The Advocate - Daniel Madison
Posted: Apr 20th, '09, 13:22The Utility
What they say:
The ultimate, any thought of card effects are now possible and within reach thanks to Daniel Madison's latest offering - The Advocate.
Thought of cards in your mouth, in your shoe, caught from a deck that has been sprung in the air! The possibilities are truely endless, imagine a brainwave effect with no gimmicked cards! This is how good the Advocate is!
The ultimate, any thought of card effects are now possible and within reach thanks to Daniel Madison's latest offering - The Advocate.
Thought of cards in your mouth, in your shoe, caught from a deck that has been sprung in the air! The possibilities are truely endless, imagine a brainwave effect with no gimmicked cards! This is how good the Advocate is!
Designed to enhance your performances so that your in-hand effects become hands-free mircacles. Use any deck of playing cards. Once you've learnt the advocate you'll never leave home without it. The Advocate will allow you to produce any freely named playing card from anywhere you desire within your own limitations.
Cost
£14.99 at magicshop.co.uk for an instant download.
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)
2/3 - to get the most out of this you'll have to be comfortable with palming. Also using it is itself a little bit fiddly at first.
Review
The Advocate facilitates "thought of card" effects. The detailed and illustrated instructions tell you how to build the advocate, which should cost you no more than a deck of cards; in fact it cost me nothing as I already had the necessary stuff, and if you're remotely interested in this, you will too. (See how I avoid tipping!) Once assembled the unit is as compact as you could realistically hope for.
If you think you know what sort of thing the Advocate is, then yes, you are probably right. The theory for this particular method builds on a technique that has been around for a while (and well-credited in the ms), but is a clean and simple version of it. There's a variation of it in Mnemonica but Madison's rendering of it is much neater, and requires less brain power in the moment.
The unit goes in your pocket, and you'll need a bit of extra space in there to work with. Trouser pockets are best, but jacket pockets are possible too.
In my sausage-fingered hands, retrieval of the selected card ranges from less than a second to about seven seconds, depending on what card is chosen. I'm sure others will better that, but even at seven seconds, you should be able to routine for it, especially if you're looking to obscure the technique.
On trying it out on real people, presenting a straight forward envelope prediction of a thought of card, I have confused people. Jaws have dropped. And it wasn't even a very good presentation, just a bit of realworld practice.
The manuscript also describes a number of effects ranging from the apparently impromptu to more scripted routines. They're discussed briefly, though, as really it is a utility item and it ought to be about what you can do with it, rather than what Madison has already done with it. That said, I've been thinking about presenting Advocate Air, in which a named card is plucked out of the air from a shuffled and thrown deck, as a mentalist Rain Man bit, so they carry some inspiration value too.
This is a utility item in the truest sense. If you are the type that thinks of the effect and then worries about a method, then it's a very useful tool to have in your arsenal. It's something that is so simple some might feel cheated at paying fifteen quid for it, but I suspect the level of use it will be put will certainly make it seem cheap in the long run. The effects Madison includes ought to keep less creative types more than busy, too, so it's a win all round.
Overall
9/10 (a teensy bit of oversell, and a lack of experience in the reviewer with similar methods)