magicrob wrote:GodDAMN you, old thread from 2008!!!!!
What is this PayPal screen I see before me?
Wait? What? Was that a 'click' I heard
ARRRGHHHH!!!!! CUUUUUUUUUPPSSSSSSS
Must be something in the air. A chum of mine - into magic, but not as obsessively as the majority of this board - emailed me a couple of days ago asking what trick his wife should buy him for Christmas; a purchase around the £15-£20 mark. After some chin rubbing, this is what I suggested to him. My reasoning was thus:
1) The basic effect is a neat little trick - it'll certainly fool most everyone and it's engaging for the specs because the premises are clear* and they, the specs, are involved because they make decisions and handle the cards themselves. (*Suggestion: this can be played as the old, 'The difference between skill and magic' idea - the first part 'demonstrates mental skill', but the second part, where the specs place the cards into the deck themselves while you're looking away and, to mix things further, the deck is then shuffled, yet you still (name yourself, if you want, then) find the cards without looking 'requires magic'.)
2) It's dead simple.
3) You get something. It's nice to get something, isn't it? OK, it's the method that's the real meat, but you always feel happier somehow if you 'get something'. And, you get something that's actually something. That is, we've all had the 'Includes DVD and SPECIAL GIMMICK'-based irritation of opening the ziplock bag to discover the the SPECIAL GIMMICK is a paperclip, say, or a single d-backer. Here you get the deck. Yes, you could make the deck up yourself, but it'd cost you several quid to do it, so you're getting something of actual physical value.
3) Someone asked about the One Trickness of this Pony. Well, yeah, it's One Trick*ish*, but def. not One Trick Full Stop. For example, my friend could use it purely to have two cards chosen, noted, and replaced into the deck, which is then placed back in the case and put away. He can then (because he now knows what both of those cards are) do a mentalism-style bit of mind reading. Neither the 'memory' aspect nor the ability to pull the selections out unseen are even mentioned. This isn't like, for example, an ID which does one very specific thing (very well) and that's it.
4) Related to the above, but a different point, people have worried about the non-examinability of the deck after the effect is done. Non-examinability is a real issue for us Amateur Hobbyists - we're performing for people who are far more likely to go, and far less easy to deflect from, snatching at stuff and insisting on investigating. It's been mentioned that you can deck switch. *However*, I'd say that, after you've produced the cards from your pocket, you can easily just retrieve the deck and use it - without any pause into which the specs might insert grabbing hands - for a couple of other tricks. (And you're not going to do more that three tricks in a row, are you? No, you're not: you've listened to Ammar.) It's dirty, sure, but it's not utterly, untouchably filthy. Just for one example in a billion, you could easily openly go through the deck and remove a couple of Jacks, ask the spec to chose a card (force it), then do a sandwich effect of some sort, just as you would with a normal deck. You *can* carry on using it after you've done Elimnator with only a small amount of thought about what particular effects you're going to use it *for* and how you display it.