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My biggest mistake for getting caught was using a svengali deck!

Made the switch nicely and proceeded to perform a 5 spectator card prediction routine.... except i'd grabbed the wrong deck of cards and it went totally wrong! At the time I couldn't understand how it'd gone so wrong until I got home and found my sven deck sat on the kitchen table!!

Either that was the greatest teleport trick ever, or i need to double check before leaving the house in future!

Needless to say I've never made that mistake since!

I've done a similar one before. Went out with two decks both set up for different routines. Started one routine and everything went horribly wrong, it was too late before I realised that I'd used the wrong deck. With a bit of bluffing I managed to switch the decks and finish the routine with a good reaction.

I've messed up LOADS of times. Probably the worst thing you can do, as others have said, is to not practice the trick until it is as smooth as butter on toast.

That being said, if you really can't wait to try out a tick that you just learned, I find that friends are the best audience. Friends are never afraid to let you know if you screwed up, and you know what to work on before performing for strangers the next time. And you'll never lose your reputation amongst friends; the worst that can happen is that they'll think you're a bad magician until you show them a "gobsmacker" trick.

Just remember, if you mess up in the middle of the trick and you notice it (eg. lose a card) the audience has no clue that it happend. From there you can then adapt to suit the situation and the spectator will think that it all went perfectly. For example, you can use your swami to reveal the card as a prediction. Or, if your feeling unimaginative, you can just say: "Actually, lets try something different for a change" and go on to another trick.

I do not recommend starting the trick all over if it doesn't work because this will seem very tedious and you'd have probably already lost the attention of the spec. This would be the time to pull out something visual that will hit em like a lemon wrapped around a large gold brick.