talkmagic.co.uk

The Effect
AlphatoOmega
http://www.bigblindmedia.com/alphatoomega.htm

Cost
£19.99 = £1.50 P&P.


Difficulty
(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)

3

Review

They say.
You have two sets of four of a kind (let’s say, two sets of Aces). One set is tabled. One set is placed behind your back. You have ANY Ace named. Seconds later, this ace is face down, in the set behind your back, and... it has a different coloured back to the other three! You now rub their freely named Ace on your sleeve and its face completely vanishes!
THESE FOUR CARDS ARE NOW EXAMINABLE!
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL… Now, you spread the tabled set of face down Aces (that have been in full view throughout) and their named Ace is face up!
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL… now someone removes the face up Ace and it has a different coloured back to the other three!
BUT THAT’S NOT ALL… the shell-shocked spectator flips over the three remaining face down Aces only to discover that they are all BLANK! THEIR NAMED CARD WAS THE ONLY ONE THEY COULD HAVE CHOSEN!
Now for the amazing bit – they can name ANY Ace! (It can be different every time you perform).
There are no false counts – The handling looks the same every time!
There are no specially printed cards! (No need to ‘ever’ buy an expensive replacement set!)
100% self-working? Not quite, but Omega is incredibly easy to perform!

I say.
I am torn. I howl. I am a torny howl.

OK, when I saw the video of this trick I immediately lurched into magician mode (one can’t help doing so, right?) and began to unpick it. “Well, that’s clearly an Ascanio spread, so we have an extra card. Also, I assume multiple outs. Thus, I can now devise…” Then, to my vast credit, I pulled myself up. This was a good effect, that I thought I’d use, and definitely nothing I’d have idly come up with myself: the proper thing, then, was to buy it, not backward engineer it. (By the way, as I said, we all go into magician mode when we see a new trick and try to figure it out. But please do that privately. I see a lot of gleeful, Look At Me!, public backward engineering going on. Tch. There’s nothing to be proud about there – there’s no invention or creativity. If you believe that figuring out a trick puts you on a par with the person who thought it up, then you probably also think that there’s little difference between drawing a picture and getting someone else’s picture and tracing it.)

But anyway, I bought the DVD and, to my surprise and delight I discovered that, in fact, it’s NOT an Ascanio spread – there are NO extra cards, and there are NO multiple outs. The spec names a card: it's that card. All examinable. Nothing added, nothing taken away. Splendid. The DVD contains some other presentations/variations of Omega - ESP Omega, Blind Faith, One Eye Open, EZ’Wave, The Amazing Four Aces Trick – but, if it ended there could fall prey to the ‘£20 for one trick? You can buy RRTCM and Scarne on Card Tricks combined for far less!’ accusation. However, it’s hugely innocent of that. You also get, ‘Exhibit ‘A’’ (as sort of Cluedo, non-card effect) and ‘Matrix Reloaded’ (imagine a matrix effect without coins, but instead cards with coins printed on them). You also get ‘Katch the Kopper’ (a Triumph effect built on a really sweet move) from the Underground Collective’s ‘Welcome to the Firm’, ‘In Tens’ (a sort of Sandwich effect with bonus phases), from Cameron Francis’s ‘Killer CloseUp’, ‘Vegas Visit’ from Joshua Jay’s ‘Methods in Magic’ (he explains the effect, but you would need to buy the cards if you wanted to perform it), and ‘Sleight School’ in which Cameron Francis teaches 18 basic (that is, good, but not obscure – they’re the basic tools) moves. You also get a dozen .pdfs (though, really, these are just things – images, etc. – for various tricks on the DVD, rather than extra material. BUT, if you buy the DVD from Tucker’s own site
http://www.stephentuckermagic.co.uk
you also get EVEN MORE. For one thing you don’t have to pay the postage, and for another you get to choose two of his e-books free – and, my, there are some goodies to choose from: one of the ones I chose was Mind Blasters
http://www.talkmagic.co.uk/ftopic25777.php
Which, you know – Golly! That, for free!

So, why am I torn? Omega is clever and pleasing, there’s nice extra stuff on the DVD and – via Tucker’s own site at least – a bounty of extra, extra material in e-form. Well… the problem is… um… ‘falsification’. The falsification you can do when you have video, a controlled environment, time and an editing suite. This isn’t of the Blaine-rising-three-feet-off-the-pavement level, but it’s nonetheless presenting something as simply a video of a performance when it isn’t. Some of this is touched upon in a thread here:
http://www.talkmagic.co.uk/ftopic32096.php
To avoid giving anything away about the method of Omega, let me make an analogy or two. Suppose a trick required a triple lift, but for the filming the magician turned just a normal, single card – how natural and clean would it then look? Or suppose a trick needed a false transfer, but for the filming the magician did an actual transfer – how utterly convincing would it then appear? The video demo of Omega is not a performance of the trick: it’s how the trick will (to a very large degree, hopefully) look, but it’s definitely not a straight filming of it being done. It is, therefore, disingenuous. How do we feel about a demo being presented as – what absolutely any viewer would assume to be - a video of an actual performance, when it’s really a faux performance so that a couple of rough edges can be avoided? My answer is: Not Good At All. It’s the kind of thing, perhaps, you’d wish to punish the offenders for, by low marks and/or cold shoulders.

And that’s why I’m torn, the AlphatoOmega package itself – esp. when bought from Tucker – is a good product, across the board. But it’s being sold in a way that, personally, I feel side-steps its imperfections in an unacceptable manner. They are ‘imperfections’ – these aren't ruinous flaws; they’re nothing more than niggles that make the effect less than the pristine clean it appears – but it’s the way they’ve been deliberately, unfairly obscured that’s the issue. It’s not the product, it’s the principle.

Overall
Which all means, I can’t give this a final mark – it’d be wrong to penalise Tucker’s good work, but wrong to reward BBM’s mendacity (I’m generally a BBM fan, by the way – I think they’re one of the best magic producers around, but they got it wrong here).

Half of me wants to pat its head, the other half wants to kick its shin.

Nice review. A good product does not need a video demo with clever editing and misleading footage. It's dishonest and, dare I say it, a bit of a con. I'm always very disappointed to hear of creators/dealers using such tactics to make sales. Stinks to high heaven.

Damn! Beat me to it....

Got this a few days ago, but got it from BBM (wish I'd known about the freebies, would've got it there if I'd known )

Held off with the review 'till I'd tried it out live a few times for the reasons mentioned above.... but, the good news...... it plays great! It has a few advantages that I love. It can be repeated with a different named card (not on the same crowd imedietly, no effect should, but if a few saw it twice either on a different day or followed you to another table they would be fooled). Secondly, replacing worn out cards won't cost a fortune.

Believe me, for the basic premise and associated variations, it's worth the price (Rep, there's an ESP variation ), but with the added extras, fantastic. The cludo style extra is a wonderful parlour effect (though not worth the price they say it sold for, no offence).

Wish I'd gone direct though, and got the freebies

G

The Omega effect itself is very nice and does the have the advantage over twisted sisters that the cards are examinable but I think it may not pack quite the same punch with a spectator (I haven't tested this in earnest yet). All of the 'hands behind the back' stuff is nowhere near as clean as twisted sisters and I think it makes the overall construction a little confusing compared with T.S. Having said all all of this it is a good effect and the DVD itself has lots of additional material so it is good value for money in my opinion.

Craig.

p.s. I hadn't noticed the 'indiscretion' on the performance editing but I will now go back and look again! If it is true then it is a bit naughty.

There's more about the 'deviation' on this link (when can we expect the creator to reply, I wonder?)

http://www.talkmagic.co.uk/ftopic32096. ... lpha+omega

cragglecat wrote:The Omega effect itself is very nice and does the have the advantage over twisted sisters that the cards are examinable but I think it may not pack quite the same punch with a spectator (I haven't tested this in earnest yet). All of the 'hands behind the back' stuff is nowhere near as clean as twisted sisters and I think it makes the overall construction a little confusing compared with T.S.

TS is certainly more direct, but I don't think the hands behind the back detract in A2O. In some tricks it does, because it's usually a beginner's book trick where it's required to 'Just place my hands behind my back (or below the table) for a second' because the author is aware that the magician is not up to, say, a pass. But here you're quite openly telling the spec that you're moving cards about behind there; you're simply doing it out of sight to retain the suspense - the first (poor) reveal is actually a good thing because it lowers expectations for the second one, so the magic then is made to seem even better. As for the cards being examinable, it's horses for courses, but for me (and, I know, many other amateurs) it's almost vital. Specs might be controllable if you're table hopping, but friends will snatch those cards up to examine them (even when they've no idea how gaffed cards could possibly help) and fight you to the floor if you try to stop them. So, that aspect of A2O alone makes me much prefer it over TS.

I don't think Stephen frequents these Internet forums...

Cameron Francis wrote:I don't think Stephen frequents these Internet forums...

I can't imagine a world where not frequenting TM is a choice I even have.

I have the whiplash DVD from Stephen Tucker and as an extra there is the performance of Omega in the bonus section.

As I remember there is REALLY this one technique we are talking here about. So this demo seems more close to the effect than the demo from "Alpha to Omega". I will check this out soon.

By the way: I already have this little paper with the explanation from Stephen Tucker with the Omega effect.

I have shown the effect to my family and they were really impressed. So this single technique/move is really important but I think you can fool lay people. And my movement is not really perfect.

GOTCHA !

I think he IS doing the move in the demo on the whiplash DVD.

And yes, I have looked at the demo of Alpha to Omega and that looks really a little bit to perfect.

Another question:
If I know the Omega routine is there enough more content on this DVD to make it worth buying? (I can get a discount on that...)

BigSmile wrote:Another question:
If I know the Omega routine is there enough more content on this DVD to make it worth buying? (I can get a discount on that...)

That's a personal decision, I reckon. In the review above I've listed everything you get, so whether or not you feel what's there (minus Omega, if you already know it) is worth the asking price, is something only you and your wallet can answer.

I know that not really any help, but it's at least true.