talkmagic.co.uk

Hello, second review. I recently purchased the DVD of "40 Ways to Force a Card" with Gerry Griffin. The product is available from Magic Makers Inc.

This DVD seriously is a must-have for all budding magicians. Rather than teaching you direct tricks and how to do them, it goes deep into different methods you can use to incorporate into your own tricks. Things like how to shuffle a deck overhand, hindu or riffle and still retain the top stock. How to make your viewer lodge a card randomly in a deck and have it turn up magically between the two black aces. How to accurately predict two randomly chosen cards from a freshly shuffled and cut deck. The list goes on and on. There are in fact more than 40 items on the DVD. Actually closer to 50. Most of the tricks don't require preparations or gimmicks, either, so these are things that can be done with any deck, which is always a favourite feature of mine in a trick. Great for impromptu work.

Gerry Griffin's visual style is very easy to follow. It is slow-paced and you can sit in front of your TV with a deck and do the things as he does them.

Very much worth purchasing if you're into card magic and sleight!

All very good to know. You've just sold me. Forcing cards is my focus in study, as well. This will be awesome! Thanks

You won't be dissappointed! It's excellent. Glad to know it was helpful!

I always say, why pay when you can get the info for free (Text deleted by Mods)

This is exactly the kind of thing we don't do on TM and there have been endless discussions on why many freebiee are just plain theft so we aren't going to debate it all over again. Please don't post such links again.

Once again, great review. Your assessment was flawless. I purchased "40 Ways to Force a Card" as I said I would and have watched it at least 10 times. There's so much information, and yet with the menus, all you have to do is watch it all the way through a couple times and then pick certain forces to look further into and review with.

I'm really glad you reviewed this product, otherwise who knows when I would have heard of it.

p.s. I never have used the 'criss-cross force' before this DVD. I always thought it was too easy to catch on. But thanks to this video, I decided to give it a try. And just like the guy says, if you're confident and casual, no ever catches it. You have to know the secret for it to seem simple I guess. Well.... that didn't really make sense, but anyway...

It was nice to see so many forces I had never heard of before. Still can't get the 'classic force' to go right with ppl, but I consider this tool to be the most valuable in my collection so far.

I knew there was a reason I was avoiding the reviews areas of this forum, now I have to go and buy this dvd. But if your raves are anything to go by it will clearly be well worth it.

Besides the fact that its a MM product, it isnt a MUST HAVE. As I am sure many many of the methods taught in the DVD are from books. So I will instead pick up a couple of books with many forces and other great information. I know more than 40 forces, I dont need but 5 myself.
So I dont see it as a must have.

Thanks for the review! More money my wife is gonna kill me!LOL I consider it a MUST HAVE for me personally as I struggle with reading books, I must prefer learning from demonstration such as dvd. Considering there are 3 learning styles audio, kinesthetic and visual you will find that people have there own preferd way of learning. I learn some of my tricks by watching others perform them badly.

I agree with david. Why the hell would you need 40 forces? 1 or 2 ussually does me if your table hopping. As a rule, i tend not to buy books that advertise quantity of tricks. I can do my 5 forces well, whereas if i got the book, i would have 40 that i would never use.

crozboz wrote:I agree with david. Why the hell would you need 40 forces?

There'll come a point when people have seen your 5 forces just one too many times. Being aware of a 6th, 7th and even a 40th suddenly becomes very good idea.

Sometimes a little variety helps keep things fresh for the performer as well as the audiences.

yeah, i can see your point, but i do mostly table hopping, so all i need are about 5 forces. I never do more than 4 tricks per table. And only 1/2 would need forcing.

Tomo wrote:

crozboz wrote:I agree with david. Why the hell would you need 40 forces?

There'll come a point when people have seen your 5 forces just one too many times. Being aware of a 6th, 7th and even a 40th suddenly becomes very good idea.

Then that means you screwed up.

They shouldnt realize they are forces. So no, a point of that should never come. For 13 years, I still use the same ones.

And again, the fact thats its a MM's product should detour any one from buying it. (at least if you have ethics)

crozboz wrote:I agree with david. Why the hell would you need 40 forces?

Another reason is that different forces are designed for being used in different places, so if you know a lot of forces and you are creating your own effect you can use the one most suitable.

For example some forces are designed for the top card, the bottom card, any card. Some forces are designed where you count, some for cutting. With Bill Simons move that will force one card and have it sandwiched between two others (great move by the way).

So I would say there is a huge advantage in knowing many even if you prefer to actually use just the two or three.

Also when staring out - isn't it better to have a choice of 40 to use, so you can pick the ones that work for you?

Just to stir the pot a little, don't forget that Theo Annemann released a book of 202 Methods of Forcing!