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Close Up Card Magic by Ben Highway
What Is It?
This is an e-book by our TM member Cardza and contains 7 effects all using cards.

I will quote what the effect is from the e-book in italics so you get an idea of the contents and then will put an overall review at the end along with a difficulty score!

Monty's First Dual
As an addendum to your favourite Monte routine you apparently cause – in the fairest
possible manner, and with no moves whatsoever – the money card to exchange places
with one of the indifferent cards in a three-card packet, by way of demonstration of how
those hustlers don’t need fast hands to get you...


uDo Speller
To long to explain the whole effect, an interesting twist on a spelling effect.

Six Pack(et)
Again, quite a long effect description so I shall briefly describe it. A sucker type trick where the magician fails to find a card with 4 attempts. In true style, the first three cards flip over to reveal suit and number and the final indifferent card becomes the chosen card

Top Card the Second
An indifferent card is branded as the ‘Top Card,’ meaning that no matter where it is
in the deck it will always be the ‘top card’.
After jumping to rest alongside this Top Card, the
Ambitious Card fuses with it, leaving your Participant
with a truly impossible souvenir of the event!

Triple Jump
My interpretation again...too long to explain in complete full, but it is an absolute killer effect. A repeat effect with the cards being divided into three packets and a thought of card dissapearing, reappearing..aah it's just too fulfillin!

The Joker's Picnic
A signed and selected card is very fairly placed between the two red Kings, from whence it disappears and reappears between two Jokers – which the spectator has been holding onto the entire time...

Repeater Card To Pocket
A Cleverly engineered repeat card to pocket as the title suggests.

Difficulty
(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)

Ranges from 3-5
It would be 3-4 but some of the effects will only hit home if an experianced magician presents them well.

Review
It is clear from the very outset that a lot of time an effort has been put into each of the effects. As a result, a lot and time and effort should be put in by anyone wanting to learn these effects as they are relatively technical, but also require good presentational skills.

The e-book itself contains several colour photographs illustrating certain moves that may not be fully understandable with just text. The photos are few and far between however and the whole thing really could do with a few more!

I can honestly say, that every single effect is worth performing. Whether or not I will find room for all of them is a different matter but everybody, if they are confident with cards and willing to learn, will find something within this e-book.

Overal
8/10

It falls back with the lack of photos to accompany the text. I found it a bit irritating the way the heading of each trick is accomapanied with a different text style and clip-art style image, a sleak and refined look would have suited the professional content!
In the effect descriptions the spectators are all named with different names which is a bit confusing at first.

These few things are extremely minor set backs when you look at the actual hard material within. The Joker's Picnic really stands out for me and I have already performed it several times with great reactions!

Now Available at http://www.lulu.com/content/3626170 for £8.

A Card workers must.

sounds good...what's the price and where's it from? Cheers man!

You will have to PM Cardza, he hasn't informed me of where and how much it can be obtained for! Sorry I can't be of more help! I think, if your lucky, he might be still giving away free copies in exchange for reviews.

Cheers muchly for the review Wild Card, glad you liked it! I will be bearing the points you made should I put another collection together in the future

The free copies have gone now I'm afraid but the ebook is available from here: http://www.lulu.com/content/3626170 for eight squids..

Thanks fellers!

Just my review of the PDF:

The Effect
Classrooms & Scenic Routes by Ben Highway (Cardza)

Below is a brief description of each trick:

Monty’s First Duel – As an addendum to your favourite Monte routine you apparently cause – in the fairest possible manner, and with no moves whatsoever – the money card to exchange places with one of the indifferent cards in a three-card packet, by way of demonstration of how those hustlers don’t need fast hands to get you.

uDO Spell – A card is selected, signed and lost in the deck. The performer explains that he will not find the card but the spectator will. The performer how he will do this: by spelling out the cards name. He then gives the pack one last mix and allows the spectator to decide where he wants to start spelling from. The spectator then spells out the name of his card dealing down a card for each letter. The final card he deals down is then found to be his selected, signed card.

Six Pack[et] – A card is selected and lost in the deck. The performer then gives himself four chances to find it and fails miserably each time. The performer then picks up the four cards and magically one of them turns over but it isn’t the selected card. Then with in an instant two more cards turn over and are found to now be the same value as the selection. The last face down card is then turned over by the spectator and found to be the selected card.

Top Card the Second – Midway through an ACR an indifferent card is branded as the ‘Top Card,’ meaning that no matter where it is in the deck it will always be the ‘top card’. After jumping to rest alongside this Top Card, the Ambitious Card fuses with it, leaving your Participant with a truly impossible souvenir of the event!

Triple Jump – The deck is divided into three packets: one is set aside, one is given to the spectator, and from the third the spectator merely thinks of a card he sees. Without even naming the card it disappears from the third packet and is found reversed in the packet that was set aside at the beginning. The demonstration is then repeated but this time the selected card is found reversed in the centre of the packet the spectator was holding onto the whole time.

The Joker’s Picnic – A signed and selected card is very fairly placed between the two red Kings, from whence it disappears and reappears between two Jokers – which the spectator has been holding onto the entire time.

Repeater Card to Pocket – A card is selected, signed and then inserted into the deck. After telling the spectator about famed gamblers the performer then reaches into his pocket with empty hands and brings out the spectators signed card. The card then suddenly becomes an indifferent card and the selected card is then removed from the performer’s pocket. The card is then put back in the performer’s pocket, the deck is mixed and two poker hands are dealt. The spectators fourth card is his signed selection. But then with a snap the card disappears from the spectators hand and reappears in the performers hand to make a four of a kind.

Cost
£8.00 from http://www.lulu.com/content/3626170

Difficulty
(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)

3 – 4 most of the tricks are quite hard and require you to know advanced card sleights.

Review
You receive a 31 page eBook in PDF format. Inside there are 7 tricks which Ben has created over the past years. Below are my thoughts on each of the tricks:

Monty’s First Duel – Although the method to this effect is very clever it’s not the type of effect I would use or would even attempt to perform. If in the right hands though I’m sure it would be a great effect.

uDO Spell – I’m not usually a fan of spelling card effects but this one is ingenious and definitely a trick I would use on a regular basis. Usually spelling effects require a fair amount of preparation but uDO Spell has a minimal amount of set up and is one of the easiest tricks in the PDF. Overall it’s a very strong trick.

Six Pack[et] – This is one of my favourite tricks in the PDF, there is a set up but that doesn’t really matter as the trick itself is very clever. A neat sleight called “A Visual Twist” is explained which looks as if you just flick the cards and one of them turns face up, although it takes a while to get the sleight down. A bonus type trick is also included at the end of the explanation called “Who Wants to Twist?” where the spectators favourite ace is suppose to turn face up but ends up to be the only one remaining face down. This little effect could easily be used after a “Twisting the Aces” Routine or possibly “Daley’s Last Trick”.

Top Card the Second – This is a great phase which can be added as a closer to an ACR and has already found its way into mine. I just love the novelty of having a card named as the “Top Card” and the fact that you are leaving the spectator with a practically impossible souvenir.

Triple Jump – This is a very strong two phase effect which will take me a while to perfect but once I have I will probably use it quite often. The first phase of the effect leaves the spectator thinking “How did he do that?” but the second phase leaves the spectator stunned and unable to speak. This is truly one of the strongest card effects I have ever seen.

The Joker’s Picnic – This is a nice transposition effect but to me it seems too drawn out and long I’m more into quick transpositions. Although if the effect was performed by the right person it would be a killer effect.

Repeater Card to Pocket – This is a great signed Card to Pocket effect which uses no palming at all, which to me is great news (I have small hands which makes palming almost impossible). I really like the killer ending but again this effect will take me a while to perfect.

Overall
I enjoyed this PDF and have got a lot out of it. It is well written and the effects are explained clearly, although there aren’t really enough pictures or diagrams. I also think the clip art style images kind of take it back from the professional look but it’s still very good and would be worth the money.

Overall it’s one of the best PDFs I have ever got/bought and would recommend it to anyone who is skilled with cards.

8.5/10

I have received this and thought i'd give some opinions from a relative newbie's perspective.

I agree that the tricks are difficult to perform, but i can see that they are well worth the practice needed ( i especially like the premise of six pack[et]).

I agree that the lack of photos can be confusing and i found that some descriptions could only be understood when handling a deck due to their complexity.

One point that hasn't been made is that the book uses quite a lot of sleights and some without description, which meant that part way through an effect i had to search my books / dvd's for an explanation of a move that i hadn't mastered (maybe just because im a noob?). I think that perhaps a list of sleights used at the start, or changing the name of the sleight to a bold font would stop this, but to be honest, the peope who are ready to perform these effects shouldn't have a problem.

To sum up, this is definately worth the money and will be something that i will strive to be able to perform.

double post - sorry

Thanks for the comments Relish!

This has now been picked up by Lybrary.com and is now exclusively available from there instead of Lulu.

It can be found here:

http://www.lybrary.com/classrooms-sceni ... -1794.html