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This one is kind of linked to my thread 'A coin routine thought', and was just something I thought of while fiddling with a deck of cards.

Say you plan on doing a card routine with five tricks. Four tricks require you to hold a break and control cards up, down and around the deck. In one trick you force a card and can go out of your way to show that you aren't holding any funny breaks or doing any slick moves or anything.

Other things being equal, would you rather have the trick where you force a card as the first trick you do, or the last?

To me it seems obvious that you would want the force card trick last. If you have it first then during the rest of the routine the spectator is going to have an image of you (during the first trick) clearly showing nothing funny is going on, and is going to start wondering why you aren't doing the same thing the other tricks. If instead you have it last, the spectator might think "wait, why didn't he do that in first four tricks he did", but I think the spectator would be much more likely to just ignore that fact if he had to think backwards to the first four tricks.

In short, have your card forcing trick last to avoid casting suspicion on other tricks where you don't go to great length to prove you aren't doing anything funny.

Of course this raises issues of over proving and whether you should even say "look I'm not holding any breaks" but that's a separate thread.

Sorry for rambling on, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.

I think that it is probably best to just not draw attention to the fact that there are no breaks and just handle the deck in a loose fashion (i.e. very much at the finger tips to that you seem to naturally emphasise that you have nothing to hide). Bringing attention to the fact that you aren't doing any funny business can also give them the idea that 'Hmm maybe he doesn't need to do anything because he made me choose the card so he already knows it'.

Best thing to do is put yourself in the spectator's mindset.

Hope this helps... again.

Grant

You do not need to go out of your way to prove your not holding any breaks because as far as a layperson is concerned they dont even know what a break is and you dont want them to suspect your doing any funny business because your not. Remember your a magician you dont need to do any funny business because all the tricks you perform happens by magic or thats at least what you want your spectator to think. If you show them your not holding a break they will think all your tricks were done by holding a break and then you have lost your advantage over them and that's where tricks become tricks and not where tricks become miracles and the miracles are where your aiming to be. Hope this helps.

As said above, never make a point that you're not doing anything funny. That'll just put ideas into their heads.

The order of the tricks in a routine should be more determined by what tricks you're using. My routines are all based on the same rough idea, the first trick is usually something very interactive. This allows both you and the spectator to get comfortable with each other and also give you the chance to figure out what sort of spec you have. After that, the tricks should follow some sort of logical path building up to your strongest routine last. If one of the tricks requires a setup, try to find a way to setup while doing another trick. One of my routines includes a book test, where I force three cards on the spectator. The book test happens in the middle of the routine so I some how need to find the cards I need to force. So the trick before the book test, I'll do Riffle Revelation for Mark Wilson's book which gives me the perfect excuse to look through the deck and find the cards I need.

you could turn the whole thing into a semi-self worker...force a short card...they can cut n shuffle to their hearts content then...you dont have to touch it...

and yeah, as others have said, dont make a big deal out of not holding a break, as it should all seem as if youre not upto anything in the first place...