Yesterday I made a post about David Regal’s Off With His Head. I wanted to add a third beat to it, and one of the ideas I mentioned was making the three cards that weren’t selected blank. This is really following the B’wave format.
Here’s it with the three blank cards as the ending:
I think it’s (for me) a better trick than the original and away to turn B’wave from a mindreading trick to a magic trick.
-Louie
In a box of old magic tricks that I came across, there was David Regal’s Off With His Head. This is a packet trick that is essentially B’wave, but with different beats and effects. B’wave is a prediction, with multiple things that prove you committed to the prediction. Off With His Head is a magic trick, where several different effects happen.
In Off With His Head, the effects are:
1: The back of the selected card changes color
2: The faces on the selected king disappear (cut out of the card)
I used this trick as my “trick of the day” at the fair I was performing at.
I wish this trick had a third beat to it, like B’wave does. I guess I could have the card appear face up, or have all the other cards blank. It would give a third beat; however, I’m not sure either would add to the trick.
I’m liking this packet trick and I’ll probably keep doing it until I wear out the cards.
-Louie
The ad for the trick PADO came across my social media feed, and I have some thoughts on just the ad. I want to be clear, I didn’t buy this, these are just my impressions of the ad for the trick.
First of all, the cover for the ad when it was served to me has the palmed card flashing. Here’s the screenshot of the ad for PADO:
This is a very minor thing, and could have been an auto generated cover that the magic company had no real control over. Alright, here’s the actual demo:
Whenever I see a demo where the table is so black that you can’t tell where it ends and the magician’s black clothes start, this is a trick that uses black art. More than that, it’s also probably (I could be wrong) manipulated with a filter to make the black colors blacker. This is fair game for online content, but not in person performing. Once again, I would love to be wrong about this.
If it is, you can’t do this trick “walkaround” without carrying a special surface to do it on. That severely limits where you can do it. You can’t do it on any tabletop. I guess the term “walkaround” can mean a lot of things, but it’s going to be difficult to do on a picnic table in the park on a sunny day.
Another issue I have is that the website says it’s for “beginners”; however, in the trailer there is a control and mercury fold. To accomplish those, the magician in the video drops his hands below the table, then there’s a camera cut. If they can’t do the sleight of hand deceptively in front of the camera for the demo, then it’s not beginner level (in my opinion).
Personally, I think this would be great for magic that’s filtered through a camera where you can be in control of lighting and the black balance, and not when you’re performing to a group of people in front of you. The magic company is selling something that technically could be done in those scenarios, but it probably won’t be something you can do 100% of the time in those scenarios.
There is Brent Braun and Andy Glass’ Chattanooga Kickstand which looks very similar, but without the black art.
What’s written above is my opinion without seeing the PADO gimmick- just my commentary and opinion on how this is being sold. I would love to be wrong, and I could do this on any surface…and it’s not a recreation of the Brent Braun and Andy Glass gimmick.
– Louie
The Triumph card trick, where cards are shuffled face up and face down, ending with all the cards going the same way, except a selected card, has fascinated me for a while. In the past, I’ve published a version or two in Vanish Magazine. Here’s my newest idea for it:
I really like using the old drop the deck and the top card flips over thing as a way to flip over the top card. I’ll probably write this up at some point and publish it somewhere.
-Louie
Here’s what my props for a roving magic set look like:
The bottom row is my card routine, which is modular and can run anywhere from about 90 seconds to 7+ minutes. The top row are the other props that I use. Everything goes into my pockets except for the empty chop cup.
The top row is the fortune teller (it’s in my PCAM lecture notes), then my Out for Beers trick, three shell game and a chop cup. The nice thing about these props is that there’s a lot of texture I can have with my roving magic set. The opening is always the card routine, then the next trick depends on the group.
-Louie
In the past I’ve made Dice Cup Chop Cups available every now and then. They were never an item that I offered on my website. I would just post them to my social media or mention them in my email list. I’ve gotten a lot of people asking about when I’m making the next batch, so I’ve made added them to my shop.
You can get them at: https://www.magicshow.tips/product/dice-chop-cup-with-eight-ball/
-Louie
Yesterday I posted about my new sequence for the chop cup, go read that and watch the video before reading this post, as I’m going to write about a few things in that post.
Here’s what I like about that routine:
1: It doesn’t use the standard chop cup move of shaking the cup with the ball, or in this case a die
2: It’s not presented as a “where is the ball,” but as what will happen to it.
3: Once the routine starts, I never go to my pocket.
For me, the big thing is that I want to remove the going to the pocket element during the routine. If you keep going to the pocket, the audience knows that’s where the big ball or die comes from. Don’t fool yourself that repeatedly going to the pocket fools them, they may not have known when you snuck it in there, but they do know where it came from.
-Louie
Last week I started working on a new sequence with a chop chop. Here’s what it looks like:
The cool thing about performing at a fair is that I get a lot of opportunities to try out different sequences to find what I like. This is what the routine looked like at the end of last week, and then in a few days I’ll be starting at a new fair and really deciding if this is what I want the final (for now) routine to look like.
-Louie
PS: Click here if you want to learn more about how I work on trick in my show.
Here’s a simple chop cup routine that you can learn, and do with any standard chop cup.
What I like about this routine, over many chop cup routines, is that I only go to the pocket once, and it’s not immediately before the production of the eight ball.
-Louie
When I made a small batch of dice chop cups last week, people asked me for a video. Honestly, I thought everyone knew what a chop cup does, but I was wrong. If you don’t know what a chop cup is, it’s a gimmicked cup that will hold out a ball, or in this case dice.
Typically, this is one with one visible ball; however, in routines like my CeeLo routine, it uses three visible dice. How the normal routine goes is that a ball keeps disappearing and reappearing under a cup, then at the end, there’s a giant ball or whatever under the cup.
Here’s a quick video of a chop cup routine that I made for the people who asked:
I was just improving and did this sequence. It’s actually a pretty good sequence; it has a lot of effects.
1: Teleportation: Die goes from pocket to under the cup
2: Penetration: Die goes through the top of the cup
3: Vanish: Die disappears from my hand
4: Production: Eight ball appears
That’s a lot of magic in less than 20 seconds!
-Louie
