should be from ours too. The first chapter of the book, Evolving with Simplicity, presents 4 variations of the same routine. Each, in succession, evolves the one before it to be simpler but to have the same effect by changing the sleights that are required. The presentation persists and the effect remains the same.

This quote is part of Ben's summary of the first chapter. I either skimmed it or ignored it the first time around because this line alone expresses that he understands this too. Even though there are four completely separate routine explanations, they're each the same effect. By making the handling more simple, the overall effect can be more powerful and, dare I say, magical... but, they're still "the same effect."

In the case of Less is More, I originally read it with the idea that I was learning several new routines. Reading it again, I understand that it's way deeper than that. It's teaching how to look at a routine, break it down, and rebuild it with more efficient pieces. Yes, we're getting "how to perform" instructions, but by doing slow iterations of evolution, Ben's showing us how we can do this with any type of routine -- not just cutting to the four Aces. This makes a lot more sense now and I'm far less upset about it.

However, that doesn't change the fact that it happens across the magic industry with routines from other folks. Fortunately, though this could possibly only be based on luck, but fortunately I have noticed that many of these cases the "new" routine gives "inspiration credit" or "based on" references to the original.

I know that you know that all of what I've said so far is purely my opinion, but I'm very interested in hearing others too. Do you agree that changing a sleight is enough to call it a "new" routine? Is only changing the performance enough to call it new? If not, how distant or changed does it have to be to be considered different?

Share your thoughts =]