talkmagic.co.uk

Hi
I'm realtively new to this. I've been learning magic (mostly cards) for about a year now and I'm just discovering forums. Looking forward to getting stuck in.

Cheers
Mr C

welcome to the forum... if theres any help you need theres usually someone around who can point you in the right direction

What type of card magic do you do???

Welcome to the TalkMagic Charles

'What kind of card magic?"
I mostly use sleights, but I have been tempted by a couple of gaffed tricks. Most of what I've learned is from the Royal Road, Art of Astonishment and Ahead of the Pack. I do like mental magic with cards though and mentalism in general, but my presentation isn't really up to convincing mentalism right now.

Thanks for the welcome!

Hi Charles and welcome - again!

You might find hidden somewhere in the old postings some debates about the merits of sleights with regular decks compared to usng gaffed decks and cards. I don't think we ever reached a final conclusion but it seems to me that the guys who can do the sleights are the closest we'll ever see to real magicians in terms of the technicalities, at least! Those (like me) who rely on gaffed cards and decks can only look on in wonder and amazement but we can at least achieve a similar result without cracking our knuckles etc. Also, I reckon we can concentrate more on the presentation side of things so we might have the advantage sometimes.

Now you know why we never reached a conclusion!

Yikes. Sounds like a minefield.
Well, I originally got into magic because I wanted to develop my dexterity. As I've got more into it though I can see that what really counts in magic is the effect itself and the reaction you get from whoever's watching it. They'll never know how you did it, so the method at the end of the day is irrelevant. It's a black box situation.
I quite like some of the gaffs I've got and I think there's a place for both. I wouldn't put one way of doing things above the other. On the one hand there's some things that you just can't do without some form of gaff, but on the other it's nice when someone hands you some mangey old deck out of their cupboard to be able to do something with it that amazes.
I'm not fence-sitting, honest. That's the way I see it.
I'm only just coming round to how important presentation is, so it;s something I'm working on.

You will find that many of us who are fairly sleight proficient will be quite defensive, because it isn't nice to see people doing stuff easily that you have taken ages to do using sleights, so the idea of examinable decks etc gets brought up time after time, despite the fact that we are very rarely asked if a deck can be examined if we have got a decent order to our routines.

Hi Charles, welcome..

I have to agree with using ordinary cards without any gaffs. Doing the trick is one thing, but handing the deck out freely for inspection is another, watching people inspect each card individualy looking for something hidden within the cards. It just add's to the reaction.