talkmagic.co.uk

Did a wee search and couldn't find much, but I was just wondering everbody, ever had one of those performances (single trick or routine) that someone either tries to mess up, or you mess up or whatever, but still by sheer luck, ends up okay...or sometimes better.

For example, I was sitting at a table in college with about 10-12 people standing around as I was just showing them silly little tricks to amuse them, when someone else produced a deck of cards. I took my chance, as the subject had turned to mind reading) and started to perform the "Do as I Do" trick in which you swap decks, each pick a card, cut the deck and the swap. Find the card you found and they turn out the same.

What I didn't realise was the rather moody adolescent I was performing it one, was a nasty little git. As we simultaeneously cut the cards, he slipped his card out, and burried it deep inside the pack and began to shuffle. Everybody laughed, and I was completely baffed at what to do!

Went through the deck like normal, found the KC..and thought...well it could happen...and if not..I could somehow work Daryl's Hotshot into it, no matter what the trick..that nice little extra always pulls them back..

So like normal we both put our cards face down next to each other, his cocky little smirk at knowing I had messed up or rather he had messed me up, flipped over the cards and WHAM! Both the seven of clubs!

People were going nuts, had not the faintest idea and I have suddenly became the college magician who is constantly harrassed for tricks!

Go luck!

I love that kind of thing, I once had some guy take a card out of a deck, look at it and say "go on then, mind reader, what card is it?" and I just gave him a quizzical look and said, confidently, "King of Spades" and it was! oh joy! bliss!

I open so many tricks by asking someone to just name a card, I then usually remove it from the deck, get them to sign it and go into an ACR; but i carry 2 cards in my wallet, Queen Of Hearts and 7 of Spades just on the off chance that someone names one of those cards, then i run what is basically the patter from Bang On, when someone names one of those cards i find it hard not to smile to myself...

Yeah I have a gimmick size three of hearts in my pocket..jumbo size..for those lucky occasions!

Wild Card wrote:Yeah I have a gimmick size three of hearts in my pocket..jumbo size..for those lucky occasions!

It sometimes worries me when I start basing routines around possibilities like this. It makes for some very impressive tricks.... sometimes.
othertimes it makes for an average performance

Yeah, I just use it in conjunction with an already solid routine, with several possibilities...the simple opener..then the ID. I guess with a bit of suggestion it could help!

It's really nice when stuff like that works, and the ID is the perfect out in case it all goes tits up.

I was entertaining a girl at my in a bar the other day with really simple coin stuff, and did a variant of the miracle vanish which basically involved me flinging a 2p onto my jacket onto the seat behind me, out of her view. Only then did I realise there was an identical coin sat on the table behind her. Now she thinks I'm capable of miracles.

The magic I most enjoy is when chances or fortunate coincidences (I guess you'd call it Serendipity) crop up, because suddenly it's not about sleights or tricks, but all about how you handle the situation. It really makes you think on your feet, and it's so rewarding to turn a nice coincidence into a really mind blowing trick. It's all about presentation.

Once, when I was performing for relatives, I miss glimpsed a card, thinking it was something else. I had asked my niece to concentrate on her card so I could pick up the vibrations from her. It turns out that she had remembered the right number, but wrong suit. When I turned over the card, it happened to be the one she was thinking off, so although everyone knew it wasn't the card she chose, the fact that I managed to get the card she had been concentrating on amazed them even more!

Sometimes these pieces of luck make the magic stronger.

I tried out Mark Wilsons double prediction (I think thats what its called) on my wife who is my usual guinea pig for new tricks. When I asked her to choose a card from the first pack she chose the top card which I thought was the end of the trick. But when I showed her how it was different to all the other cards in the pack she was really impressed (difficult woman to impress with magic!) so I just abandoned the second half of the trick and it looked really impressive.

It has never happened to me since but I now know that I have a get out if it does.

I once passed by a table where a couple of my friends were preparing to enjoy another game of poker after taking a break, and I had the impulse to cut the deck just to see what card I would end up with. And, surprise, I cut exactly to the Ace of Spades! But as if this wasn't baffling enough for them (as well as for me), a couple of minutes later, I passed by their table again and cut the deck again, just for the heck of it. And presto, I had cut at the Ace of Clubs (and by now they were desperately trying to figure out the secret behind my pure luck ).

Another exprience I had was, while practicing a rising card routine, I did it on my friend, but the only difference was that I had him choose a card in his mind rather than pick it from the deck. So I chose to make rise up the card that I noticed that was most commonly chosen among montrealers, 6 of Hearts. I found that this varies from place to place, for example while doing magic in Romania it turned out to be the Ace of Hearts. (It mostly varies linguistically, for exaple French speaking people may not find it as easy on their tongue to call out Queen of Hearts, so they naturally think of another card). But to come back to the routine, he was stunned for the next 15 minutes and he could not even think because of this for the whole day.

So to all magicians on TM, I wish you as many of these "lucky" moments as possible

i was doing a jumping card trick for my friend in the kitchen he pikced a card out and put it back into the middle of the pack , i slapped the pack his card flew out [as anticipated] and landed in an empty cup in front of him

i tried to do it again but gave up lol

Once I did a lit cigarette vanish, I pushed into fist, blew on it and as I opened my fist to show the cig had vanished, there was a power cut!

Perfect timing and I milked the reputation as the 'man who can make the lights go out' for all it was worth. Luckily it was a dark day, making it even more spectacular. The cig vanish was pretty unimpressive in comparison...

The one handed colour change.
I have practiced it a hundred times before and since and the only two times it worked perfectly were the only two times I performed it. Once to the wife and once to the magic club.

Perhaps the best lucky result I've had is with Untouched, a trick where you place a card face down on the table and the spec deals two piles of any number of cards from anywhere in the deck. The top card of each of these piles is turned over and one card indicates the value of your card and the other the suit. Completely self working but needs control of the spec.

I did this for my sister's engineer husband and he fell over before immediately requesting a repeat, of course. I rashly decided to do it again on one of those 'what the heck' whims. He launched in with aplomb, shuffling the deck before hand then taking the cards from literally anywhere and mixing them up once more before dealing them randomly into two different sized piles. This should ruin the effect. However, I'd been closely watching the process and by pure chance the right cards were in the right place. I'm not sure what the odds of this are but it's long. When he turned the cards over to reveal that I'd done it again, without going near the deck throughout and after all his mixing he stomped off grumbling.

I smiled.

I once performed the OTL effect from Paul Daniels's first book. The idea is to predict a card openly, but when the spectator chooses one, the performer seems to have got it wrong. It then turns out that the prediction itself has changed, because it is now correct, even though the spectator's signature is still on the business card.

I wrote a card prediction down on a business card, got the spectator to sign it, then pulled the card off the stack and placed it on the table. As I went to pick up the playing cards, she picked the business card up and looked at it again.

She smiled at me, put it back and we carried on.

It was, of course, now a completely impossible effect, and her reaction fitted that.