Eng­lish Art­icles

Re­cently my friend Jon Al­len in­formed me that he had a new ver­sion of his best selling trick “Par­agon” in the pipeline. He sent me a little private video clip and I was fas­cin­ated! You do the same Par­agon ef­fect, but then you use a clear …

Si­mon Aron­son es un genio de la car­to­ma­gia. Me en­canta su tra­bajo. Hay un juego que siempre me ha fas­cinado, es su “Ad-ja­­cent”. ¡Qué gran juego! A pesar de ten­erlo, no lo podría hacer, porque soy zurdo, y to­dos las manio­bras es­tán fuera de mi al­cance y …

Si­mon Aron­son is a card ma­gic geni­us. I love his work. There is one trick that has fas­cin­ated me thor­oughly, and that is his “Ad-Ja­­cent”. What a great trick! Des­pite hav­ing it, I would­n’t per­form it, be­cause I am a lefty, and all the reg­u­lar peek work …

El es­cen­ario de la ma­gia se ha con­ver­tido de al­guna forma un tanto de­mente. Un con­greso por aquí, otro por allá, un opar de videos, DVD‘s, tru­cos nue­vos, lib­ros por leer, en­cuen­tros entre clubs, nuevas descar­gas, nuevo, nuevo, nuevo… ¡Bang! Y la cabeza ex­plota. Con todo este …

The ma­gic scene has be­come some­how in­sane. A con­ven­tion here, some event there, a couple of videos, DVDs, new tricks, books to be read, club meet­ing, gigs, new down­loads, new new new … bang! The head ex­plodes. With all that in­put, how can one still be cre­at­ive …

Last year, same time. Ring ring! (phone) Q: Hi Alex! XXX here (name garbled). A. Hi! What’s on? Q: Alex, you have to help me! I have a show in two weeks, and I need a 25 minute stand-up pro­gram, some new tricks and things. You know, it is an im­port­ant …

  ¡Me en­canta este pequeño “hack”! Lo hago de forma ha­bitu­al, no porque no pueda em­pal­mar cartas sino porque es di­ver­tidísimo poder hacerlo justo delante de sus narices. Ll­eva el cono­cido gag de las 52 cartas en el bolsillo izquierdo de tu pan­talon (con el dorso que co­in­cida …

I love this little “hack”! I do this of­ten, not be­cause I can­’t palm cards, but be­cause it is so much fun to do it right un­der their noses. Have one of the well known gag cards with 52 prin­ted on the (with a match­ing back for …

I pub­lished this no­tion already on the Ger­man part of my blog, but then would want to re­peat it here for the Eng­lish read­ers. After see­ing again and again on the Face­book, at con­ven­tions and in clubs the de­sire and at­tempts of ma­gi­cians to mas­ter some­thing and …

Where is this mar­ket­place go­ing? A “new” trick is offered: A ver­sion of the “7 Card Monte” (click here). Well, some sort of dis­cus­sion and spec­u­la­tion star­ted in some ma­gic­al for­um. When read­ing this, it really raised my eye­brows. Some people ap­par­ently have only a little or …

I love the cat­egory “hacks” on this blog, which deals with fix­ing small prob­lems in our ma­gic­al life. This is one of those “hacks” that are in­ten­ded to make a ma­gi­cian’s life more com­fort­able and more trouble-free. The Mul­lica Wal­let is a great thing. But then, the re­mov­al …

Jon Al­len’s “Par­agon” ist fine. It is a real ad­vance­ment in “Signed Fol­ded Card to Clear Box”. I like it, be­cause my LAGER Switch was in­stru­ment­al in that. So I was sort of in­stru­ment­al in the ex­ist­ence of “Par­agon” as well. Fine feel­ing, makes me a bit proud. …

Q: Are you go­ing to be in Black­pool this year? A: No. Q: Why not? It’s great! Tons of ma­gic … A: No, it’s not all that great really. Yes, there is tons of. But not ne­ces­sar­ily tons of ma­gic that I like, un­for­tu­nately. Q: Why? 3000 ma­gi­cians friends there, …

Again, Seth God­in, who wrote that in his news­let­ter: Of course it is. The defin­i­tion of a thrill is tem­por­ary ex­cite­ment, usu­ally ex­per­i­enced for the first time. It’s thrill­ing to ride a roller coast­er. The fifth time you have to ride it, though, it’s more than a chore, …

Someone pos­ted this clip from the Ma­giFest 2016 on Face­book and I just could­n’t stop watch­ing and won­der­ing about it:   Well, cer­tainly the guys do ser­i­ous, ad­vanced  moves and pos­sess skill. Cer­tainly they worked hard and a long time on these moves. But then — watch care­fully and …

The UK card man gave me an­oth­er one of his cre­ations for my humble blog. Thank you, John! Along, here in his own words: Hi Guys, Here’s a prac­tic­ally self work­ing piece that’s a lot of fun to do. Set a roy­al flush in spades on top of the deck …

Here some­thing in­ter­est­ing — a stu­dent of mine work­ing to­geth­er with an act­or in a little set. Nice! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_s7n-rHmAw

In the past weeks I struggled to up­grade my com­puters with a very im­port­ant soft­ware. I de­cided from now on to give it a try and get used to the Dragon dic­ta­tion sys­tem soft­ware. At first I thought this is go­ing to be easy, but it …

I am pon­der­ing all the time wheth­er or not to at­tend this year’s Black­pool con­ven­tion. I love the Win­ter­garden’s, the ma­gi­cians and I love the Ruskins. I love meet­ing pals, strolling through the deal­er­’s hall, watch­ing lec­tures and all this. And the pints, of course … BUT—what really …

We have seen it. We see it again and again. If there is a new trick out that the ma­gic mar­ket­place wants us to buy, there are video trail­ers pro­mot­ing the item. It is called mar­ket­ing. Fair. Most of these trail­ers are pro­duced by cap­able guys in per­fect …

In­ter­est­ing read these days and found out about some in­ter­est­ing ‘wacky laws’ … Stur­geon’s Rel­ev­a­tion: This was (is) also called ‘Stur­goen’s Law’ by many. It says: “90% of everything is crap.” This one is my fa­vor­ite and there­fore used as a slo­gan on this blog. A look at the …

Re­cently I wanted to up­grade an ad­di­tion­al SSD on my 27″ iMac. So I searched in the in­ter­net for some in­struc­tion­al videos, which I found (see video be­low). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03Lg4IgJd04 Some­thing dawned on me. With this really ex­cel­lent in­struc­tion video, I was able to add the SSD drive. But—and that …

This top­ic has been around for dec­ades and many times you will hear that ex­pres­sion ‘old but gold’. Most of the times there is the re­com­mend­a­tion to ‘just dig into the old lit­er­at­ure’, be­cause it is there where you will find the hid­den treas­ures. That may well be …

Read an in­ter­est­ing art­icle about the in­ter­net (and smart­phones) killing ma­gic. The top­ic is, of course, a real­ity we ma­gi­cians in these times have to face. But not only we ma­gi­cians, also the theat­er, mu­sic and all the places where there are live per­form­ances of artists. …

I found this one and I had com­pletely for­got­ten about it. Some ex­per­i­ment­a­tion with Ver­non’s Sev­en Card Monte. The setup is the same as Ver­non’s us­ing a DF-card. Try to fig­ure it out …

Just a re­mind­er for this nice tech­nique, which is de­scribed in one of the Ver­non In­ner Secrets of Card Ma­gic Books. I don’t know why we should buy each and every ‘new vari­ation’. This kind of stuff in the books is more than good enough. In …

Here is some­thing for you guys, who like fid­dling around in the work­shop (al­though I just did this on my kit­chen table in 30 minutes). All star­ted when I read Cody Fish­er­’s bril­liant ‘Bill in Lem­on’ routine. His rou­tin­ing is ex­cel­lent, and I love the ploy …

Some­times You­tube is good for re­search­ing and stor­ing his­tory. This clip is a very nice com­pil­a­tion of rare foot­age of Ed Marlo. See­ing it re­minds me how good they were back then, es­pe­cially Marlo him­self. Im­press­ive. I have no idea who put that out­stand­ing col­lec­tion to­geth­er and …

Won­der­ful thoughts from Seth God­in ar­rived in my in­box. Most of what he thinks up and writes is very use­ful to me, as a start­ing point for my own train of thoughts. Of course, I tend to see it ma­gic wise (quote): Writ­ing the first draft of …

After years of un­suc­cess­ful search­ing for prop­er knives sets and not find­ing them, I de­cided to go for my­self and make them up. Here is the pro­ced­ure, which will give you some nice knives and sets in any col­or com­bin­a­tion you might want. First of all, I …

Re­cently I found again a per­form­ance clip of Spain’s great Ca­m­illo Vazquez. Still think this routine has ‘some­thing’. Some lovely moves and sub­tleties in there. Amaz­ing what can be done to that ‘Dizzy Dom­in­oes’ trick that Tommy van Dommelen in­ven­ted and Ken Brooke mar­keted in the 70ties. …

When I saw this, I only asked my­self: “Is any­body out there ac­tu­ally per­form­ing it?” I mean, sure, there went quite a lot of build­ing into it, but then? I know Tora is build­ing and in­vent­ing a lot of stuff and some is really nice made. …

Fi­nally, here is the full ver­sion of my switch­ing concept, us­ing an un­pre­pared glass box (you could even use a nor­mal glass for that). Jon Al­len has built his ‘Par­agon’ ef­fect on this one. It is the grand daddy of them all … 🙂 A word on …

This seems to be a long for­got­ten, won­der­ful coin van­ish. What I really like with it is the concept be­hind. A nice idea to use the small coin as a reas­on­ing to bring the hands to­geth­er in or­der to steal the big coin. A per­fect ex­ample …

When two ma­gi­cians in Vi­enna try to set a stage for video takes, it looks like this. At that time, we were try­ing to con­ceive a small video ses­sions series (which nev­er happened). I ab­so­lutely love my friend Mi­chi Schuller for his pa­tience, be­cause if you …

Well, a move that is a life­time com­mit­ment. The move that sep­ar­ates the ‘boys from the men’. Here is how far I am so far. Im­port­ant here as well to no­tice the am­a­teur­ish video edit­ing, all done by my­self.  

I can­’t re­mem­ber how long I do this routine. And how I simply love it. Every time, when I wanted to ‘im­prove’ upon, and learn one of the fan­ci­er, more mod­ern stuff, I fell back to this clas­sic Gos­h­man rendi­tion. At that time, I was heav­ily in­flu­enced …

On this video you will see my good buddy Al­ais­dair Mc­Cova per­form his hand­ling of a Scot­tish vari­ation of a trick of Slydini—the coins across. I am sure all you know­ing guys out there will have no prob­lem fig­ur­ing out the moves. They are all more …

For many years I was re­fer­ring to this as a vari­ant of the ‘Za­­r­row-Shuffle’, un­til Karl-Heinz Ritter from Mu­nich cor­rec­ted me, point­ing out to me it’s ac­tu­ally more of a shank shuffle. For years I be­lieved I was do­ing a prop­er Za­r­row, which I was not …

Here it is—just for the re­cord. I de­veloped this in 1985 (I have wit­nesses). Mike Por­st­mann was in­stru­ment­al in it by sup­ply­ing me with an idea that had ac­tu­ally noth­ing to do with it. But it sparkled my ima­gin­a­tion. The res­ult was this switch­ing tech­nique, which …

This is my all-time fa­vor­ite uni­ver­sal switch for coins. It is a work­horse, that you will take to your real world shows and use when the oth­er fancy sleights stay at home in the stable. I use it with the ‘wild bend­ing coins’, for ‘copper/silver’ and …

Just a re­mind­er to not for­get this stun­ning and fun-to-do tech­nique. I use this all the time when work­ing at the table. So simple, so con­vin­cing. Slydini was the mas­ter! Also note my sub­lime au­dio editing—your hear all the back­ground noise of the pub we were re­cord­ing in, as …

A slight modi­fic­a­tion of the clas­sic Shaxon/Lewis switch­ing en­vel­ope. Note how my take on it makes it pos­sible to dir­ectly re­trieve the bill or bil­let from the pack­et prop­er, when pla­cing this into the pock­et. This is very use­ful for men­tal­ism, as you will see when …

A little sub­tlety on the Hindu Force. Makes it much more con­vin­cing. Years later I found out that (ap­par­ently really all-know­ing) Max Maven had the same idea years be­fore me. What should I say? At least—I hit upon it by my­self without Max’ help!

Here is how I make a simple card trans­pos­i­tion stronger and more mem­or­able. The main thing is the glass bit. By turn­ing the glass (thus in­dic­at­ing the trans­pos­i­tion), everything is much clear­er and im­press­ive for the or­din­ary spec­tat­or, who is dis­trac­ted by food, whine and the …

This is the tech­nique I use for steal­ing a card from the middle of the deck. I worked on it, be­cause I wanted to do As­canio’s ‘Baroque Trans­pos­i­tion’. Lovely routine and the tech­nique fits very well here. Of course, you should know the ori­gin­al routine to …

This tech­nique seems to be a Marlo Ac­tion Switch (or whatever). I’ve been us­ing it for ages to switch in/out mul­tiple cards and pack­ets. Some­times, I will do it without a table—it then be­comes a sort of ‘float­ing top change’. Judge for your­self.   …

Lovely switch here with the help of a couple of bills. Might be use­ful when you want to switch out a set of gaffed cards for nor­mal cards or whatever. Think for your­self how this can be lo­gic­ally in­teg­rated into a routine …   …

Here a couple of van­ishes for all you sponge work­ers out there. Here we have the K.O. van­ish, the 1–2‑3 van­ish, the ‘Chop­stick Van­ish’ (as pub­lished in Apo­ca­lypse years ago) and the clas­sic ‘Rezvani Van­ish’, which later be­came known as the ‘Ben­son Van­ish’ (which it is …

I love this one! If you ever per­form the signed bill in Kiwi, try it. The point is that you have an un­pre­pared Kiwi on the table. In your pock­et, there is a pre­pared one (with the hole in it). In the course of the routine, …

I have been us­ing this tech­nique and hand­ling for more than 25 years. The main thing about it is the way the TT is stolen from the silk, once the bill is in­ser­ted. Pay at­ten­tion that it is the first fin­ger that ac­tu­ally steals the TT, …

Again, an old but rarely used top palm tech­nique. Why? It is de­cept­ive, fast and sure­fire. Get to it and re­sur­rect it … 🙂  

One of my fa­vor­ite coin van­ishes. It util­izes what Al Schneider calls his ’ snap back tech­nique’. I should men­tion that I strongly be­lieved I ‘in­ven­ted’ this tech­nique com­pletely in­de­pend­ent from him in 1988, when I was work­ing on my stage ma­nip­u­la­tion act. At that time, …

Here is my ex­e­cu­tion of the clas­sic bot­tom palm Erd­nase style (well, more or less). The bot­tom palm comes in handy when in dif­fi­cult per­form­ing cir­cum­stances when all the Ramsey/Malini ‘wait’ tech­niques failed … In the ex­plan­a­tion part I use a plexi-deck for bet­ter vis­ib­il­ity. Don’t use …

Un­for­tu­nately I nev­er met this gen­tle­man in per­son. Maybe I com­pletely missed him 30 years back when at a con­ven­tion in UK. Evid­ence of a big­headed young­ster, who thought he knows all and every­body. Wish I could turn time back … So here, 30 years too late, …

Over the years my eyes got worse. And my ‘tem­por­ary per­form­ance memory’ (per­form­ance cache). Which means that when I present a trick us­ing a key card, and I have to re­mem­ber this in the per­form­ance, I tend to simply for­get it! Just stand there with a stu­pid …

In the past weeks I worked hard get­ting through Al Schneider­’s mo­nu­ment­al ‘The The­ory and Prac­tice of Ma­gic De­cep­tion’. Amaz­ing work, quite a lot to swal­low. Heavy stuff. Then, some guys poin­ted out to me that Schneider is a ‘low-key’ per­former, lack­ing es­prit and pizza­zz. Well, maybe …

Re­cently I read a very in­ter­est­ing art­icle by John O’No­lan. Be­ing the un­der­dog is easy, you can say whatever you want without the mob at­tack­ing you. Once you have (or are) some­thing, once you speak out and show your work, things change. The spot­light turns on you, …

Every time I see this little clip, I just have to laugh out loud. A well done clip and a re­mind­er that in ma­gic we have quite a few of these kind of per­formers as well …

Fi­nally, after long and ser­i­ous con­sid­er­a­tions (and my nerves be­ing al­most blank), I de­cided to cut off that en­cum­brance of pub­lish­ing in two lan­guages: Ger­man and (or) Eng­lish. Dur­ing the past years, this has been a nev­er end­ing struggle. Now I fi­nally de­cided to go for the …

Soon there will be a very inter­est­ing DVD by Germany’s Flo­rian Zim­mer, deal­ing with manip­u­la­tive moves with cards for the stage magi­cians. I already saw some of the moves, and they are strik­ing, to say at least. Watch out for this, when Flo­rian re­leases it. …

From time to time I try to find out what the real good­ies in ma­gic are. And I ask my friends. Here is what John Carey sug­ges­ted con­cern­ing com­mer­cial card ef­fects: 1. Chica­go opener/ Red hot Mama. A beau­ti­ful 2 phase routine as­so­ci­ated with the bar ma­gi­cians …

What a nice, humble and (above all) sol­id way John Carey got star­ted in ma­gic (taken from his run­ning week at the Ma­gic Cafe For­um). Worth a read and con­sid­er­a­tion: It all began for me as a kid of 9 stuck in a hos­pit­al bed. Mum and …

Here is an in­ter­est­ing concept that struck me after read­ing this. It is ori­gin­ally not meant for ma­gi­cians, but for cloth­ing. The idea is to keep 33 pieces of cloth­ing for 3 months (you can read the whole thing here: sys­tem 333). The ideas is to re­move …

The bril­liant Seth God­in wrote in his news­let­ter: “Most break­through organ­iz­a­tions aren’t built on a bundle of won­der­ment, nov­elty and new ideas. In fact, they usu­ally in­volve just one big idea. The rest is exe­cu­tion, pa­tience, tac­tics and people. The abil­ity to see what’s hap­pen­ing and to act on it. …

Right at the mo­ment a ma­gi­cian friend needs some help put­ting to­geth­er a new show for next year. The trouble is to get the whole thing star­ted. Some­times it is good to have at least a tiny struc­ture in the be­gin­ning. Here is that wee struc­ture …