talkmagic.co.uk

Mark Waddington wrote:"sure, but it's going to become a really s**t trick if you do"

Or, just palm the controlled cards off and add them back when they have shuffled.

"Do I come into your place of work and offer to serve the Big Macs? No..."

When I'm trying out a new trick my girlfriend or whichever work colleague I'm using tends to ask every now and again if they can shuffle the deck and I usually say, "you can, but the trick isn't likely to work then" then I would say "I'm kidding, you can shuffle them if you really want to" and I kind of half hold the deck in their direction but not very convincingly and look them in the eye. Some of the time this will disarm them and they won't take the deck. If they do take it and shuffle I'll just go into another trick.

I think the question has to be asked as to why they want to shuffle in the first place. Prevention is better than cure. 90% of magicians perform in a "see how clever I am" manner or
"let me see if I can fool you" manner and this provokes the reaction. The magician may not be conscious of this challenge attitude but I rarely see it not happening. Magic is a challenge in itself and you have to remove that aspect of things to get co-operation. You should be so nice, sincere , humorous and non challenging that they don't want to shuffle in the first place.

However if you perform as if you are terribly pleased with yourself then you are going to attract trouble like this all the time. If these requests to shuffle happen frequently you need to look at your manner of performance rather than think of clever lines to get out of trouble. Trouble, I may add which you have yourself provoked.

mark lewis wrote:However if you perform as if you are terribly pleased with yourself then you are going to attract trouble like this all the time. . Trouble, I may add which you have yourself provoked.

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