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!

photo credit: sambeckwith

Hello world! It has been quite a while since I last updated my blog. Life is busy especially when you are working full-time. Let me get on with my article immediately.

So far in my articles, you may have noticed that I have presented the process of learning magic and the principles and techniques used in magic tricks progressively in a systematic manner. If you follow my articles carefully, you will have a clear and good understanding of the essentials of the secrets behind any magic trick. Subsequently, it will be easy for you to begin learning magic systematically, selecting the field of magic you like to specialize in instead of groping in the dark, learning random tricks which may be either too difficult or too easy but meaningless. That will save you lots of time and money.

Moreover, different magic tricks have different effects on the audience. So it is important for you to know what you are trying to achieve with your magic tricks. Are you trying to build rapport with someone? Or is it you want to break the ice with a stranger? Perhaps you are trying to focus the attention of a group of familiar or unfamiliar people on yourself or you are simply trying to entertain your family and friends. Using the wrong magic tricks and performing the right magic tricks with the wrong presentation will not bring you the desired effects. Thus picking up magic tricks randomly here and there, especially free magic tricks on the internet will not help you achieve your objectives.

Nevertheless, I will only touch on the general principles but not into the details as I do not wish to expose the secrets behind magic openly. These articles are meant to help those who are truly interested in investing into learning the art of magic and making the journey easier for them. This is to prevent exposing the secrets behind the art of magic to nosey curiosity seekers who do not respect the art of magic.

Magic is essentially an art of deception. The line is extremely thin between a con artist and a magician. A magician uses the art to entertain whereas a con artist uses the art to rip off his targets in order to benefit himself unethically. Unfortunately, there are many half baked magicians who are also part-time conmen. In the process of learning magic, I was unfortunate enough to come across a few of these. If you want to learn magic, you must be clear about your objectives and make a clear stand on how you are going to use what you learn from the art of magic.

The essential principles of performing magic tricks are

1. the force,
2. misdirection,
3. cunning phrasing of words and
4. sleights 

Understanding how these four principles work will enable you to know how more than 70 percent of all magic tricks work.

The principle of force as the name implies, forces the audience to make a choice that is predetermined by the magician. For example a magician let the audience pick a card at random. The card that the audience eventually pick is the card that the magician ‘forces’ the audience to pick. Of course the audience will not realize that if the magician is skilful in the execution of the force. The force can be executed by using props, sleights, mathematical principles or a sequence of instructions dictated by the magician to the audience. A magic trick that uses the principle of force is usually one where the magician predicts an outcome such as predicting the card chosen by the audience. The field of magic known as Mentalism (mind reading) uses the principle of force very often.

Misdirection simply means distracting the audience. Stage magic is composed heavily of stage props and misdirection. A very simple thing to do is to direct your audience to look at somewhere else away from what you are sneakily trying to do elsewhere. Directing the audience to look elsewhere is a visual misdirection. Besides that you can misdirect the audience by keeping them busy with something to do or engaging them in a conversation. I would like to call that mental misdirection. Another form of mental misdirection is to make the audience think that you have done something, say with your hands, when you have actually done something else. The master of misdirection is late Tony Slydini. To understand and appreciate how does misdirection works in magic tricks, it will benefit you greatly to watch Tony Slydini perform his magic tricks.

The third principle listed here involves a manipulation of words. I would like to call this double-talking. Whenever a magician engages the audience in a conversation, his instructions and predictions may seem to mean something but it could also mean another thing. Besides double-talking, he would possibly instruct the audience to do something subconsciously by a play of words.

Sleights are skilful manipulation of hands. Mastering sleights is the most time consuming task magicians have to spend their time on. Although it may not necessarily be true that the magician who is the most skilful at his sleights is the best magician but a magician must be skilful at his sleights in order to be a good magician. Thus I have always advocated beginner magicians or aspiring magicians to learn magic tricks that do not involve the use of sleights in the beginning but to perform simpler form of magic tricks while giving themselves time to practice their sleights.

In my next article, I will talk more about Misdirection in magic.

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.