Matt Baker Masterclass

Matt Baker, known for his popular book The Buena Vista Shuffle Club, comes to you on screen and brings some hard hitting magic your way!

As a math professor by day, Matt is known to combine number theory and other clever principles with sleight of hand and in doing so create some mind blowing routines that won't require ridiculously dexterous fingers. Though, a nimble mind won't hurt.

This Masterclass, presented by Vanishing Inc., is a 3-video event. It's broken up into 3 weeks, the first two are individual lectures and the third is a live Q&A held via Zoom. The theme of the Masterclass, overall, is "Mathematical Principles in Magic," and that's pretty evident in some of his routines (such as his Any Card at Any Number, a.k.a. Twice as Nice).

Matt builds on the foundations that The Buena Vista Shuffle Club laid by improving and strengthening some of the routines presented there. Along with that, he also dives into the "Gilbreath Principle" -- something I've always found quite interesting, personally -- and you'll also see (and hear) influences from Simon Aronson, Gabriel Werlen, and Alex Almsley. Not to mention a never-before-taught false cut by Joshua Jay!

You can see below the name of each week's lecture, but a quick breakdown is that Week 1 is card magic with a semi-mentalist finale and Week 2 is rope magic, magic with M&Ms, and some more card magic! Most of the routines utilize math in some way or another, though after you practice a little you may hardly notice.

Where to buy?

If you sign up for VI+ (for $50 a month), you'll get a new Masterclass each month and will get courses like this one. Plus, free shipping on all of your orders!

Last I checked, you should be able to pick up Matt Baker Masterclass at Vanishing Inc. The last price tag I saw for this video was set at $75.00.

Buy at Vanishing Inc.

Contents of Matt Baker Masterclass

Week One

  • Single-Fried, The Sierpinski Principle
  • Pile Driver 2.0
  • Free Sandwiched, Free Cut Principle
  • Twice As Nice, Undo Influence Principle
  • Scripted Will, The Green Neck System

Week Two

  • The Impossible Knot
  • Crowdsourced Prediction, The Red-Black Relationship Principle
  • Shuffling versus Mixing
  • Match or No Match, The Gilbreath Principle, Part 1
  • Card College, The Gilbreath Principle, Part 2

Week Three - Q&A

Image Source: The header image for this page is from Vanishing Inc.

This is a video featuring magic presented by Matt Baker and was produced by Vanishing Inc. Available to stream, it has a running time of 2:05 for Week 1, 1:42 for Week 2, and 1:35 for the Q&A.