If you wish to watch more of Tony Slydini’s magic tricks and to learn the secrets behind these magic tricks, you can find them in this almost 2-hour long Slydini Lecture by Jim Cellini – DVD .

In this DVD (Slydini Lecture), Jim Cellini (Slydini’s disciple) performed the following magic tricks designed by Slydini.

1. Slydini Silks Routine.
2. Cut and Restored Rope.
3. Vanishing Silk.
4. Chinese Linking Rings.
5. Paperbox and Balls Routine.
6. Coins Through Table.
7. Silk Fountain (performed by Jim Cellini’s wife).

You may want to get this 312-page book. “Slydini Book, Annotated Magic of” written by Lewis Gansons. There you may find the explanations of most of Slydini’s magic tricks or perhaps all of them.

Following these performances, Jim Cellini proceeded to explain each magic trick with the exception of the Chinese Linking Rings and the Silk Fountain. Anyway, the secret behind the Chinese Linking Rings is the same to any other magic performance using Chinese Linking Rings. In fact at one point, he carelessly exposed one of the ring’s opening at the early stage of the performance. The Silk Fountain performed by Jim Cellini’s wife was not skillful enough. For those who are fairly experienced with knowing how to do magic tricks will be able to figure out how this magic trick is done. If not, just watch closely several times and you will be able to figure them out by yourself. She is not experienced enough and her lack of proficiency in her sleight of hands actually gave away the secret of the magic trick. May be that was why the secret to this magic trick was not explained in this DVD. 

For the “Coins Through Table” magic trick, Jim Cellini explained in detail the ‘7 coins routine”, “6 coins routine”, “4 coins routine”, “2 coins routine” and “1 coin routine”. He covered the subtlety of the hand movements Slydini made and how he personally modified them for himself, as well as how to create the sound of the coins penetrating through the table and falling into the hand under the table. He went on to discuss an unpublished “Unique Coin Routine” which is the one where Slydini fooled Dai Vernon. I have left out the explanation in my earlier posting for this magic trick. Please refer to “How to do magic tricks #9 -  Slydini’s The Helicopter Card”.

The invaluable part of this DVD lies on the discussion that went beyond how each magic trick was performed. Jim Cellini covered quite a lot of important information on how Slydini taught him on his body, hands and legs movement on stage, how to sit in such a way so that the lapping technique can be done efficiently and effectively. These lessons are hard to illustrate in books and are seldom taught in any media. 

Jim Cellini explained many magic tricks performed by Slydini in which Jim Cellini did not perform in this DVD such as the cigarette magic tricks. He also told how these magic tricks came into existence.

Some unexpected bonuses are stories about Tony Slydini and Dai Vernon’s relationship, Slydini’s way of looking at magic and how he designed his magic tricks. Jim Cellini told how Slydini designed a card magic as Slydini performed it to Harry Lorayne by using his unique way of performing magic. It was quite hilarious.

The only pity is that you do not get to watch any footage of Slydini in this DVD. However, the materials in this DVD are first class. If you want to watch more of Slydini’s footage, you will get a lot of them in this two-disc DVD set, “As I Recall (2 DVD Set) – Tony Slydini”. You will also get to see Slydini’s students perform and explain some of Slydini’s tricks which include those other magic tricks by Slydini that are not performed in the “Slydini Lecture by Jim Cellini – DVD”. 

Here are some video clips from this 2-disc DVD set.

Perhaps you may ask, “Why can’t I find all of Slydini’s magic tricks performed and explained all in one DVD?” First of all, I did not produce them. And that is how the way the market operates. Have you ever found a CD of your favourite artiste’s with all his or her songs recorded in it? Never!  

If you really want to know all about Slydini’s magic trick, you may want to get this 312-page book. “The Annotated Magic of Slydini” written by Lewis Gansons. There you may find the explanations of most of Slydini’s magic tricks or perhaps all of them. I do believe that you can find the secret to Slydini’s “Helicopter Card” in here.

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The first magic trick that lasted until 4:30, is some sort of a representation of the “Paper Balls in the Hat” trick using cigarettes. Notice the hand movement and body gesture are somewhat similar to those when he performed the “Paper Balls in the Hat” trick. The difference here is that the paper balls are replaced by cigarettes and there is no hat or box. What you see here are cigarettes appearing and disappearing from one hand to another. Apply all the principles that I have discussed in my earlier articles “How to do magic trick #8: Tony Slydini – The Master of Misdirection” and “How to do magic trick #9: Slydini’s Helicopter Card”. Try to figure out for yourself and do it as an exercise. Just like back in school, the actual learning takes place only when we do our homework.

The second magic trick from 4:50 to 6:30 presented to a lady was the same magic trick Tony Slydini performed to Dai Vernon in the earlier posting “How to do magic trick #8: Tony Slydini – The Master of Misdirection”.

The third magic trick from 6:53 to the end of the video at 8:34 was the “Coin Through The Table” magic trick using 7 coins. Sadly, the video ended abruptly just before the end of this maigc trick. At the end of the video, you saw Tony Slydini put his right hand holding the 4 coins below the table while he put his left hand holding the 3 coins on top of the table. Tony Slydini slammed his left hand on the table and the 3 coins ‘penetrated’ the table and dropped into his right hand that was under the table. Slydini opened his left hand and there was no coin in his right hand or on the table because the 3 coins had supposedly penetrated through the table. As he brought forth his right hand from under the table, there were 7 coins in his right hand.

The “Coin Through The Table” magic trick using 7 coins could have been done with any number of coins, say only 6 coins. However, by having 4 coins in one hand and 3 coins in another hand creates a stronger misdirection that no coin have been passed from one hand to the other while he showed the 3 coins in the left hand the first time (7:54) and 4 coins in the right hand the second time (8:08).

I will make the explanation of this magic trick here short. The first time he revealed his left hand completely opened with 3 coins still in the left hand (7:54) was genuine. That was meant to convince the audience so as to make them let down their guard. The second time when he ‘dropped’ the 4 coins from the right hand (8:08) involved a sleight of hands. Notice that he did not turn his right hand faced up like he did previously with his left hand. 3 coins were clipped with his thumb in his right hand while the one and only unique coin (the English penny among the 7 coins) was dropped onto the table from his right hand. The other 3 coins that appeared on the table were dropped (slid through the bottom) from the left hand. The one coin from the right hand and 3 coins from the left hand totaled up to 4 coins on the table. Upon seeing 4 coins on the table, our minds deceive us that ALL the 4 coins are from the right hand. Right from beginning of the magic trick, Slydini had emphasized to the audience to watch the English penny (that was meant to fool them). He was setting up a mental trap for his audience. So when Slydini picked up the 4 coins from the table with his right hand (palm faced down hiding the 3 coins clipped in the right hand), he then have all the 7 coins in his right hand.

As a concluding statement, I would like to refer you to the movie “Swordfish” . John Travolta played the role of a ruthless terrorist when in actual fact he was a special government agent. He had fooled the police and the FBI agents time and time again, and in his final act, he faked his own death. Somewhere in the middle of the movie where he driving in his car, he said something like this (pardon me because I can’t remember the exact words):

“I love Houdini. He could make an elephant disappear from the stage. The keyword is – MISDIRECTION. What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes.”

Meditate on that!

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It is a basic rule in performing magic that you do not repeat your performance of a magic trick to the same audience twice for the obvious reason that the audience will try to notice how you perform the magic trick particularly at your other actions which they did not notice previously. Tony Slydini broke this rule of magic and he is famous for challenging the audience. Nevertheless, he did repeat his performances with slight variations from his previous performances. These variations gave a fresh touch to the same magic tricks and at the same time, they gave the audience the feeling that he was doing something different from the previous performances. Tony Slydini was such a master at his sleight of hands and misdirection that he dared to break these rules. His sleight of hands were so neat that even if you knew how to do the magic tricks that he had performed, you still could not catch him doing it.

So what is the secret to the “6 Coins Routine”? If the legendary Dai Vernon (the man fooled by Tony Slydini) could not figure it out, how could I? However, I can tell you the secret to the “Helicopter Card”.

Notice again that Tony Slydini repeated a number of actions to the audience to wear down the audience’s alertness. The first few times Tony Slydini carried out these actions, he would either explicitly show the audience or subtly let the audience notice that he had not done anything tricky. Subsequently the last time Slydini repeated the same action was when he performed his sleight of hands. In the “Helicopter Card” magic trick, Slydini first drew the audience to a card he put sticking out of the rest of the cards he was holding in his hand. The card that was sticking out was not the audience’s chosen card. It was there to catch the audience’s attention so as to distract, frustrate and to confuse him. Slydini then went on to frustrate the audience by making him pick up card after card on the table to search for his chosen card. This action also served the purpose of giving a miraculous effect at the end when the chosen card appeared on the table as the audience believed that his chosen card was held together with the rest of the cards on Tony Slydini’s other hand. As Slydini did this, his hand would touch each card as he asked, “Is it this card?” The last time when Slydini pointed to a card on the table, he actually dropped the card held in his hand just slightly behind (from Tony Slydini’s perspective) the card he pointed to and this action is covered by his hand as he pointed to a card on the table. Slydini then finally directed the audience’s attention into the air and imagined a card had landed right where he had placed the audience’s chosen card earlier.

His sleight of hands was so extremely neat that you won’t be able to notice it. Just take note that the chosen card appeared just slightly behind (from Tony Slydini’s perspective) the last card Tony Slydini pointed to the audience.

I would like to make a statement about Tony Slydini’s use of human psychology when he performed certain actions repeatedly. We repeatedly see something to be either present (true) or absent (false) frequently in our past experiences. As we make the same observations repeatedly, we become very confident that we know all about certain truth without examining and giving a thought about it. We all come to our own conclusion which is eventually wrong, such as “the world is flat”. And Tony Slydini has used this presumptious mindset very well against us.

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photo credit: trialsanderrors

Start with some gimmicks. You can get a variety of magical gimmicks either from your local magic shops or purchase them from online magic shops. From gimmicks, you may want to progress on to self-working magic tricks using playing cards. Self-working tricks as the name implies are magic tricks where their effects happen naturally when you follow the procedures of the performance routines accordingly. Self-working magic tricks require little or no sleight of hands at all and are therefore relatively manageable.

Generally, professional magic tricks using playing cards or coins require many sleights that take a lifetime to master. Mentalism magic (mind reading) generally require relatively less sleights (or in fact none at all) as compared to card magic and coin magic. So you may want to begin with mentalism first instead of other types of magic such as card magic or coin magic.

For your personal education in magic, I would recommend that you watch the World’s Greatest Magic DVD series. Each World’s Greatest Magic DVD series features a particular magic trick performed by different magicians with their individual style of presentation. From watching these different presentations, they would enrich your experience with magic. That is the basis of how we learn and become an expert in any subject in any field – with continued exposure to the same thing, experiencing them again in a variety of ways.

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If you have watched David Copperfield’s performance, you would have noticed that he is able to perform very simple and standard routines interwoven into a dance with a storyline in it. David Copperfield is able to inject entertainment into his performance that makes his show more interesting than an amateur magician who merely performs the standard routines as performed by many other magicians.
My brief discussion on stage magic is to show that items used in stage magic is standard stage props which we would not be using. What I would like to focus on here are items used in close-up magic. Close-up magic is more relevant to the non-professional magicians (since we are only interested in amusing our friends and ourselves) whether you are just a hobbyist or someone who intend to pursue magic as a profession in the future. The most common objects used are:

1. Playing Cards
2. Coins
3. Balls and Cups
4. Sponge Balls
5. Rubber Bands
6. Ropes
7. Silks
8. ESP Cards
9. Business Cards (Name Cards)
10. Money
11. Handkerchief
12. Cutleries from dining tables
13. Almost any objects around you.

                                                                                                                   photo credit: keertmoed

Amazing Tricks w/ Everyday Objects – DVD

Among these items, playing cards and coins are among the most common followed by sponge balls, rubber bands. Many close-up magicians are dedicated particularly in the field of card magic and coin magic and the magic tricks devised for playing cards and coins accumulated since early 20th century are numerous and so are the sleights involved in these two types of magic. ESP Cards are more commonly used by mentalists (mind reading magicians) and magic tricks involving the use of ESP cards can be modified and replaced by normal playing cards generally.

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