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So I approached a man and woman together and asked if I can show them a bit if magic. I turned to the man and asked if by any chance he has a deck I could use. Surprisingly he reached in his back pocket and pulled out quite a fresh deck of Masters...

...

He gave them to me a long with a little smirk and a wink. Obviously, he was a magician, and I was thinking is this a good thing or a bad thing? I couldnt show him a trick and say Oh, by the way, how did I do? Because that would be rather unprofessional. Even though I'm an unprofessional magician...

Anyway, I was just wondering what you thought about that. All magicians have a certain magicians eye and can work out an effect pretty easily, but this guy didnt say anything to expose the tricks I showed him. All I did was a quick ACR and walked off pretty speedy.

LeftEye wrote:So I approached a man and woman together and asked if I can show them a bit if magic. I turned to the man and asked if by any chance he has a deck I could use. Surprisingly he reached in his back pocket and pulled out quite a fresh deck of Masters...

...

He gave them to me a long with a little smirk and a wink. Obviously, he was a magician, and I was thinking is this a good thing or a bad thing? I couldnt show him a trick and say Oh, by the way, how did I do? Because that would be rather unprofessional. Even though I'm an unprofessional magician...

Anyway, I was just wondering what you thought about that. All magicians have a certain magicians eye and can work out an effect pretty easily, but this guy didnt say anything to expose the tricks I showed him. All I did was a quick ACR and walked off pretty speedy.

Why does the fact someone have a deck of Masters make them a magician?

All it proves is that they've bought a deck of cards.

If magicians couldn't fool other magicians now and then, FISM would be blown out of the water, and quite possibly there'd be no hope in the world.

Which is again strong supporting evidence that to be respected as a unique performer by other magi, you need to be unique in some way, surely?

Magicians love to see other magicians perform, and a decent magician meeting is a breeding ground for new ideas and improvements. A magician will almost ALWAYS be helpful to another magician.

So what's your problem

If the man was a magician he probably just had both the professional courtesey to let you do your thing and also was probably just enjoying it.

I even like it when a layperson says they know a trick and precede to show you. It is nearly always very obvious but every now and then they can surprise you. Magicians love magic .....well I know I do anyway

Well was just saying it shocked me. Never been faced with that before. Guess its all in the learning curve of magic!

Next time I'll stick it out longer and knock him dead!

Magicians love magic .....well I know I do anyway

Personally I love to see magicians perform even if I think I know the tricks very well indeed - there's a good chance I'll learn something new about the handling, the patter, or the way effects are presented and if nothing else, it's magic and I rather like that sort of thing!

Mandrake wrote: Personally I love to see magicians perform even if I think I know the tricks very well indeed - there's a good chance I'll learn something new about the handling, the patter, or the way effects are presented and if nothing else, it's magic and I rather like that sort of thing!

Sooo true.
I spent the first few years of my obsession with magic, knowing no other magicians at all. Recently i've been attending my local magic society's meetings. Chatting to other Magicians in person and being shown tricks is so refreshing and enjoyable after so long of performing them to laypeople with mixed levels of interest. As Mandrake said, even when you're being shown a routine that you know well, it's still very energizing to see another person's handling, to learn from or to remind yourself how good your's is

slieghtly off topic. but. i love getting fooled as a magician. i know quite a lot of effects and slieghts and when watching some body perform and thinking you know what is going on. and then right at the end something out of the blue and amazing happens, i think it's great. i love getting fooled as a magician.

I often find that I get fooled by the simplest thing when watching magic because I'm looking for something much more complex.

Saw a trick that totally threw me the other day, really baffled me until I realised that he'd used a cross cut force right at the start.

This is an interesting point sometimes magic to a magician seems more magical then to a lay person because your looking for a DL or this or that and never spot it. We look at other magicians on DVD’s all the time to learn from them. Inspiration can be found by watching other magicians perform especially David Stone (yeah I had to add that =P) anyhow watching and performing for another mage can be a great experience , pint of beer in ones hand a deck of cards and a great night can be had. What I really don’t like is. This from laypeople I got an uncle , cousin , dead gold fish in the magic circle when I hear that I cringe I have actually know of more uncles , cousins , gold fish etc in the magic circle then there are actual members of said club. What really gets up my nose is the old “I got one for you bet you don’t know this one” now that irks me. Where I want to get the cards and ram them down there mouth.

“I take the four kings and but one here , here and here. And look all at the top you seen that you know how its done?!” Grrr I usually give them a load of slights , “oh yes very good. Tilt move. DL and what a great invisible ***s” or the “my granddad use to pull coins out my ear” not really the same league as taking the coin showing both hands empty , reproducing it, making it vanish and transform in to a larger coin now is it?

But others who practice magic and know there stuff I love to watch I like to share ideas with and the likes. But specs who know some kind of “heres your card” type thing forget it.

You said that the man was with a women, if he exposed the secrets to your tricks he may well be exposing his own tricks to the women he was with, hence his silence. However, it was probably simple curtesy rather than anything else.

When it comes to performing to magicians they are the easiest people to fool in my experience. An intellegent layperson will think from scratch, whereas magicians usually try to match up your actions to existing knowledge, making it easier to deceive them.

A few years ago when Marvin's Magic was being demoed by one of Marvin's assistants on QVC (yeah, I know I know !!) the guy did the classic disappearing silk using a TT. He got to the part where the silk had been pushed into the closed fist but instead of just opening the fist slowly, he reached into his shirt pocket, took out a playing card, waved it over the fist, replaced the card in his pocket (!) and then showed the silk as vanished plus two genuinely clean hands which could be minutely examined. At the point where he first reached for the card, my son and I were going, 'Oh yes sunbeam, rock on, nice one Cyril' and other rather juvenile, well chuffed 'in the know' excited noises. Simple but mind blowing at the same time, sheer poetry and sheer magic !

Me personally i love other magicians showng me tricks it can only improve your own performance providing they have done it nice and smooth. Also a few weeks ago a few of us from the medway society went to show some tricks to the bexleyheath society and give them a good night, and at first i was like what can i do they wil probally know everything im doing and start throwing fruit at me and booing, but after about 5 mins of thinking like that i thought what the heck ill just do my normal routine at the end of the day we were only entertaining them regardless if they knew what i was doing and in the end it turned out to be a great laugh all you have to do is treat them like they are laypeople because for them few minutes you are showing them your stuff they are actually laymen, and you never know you might have taught them a thing or 2, also they probally enjoyed not being the centre of attention for once and just relax and have a good time. Has for the origanal question he wasnt there to judge you so he didnt and remember at times magicians can be the most forgiving people of all.

LeftEye wrote:He gave them to me a long with a little smirk and a wink. Obviously, he was a magician, and I was thinking is this a good thing or a bad thing? I couldnt show him a trick and say Oh, by the way, how did I do?

Hmmm... why didn't you just ask him if he was a magician? I would have.
Perhaps he could have shown you a nice trick. I love watching others perform magic. I go to magic shows whenever I can.

So... why didn't you just ask him?

I think that if someone pulls out one of the 'E' decks, whether it be a Masters, Ghost or Tiger deck then there is a better than fair chance that they are a magician of some level. Wouldn't you say?

Anyway, I'd also agree that the majority of magicians not only are courteous to each other but would also enjoy the performance and may possible provide some constructive critique in a friendly manner. If we didn't enjoy watching other magicians perform magic then a would think that few magic DVD's and videos would be sold - perhaps.

I would certainly have struck up a conversation in addition to the performance.

Sometimes I wish I had a magician to talk to