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Last night I was out with 7 work colleagues. I always carry some magic with me on these events and eventually one of them asked me to perform as we were finishing dinner. We were all very close at the table so I knew I was courting some trouble.

I started with a good old fashioned silk vanish with the intention of keeping the TT to do the disappearing salt thing. However the person to my right, one of a visiting group from our US operation made it very clear that he knew all about TTs and proceeded to blow the gaff to the rest of the table.

Not so long ago that would have reduced me to a quivering wreck and I would have packed up for the evening. But I have a little confidence in myself these days so I put the TT away and got out Holy Moly. I went straight at my American "friend" and got him to perform it with me. It went down a storm and when he opened up his hand for the finale he became the butt of the jokes. It was pointed out to him by the others that I didn't have a TT for that trick so how did he explain that one?

So I went on to cards, did an aces production, Mark Wilsons reversed card in the deck and double thought projection and then got out the only two packet tricks carry. I started by messing up strange travellers. Anyone who knows it will understand if I say "bad preparation". I had the cards upside down. So I just aborted and went strainght in to Twisted Sister which again went down well.

As we were about to leave I brought out my last offering, Coin Unique. I did the trick perfecrly OK and as usual people were totally mystied. I love this because real magic happens right in front of the spectators eyes. I was however over heavy with the thin stemmed wine glass I was using and broke the stem, so I had an embarrassing apology to make to the hovering waitress.

All in all, whilst it was a modest performance I was pleased with the reaction I got to evrything except the TT. What however really cheered me was the not losing confidence when things went wrong and my ability to laugh it off and move on. Lots of threads have been posted on here agonising over what to do if a trick goes wrong. For me the answer is scoop up the debris, stick it in your pocket and get the next trick on the road.

Two real lessons learned also. 1) Always triple check any set up trick before you go out with it, I am disappointed that I blew strange travellers, it always gets a good reaction and 2) Don't grind coins away with flimsy glasses!!

Johnny Wizz wrote:..........All in all, whilst it was a modest performance I was pleased with the reaction I got.........cont'd......What however really cheered me was the not losing confidence when things went wrong and my ability to laugh it off and move on. Lots of threads have been posted on here agonising over what to do if a trick goes wrong. For me the answer is scoop up the debris, stick it in your pocket and get the next trick on the road.

You should be happy about it! You are right, many people don't perform (in my opinion) because they fell they are not able to do it without a possible mistake......they really need understand that everyone does, it is not the end of the world........if you only know one trick, then mistakes can present a problem - however if you know a few, they will forgive/forget before you do!

Every now and then you do run into a layperson that knows the TT.....such is life really!

Good stuff Johnny!

I have to say that I hate when people shout out the answers to tricks. They always seem to be so smug with themselves for ruining a trick. Can they not just sit there and let you show everyone else who doesn't know how its done.

though its bad form to do it, someone was desperately trying to pre-empt and reverse engineer an effect i was performing - which were all wrong, so once i finished - i just slung the pack at him and said "go on then smart @rse, show us something..."

utter silence for a couple of minutes, drank in silence and everyone else laughed at him...not very professional to do it, but...well, you gotta treat yourself every once in a while...he was an arrogant little man too regardless so i didnt feel too bad...

otherwise, if you screw up, most of the time, no one really knows what you planned to do in the first place - so just pretend you've had a change of heart and move right along...best to have a laugh at it rather than crucify yourself over it i reckon...no point adding extra pressure, plus its all experience isnt it..

My big sin is generally showing off a "new" trick I've been working on, which causes me to focus solely on a single effect, rather than the performance as a whole. I tried to do GFY to friends recently and almost unbelievably it went wrong (anyone with a RaMa deck who wants to know how, feel free to PM) so I ended up with two different cards. Because I was fixed on doing it properly I tried again, and again it fouled up (but in the tradition of good magic, it went wrong in a different way. Keep 'em guessing!) and I realise now that actually I should have taken the two different cards and worked something out with them.

I've mentioned elsewhere on the board that the trick that I finally performed, very much an impromptu "easy" trick that I did just because I knew the chances of me fouling up were much narrower, ended up having a reaction far beyond anything I was expecting. It's not the method that gets results, it's the effect.

As many people smarter than I have observed, it's not the learning of tricks that makes you a magician. No matter what I get from Royal Road the lessons you get from performing for people, rather than your own reflection, are where the big leaps are (though I'm really still on baby steps). Last night I even abandoned a trick halfway through because I realised that it wasn't possible for the spec to keep focused on the trick well enough to follow it. I ended up performing it later in the evening and it worked all the better for it.

well done Johnny Wizz!!

Glad that everything went well for you. I've had tricks go wrong a few time and while I'll always try to find a way to recover from it, sometimes you just have to give up on it and move on. I've learnt that lesson in the past.

Well done!

well done i usualy have a jumbo coin secreted for just this type of occassion i get it asw i put tht tt away, produce it and say well that didint come out of my tt did it.
then snap off two regular coins give them one and go into a do as i do routine which he obviosely can't folow.