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Regarding gimmicked cards, I agree with Teller's view:

"If you can convince them you aren't using trick cards, great!, use trick cards."

Magic is a craft where the ends (almost always) justifies the means. If you have to use trick cards, psychology, sleight of hand, a trick house (ALA David Abbott) to create the best effects and acts, I say go for it. Of course, you have to follow the one condition that the audience doesn't suspect any of it.

Also, what "pros" do shouldn't really matter that much. I'd bet that even they disagree on tons of the small things we discuss here.

Regarding the "presentation is everything" view. Darwin Ortiz wrote that he sees it as, "A polished turd is still a turd." A lousy magic effect or structure can't be saved purely by presentation. That said, mediocre magic tricks can make decent gags for entertainment value, but I'm not sure it should be called magic.

callum says

So:

90% - Presentation
5% - Audience
5% - The Trick

how the hell is the trick 5%...Thats the whole reason you are there.To entertain to the max then you must do a strong effect...The Magic is in the trick and the presentation is the showman ship of the entertainer himself..Trust me,when i started i ignored patter and presentation blowing it off as unimportant,yet i still had people saying 'do a trick' because they loved the trick.

I immensly disagree that presentation is ''EVERYTHING''
I think its 50% of the entertainment but no more unless your a funny guy like bill malone,and lets be realistic,there aint many like that.

On the other note,Keith Barry uses a mirage deck and i myself have to admit that i overlooked the use of a trick deck by a pro magician,but hey,why waste 100s of hours of time practising a classic force thats not always garunteed when you can get the same effect with a mirage deck?

90% - Presentation
5% - Audience
5% - The Trick

It was just a figure of speech I guess; I didn't mean it literally at all, I'm just trying to reflect my ideas that presentation is important but it isn't everything >.<

have you performed to an audience?

&

with a simple and well presented trick you can blow even the most skeptical of audiences minds.

I have performed to an audience, and I agree that good presentation can change a lot. But if there's some geezer that absolutely despises you and end up doing a trick for them, then they're probably not really going to like it, regardless (which is what I'm getting at).

As far as Darwin Ortiz is concerned I have seen him perform. Alas he should read his own book. His "presentation" of Macdonald's Aces is the worst I have ever seen.

I admit that I am overstating the case but not by much. Good presentation CAN lift a mediocre trick into a wondrous mystery. However I am all for good tricks. However they are not the important thing. The important thing is YOU.

Most magicians present tricks. They shouldn't. They should present THEMSELVES presenting tricks.

Tricks are only tools. Think of them as merely the pegs that you hang your personality on. However the pegs should be strong.

Most magicians have atrocious presentation. Many of them underpresent things but a few of them overpresent too. You can have too much showmanship sometimes for something piddly and it can look ridiculous.

However I must inform young Flood that a good trick is not enough. I would rather present a bad trick with showmanship than a good trick without. The trick is important certainly and the audience is best left to luck of the draw. However presentation is PARAMOUNT. If you haven't mastered good presentation then you may as well not bother.

Of course this implies that 90% of magicians shouldn't bother. Well, so be it.

Flood wrote:
how the hell is the trick 5%...Thats the whole reason you are there.

The whole reason you are there is to entertain, to bring a little mystery into otherwise boring lives. You can do that with a self-worker easy as long as you can present it well.

If you do the most amazing sleight of hand card routine without good presentation, you're just some kid showing off. That gets very boring very quickly.

This is the third time I've posted the following sentence on TM, but I'll try again - "it's not the trick, it's you."

Look at any DVD of David Blaine is his street magic hey day. Is there anything he does that you can't figure out? Probably not. So how come he got the TV deal and not the hundreds of kids who know how to do knuckle busting moves with a pack of bicycles? Because those kids think the magic is in the cards, while David Blaine understood that the magic is in the mind. And his presentation (or lack of it ) allowed that to happen.

Trust me, the trick is 5%, or 10%, or something stupid like that. Who and what you are is what will keep people on the edge of their seats and make them give a damn about what you're showing them.

Just thought I would mention this, even though it's rehashing what alot of other members said.

You are there to entertain. Magic happens to be the method you are using to do this. For all a typical audience cares you could be playing the trumpet. As long as you are entertaining, they are happy.

For example, there is a guy I know, who to be honest, is pretty poor at doing tricks. But he is an amazing performer. Top notch rapport with the specs, a total joker.

He is booked out every weekend. Close up, kids parties, table hopping he does it all and rakes in the cash.

Another local I know, top notch technical magician. Perfect weaves, nigh-invisible passes, the lot. Dull as dishwater though, works once a month at the most.

You are an entertainer, not just a magician. If people want to see magic tricks they can go on youtube or watch one of the kids magic shows on TV. You are being paid money to entertain, magic is just a method.

The general perception seems to be that performance is everything. But take Cups and Balls for example. Your basic "Ball penetrating through cup" is sleightless, but you really wouldn't get very far with that. You need a certrain degree of skill/sleight accomapnied with excellent presentation to go far.

Wild Card wrote: Your basic "Ball penetrating through cup" is sleightless, but you really wouldn't get very far with that

Oh I don't know, I bet you could get a decent 20 minute routine out of it. A talk about hypnosis and mass hysteria, a touch of pseudo hypno, the actual ball through cup, the reveal, bringing the specs "back out of hypnosis", a small summery of what the specs have just experienced. Viola. A 20 minute routine.

Look how famous a pk bend took Uri Geller. Imagine how far "cup through ball" could take you if you figured a good presentation/reason for it to exist.

It IS a lot to do with presentation, selling the effect and building mystique and your personality.
As I have said before, sleights are useful, but only as tools to aid you in performing your deceptions. If a sleight is too convulted and not worth the trouble for the result it acheives, then I give it a miss. If I feel it is something that will enhance my effects or is a way of doing something easier than I did before then I will bother learning it.

It depends on what you consider to be sleight of hand. I find some simple card forces, false cuts and shuffles and card controls invaluable to my card magic.

Take the simple Hindu Shuffle Force. So easy to do. So obvious to someone who knows it. Yet so deceptive to a spectator. With a few useful tools as your disposal you can perform countless effects off the cuff and, as the youth say, "jazz it".

I am not completely against using gaff cards or decks, in fact some of the effects I perform utilise these, but I always do a deck switch and perform some effects using SOH, particularly when the spec handles what they believe to be the same deck of cards.

I'm not saying all this is necessary, but having some knowledge of SOH makes your magic more potent as some simple false cuts and shuffles are subtleties that convice the spectator further of the magic.

I find that if i learn a trick with some form of sleight of hand, to gain another trick, you just simply use that sleight of hand in a different sort of way.

So yes, I do think it is nesaccary to learn sleight of hand.

The beauty of slight of hand is that you can perform tricks with any deck at any time. With gimmicks you are usually limited to one effect and this may leave you in a awkward position when an impromptu audience asks for more.

A good example of gimmicks vs slights is expressed by comparing the following videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kNIySf-IPg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztPiSXzsjTg

One of the above uses gimmicked cards whilst the other relies in slight of hand yet they both leave the audience stunned... the big difference is that the gimmicked cards cannot be examined after the performance.

When I was younger and first had an interest in performig magic, I would veer towards the easier effects as you could perform them pretty quickily whereas ones that took a fair amount of practice I steered away from.
Partially, I think people can steer away from something that they fear is above them, but once I made concious decision to learn and practice these sleights which seemed far too difficult for my left-handed clumsiness, I found they weren't as hard as they seemed and the progress I made encouraged me to progress further.

I only bother using sleights that are useful to me. If I see something which is fancy and hard to do but has no point to it, then I'll skim over it. As I have said before, false cuts and shuffles and few different ways to force a card have proven invaluable to me.

Well, one thing Ortiz says, and I agree with is that the effect in itself needs to be good.

Presentation is, of course, very important but the base effect needs to be strong too. He touches on designing effects in his book Designing Miracles.

Again, I oly bother with effect that impress me or would impress me if I were to see them. Not being a card player, I avoid gambling routines and the like as to me, they come across as very clever but not magical or evoke a sense of wonder.
Yes, a good effect is needed for maximum impact but a self-worker, such as Do As I Do, can be a stunning piece of entertainment when dressed up correctly.
Just look at some of the youtube videos. Some of them are actually good effects, but the droning, dull, disinterested delivery makes them as dull as a Coldplay CD.

Flood wrote:i work my *rse off trying to learn push off doubles methods of controlling,one hand top palm and yet the single most baffling trick everyone talks about (that i do) is the ID......blows them away

I think this statement sums things up nicely as some of the best and most profound effects I've achieved have been with a Brainwave Deck, however the performance has EVERYTHING to do with it! A Brainwave Deck can be the weakest and most obvious effect, or if performed correctly and sold well can lead people to believe that you're as clever as Derren Brown (which I'm not but people have said all sorts of things after being Brainwaved)