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Not to bring up a dead topic, but I've taken the advice presented here -- and it's sound.

I've yet to recieve the book, though it should be coming any day, but I couldn't resist cracking open the DVD's and sticking in disc 1. I've not moved on from here, but it's been incredible thus far.

I had no idea the variety of tactics used with the overhand shuffle, and though it took a bit of practice, I'm surely getting the hang of it. I've found that some of the absolutely _key_ stuff is the placement of your fingers, or the postition of the cards in your hands... and Wilson spells it out perfectly to ensure your hands are perfectly placed.

His presentation of the tricks are entertaining, and done well enough that even after watching the method -- it's tough to spot his moves.

The only problem I've had is that the sound is a bit awkward at random places -- as if he suddenly turned away from a microphone somewhere. It usually lasts about five seconds or so -- and it's not completely inaudible -- but a bit of an annoyance.

For that to be the only gripe I can come up with while going through the true beginner stuff is amazing to me. I've purchased a few books over the years, but hated flipping through pages of things I knew I'd never care to do.

Now I've got five full DVD's, and a book (coming soon) of tricks that I'm eager to learn _all_ of. The ability to visually see everything as it's done is very helpful.

Thanks to those of you who made these recommendations, both here and in my 'introduction' thread. It's an excellent community here, and if all of your recommendations are as good as this one -- it will be a long time before you're rid of me

While we're flogging a dead horse

I think the combination of the book and the DVD is a winner. My DVDs arrived on Saturday and I finally managed to get to start watching last night.

Slowing the playack speed showed me where I was going wrong with my hand / finger positions. Now chuffed that I can in-jog. OK, only at 30% of speed but that's what the practice is for.

Haviland wrote:While we're flogging a dead horse :-)

Now chuffed that I can in-jog. OK, only at 30% of speed :oops: but that's what the practice is for.

Bah - what is speed? Our goal is style, Haviland, style.

And, fortunately, the messier your shuffle is, the better it is for the in-jog.

As it happens, the in-jog was the first thing I learned (after an ingenue period when I knew of nothing but gaffed decks, and couldn't imagine how magic could be performed with anything else). For quite a while it was the only thing I knew how to do. Yet, I discovered, one could do so amazingly much with it. The in-jog was my key to the door of magic, I feel. I hope it gives you even half as much pleasure, Hav.

Ah, now messy shuffles, that I can do.

It's easy to know how it's done, anyone can read a book - but to do it, and do it right, that takes effort and practice and skill.

I supect that my style will remain that of a fumbling amateur. At my age, it's probably best, even if I get good

A good cover, if nothing else.

My shuffle is fairly slow aswell when i started, and my injog was huge, but now it is gettings quicker, and and injog is getting smaller, its practise. And they are brilliant dvds aswell cant tell you how good they are, but to be honest he says use the book, i started doing that and now i just rewatch the dvd again and again.

I've been meaning to mention this for ages, but I've kept forgetting.

On Vol 4 of the DVDs (or page 161 of the book) there's a trick called Kangeroo Card. This ends with a splendidly visual revelation. Unfortunately, it's pretty much dead in the water because it relies on borrowing (or happening to have with you) a felt hat of the kind men stopped wearing in about 1961. I wept over this fact on many a long night. But then I happened to discover that, instead of a hat, you can do it with one of those little brown paper bags you get given to carry your obscenely over-priced tea or coffee on trains - and possibly at other obscenely over-priced tea and coffee outlets. These are so perfect that they could have been made for the trick (they have a fold that's like the crease in a hat, y'see, and it's one that can also be slyly 'popped out' so specs examining the bag/cards after the trick are even more stumped) . They are deeper and narrower than a hat, yes, which means that it's slightly more difficult to pull off the ending (the card can hit the sides and fall back). But, for the price of that, the effect is even more lovely because (1) you don't have to hold it oddly high up to prevent the specs seeing inside, (2) you quite obviously can't see the cards inside either, which sells it more, (3) it's much more arresting when the card flies, spinning, into the air out of the thing. In fact, it seems that, with a bag, 'how you make the card jump out' is often a mystery - not merely 'how you make just their card jump out'. Hold the bag by a bottom corner, wide side facing the specs, and focus your eyes on the top of it: I suspect that the sheer distance between the bottom of the bag and the opening comes into play here, as does the fact that your other hand is now 'behind and low' instead of 'to the side and low'. Whatever the reason, I was surprised when - when I tested this on my long-suffering, magic guinea pig, twelve-year-old son - that not only was he wowed, but he said, 'OK, you don't have to tell me how you knew my card. Just please tell me how you made it fly out of the bag.'

I didn't tell him, of course. As, one day, I hope he won't tell his son.

An almost final thing - because the DVD performance does it otherwise - is that I'd ask people to pass you/examine/whatever the bag after the card has been selected and returned. I use the pass (you don't have to, obviously, but I've always found the pass easy and safe - far more so than shuffling to a break, say, which I'm well capable of screwing up). The covering misdirection of people examining a bag to check it's entirely normal is that vast that you're almost embarrassed to make the move while they're doing it because it's so simple.

An actually final thing: this, I hope you see, isn't just about being able to get an abandoned train bag for free, instead of having to buy a Fedora. What it means is that a trick that would need to be 'staged' with a hat, can now be done naturally or even, in many cases, entirely inpromptu. Also, there's little more pleasing in magic than, after you've performed this trick, watching several intelligent people spend quite a long time peering investigatively into a paper bag.

Thank you for that. I think I will find it very useful in the future because I too miss the old felt hat thing. In addition I already do all sorts of silly tricks with a paper bag including the miser's dream so this will fit right in.

cordenadam wrote:My shuffle is fairly slow aswell when i started, and my injog was huge, but now it is gettings quicker, and and injog is getting smaller, its practise. And they are brilliant dvds aswell cant tell you how good they are, but to be honest he says use the book, i started doing that and now i just rewatch the dvd again and again.

Injog, injog, injog. Practice at lunchtimr at work, in the car waiting for kids going to and from places. Almost competent - as long as no-one's looking.

Haviland wrote:

cordenadam wrote:as long as no-one's looking.

You might try videoing yourself doing your tricks - using a proper video camera, the video option that's on most digital cameras nowadays, or even just a web cam. I've noticed that lots of (proper) magicians advise this. That is, they advise you do it rather than standing in front of a mirror: using a mirror doesn't catch some things, and may even encourage a few bad habits (like blinking when you do the move). Something else about it that I've not heard mentioned, though, is that it creates a bit of pressure. 'The video's running on me now - I have to get it right this time,' which I'm thinking might partially inure one to the performance anxiety associated with doing a trick for real, peering humans. Just a notion.

I learnt card magic with royal road and expart card technique, but i think they are both so far out of touch with modern card magic as to be virtually worthless. i would never recommend those books for beginners anymore. a lot of the sleights in royal road are really inferior and there are way better resources in the 21st century.

ajshakey wrote:I learnt card magic with royal road and expart card technique, but i think they are both so far out of touch with modern card magic as to be virtually worthless. i would never recommend those books for beginners anymore. a lot of the sleights in royal road are really inferior and there are way better resources in the 21st century.

What?

How can that be?

An effective method can't _ever_ be "out of touch" with _anything_ magic. If it works, it works, regardless of how it's done.

Keep in mind, as well, that these are beginner tactics -- and there are certainly other methods... but probably not many other better ways of starting out.

The last post is of course arrant nonsense. It is "modern card magic" that is "virtually worthless" This is why I never read books written after 1954. In fact nowadays even foetuses are writing books on card magic.

The trouble with the modern stuff is that it is full of intricate sleights where you need 55 fingers and an impractical mindset.

You do your "modern card magic" in front of a crowd of laymen and I will follow you with stuff from the Royal Road and they will be ignoring you and bowing at my feet and begging to start a new religion with me at it's head. Not that I am one to brag of course.

Every single sleight in the Royal Road is perfectly practical nowadays except the rather bad DL.

And most important of all dotted throughout the book are examples of the real secret of magic. Presentation. Of course 90% of the modern young whippersnapper incompetents haven't the slightest notion of what the word means.

And in Expert Card Technique which you have decried so much is the finest section on showmanship and presentation I have ever read. It beats Strong Magic by Darwin Ortiz into a cocked hat.

Furthermore I bet if you were to examine all this modern gobbledygook closely the odds are that it is simply old stuff rehashed anyway.

I might have been a bit hasty with my earlier post about the royal road to card magic book and dvd set as I was basing my opinion of it on one move. I found the description of it a bit vague in the description in the book and not given enough explanation on the dvd but I finally figured it out with maybe a little modifying from the original instructions.
Plus I had not read/seen enough of the book/dvds to comment on it. The other moves in the book (I'm up to controlling a injogged card so far) are described well in the book and Paul Wilson demonstrates them in detail on the dvd both fast and then slow.

mark lewis wrote:Every single sleight in the Royal Road is perfectly practical nowadays except the rather bad D/L.

Don't get me started on that. Or maybe I should start a new thread, so I can get well and truly started on it myself.

Are you saying that you don't like the DL or are you referring to the gamut of sleights in general?

Actually I think a good card magician can get by perfectly well with only about 5 moves although it is certainly beneficial to know more.

You do need some sort of control, a good force, palming is pretty necessary, a DL and I can't think of much else that is UTTERLY essential.