My recent post urged you to slow down a little when learning sleight of hand. When I made that post, I wondered whether I’d receive responses from move monkeys like myself who were concerned that they would get bored of learning just one move. And that’s exactly the response that several people emailed me.

But, there’s something I deliberately didn’t address: the difference between practice and play. I play with moves, tricks, concepts and ideas on a daily basis. However, along with those kind of play sessions I also sit down and practice. A practice session for me is when I sit down and focus on one thing in particular. I block out everything but the move or trick that I’m working on. This last week, for example, I’ve been practising the One Handed Top Palm with my other hand as I think it’ll be useful to learn it with both hands. I play with ideas for hours, but I’ve only been focusing on that one move in my practice sessions.

Just like practice, play is essential. As you get more experienced in magic it gets harder to do, but I urge you to try to play with ideas as often as possible. Playing with lots of moves, for example has its uses. As does playing with old apparatus (unless you’re Rich Aviles).

A lot of serious card magicians that I talk to are in a rush to learn too much too soon. They want to learn every sleight possible: first the Classic Pass, then the Dribble Pass, then onto Charlie Miller Cascade Pass before continuing with a Second Deal and a Bottom Deal. All of this in a few months.

I have a different point of view though. I take a single sleight and I work on it for a good few months. This gives me time to explore lots of descriptions on the move and ask lots of magicians for feedback and criticism. Most importantly, it allows me to concentrate and focus my practice sessions better than if I’m trying to learn too much at once.

Then, when I’m ready (normally when I’m getting proficient with the move), I start to fully research tricks that utilise the move and start playing around with my own ideas too. I think of this as the Royal Road to Card Magic approach; learn a move and then learn some applications.

If you’ve got a lifetime in magic ahead of you, I think this will be the best long term approach for learning magic effectively. Slow down, focus, experiment and enjoy. The end result will be an arsenal of effective, perfected moves as opposed to a large repertoire of poorly practiced and ill-used moves.

What will your chosen move for the next few months be?

The Five-Second Rule is that if food falls on the ground, it may be safely eaten as long as it is picked up within five seconds.

Based on this, I propose that magicians adopt the Two-Second Rule. It has nothing to do with dropping cards: quite the opposite in fact - it’s about holding the deck for too long.

I suggest that the rule is simply this … magicians should never be seen holding the deck with both hands (i.e. left-hand dealing grip with the right hand also holding in end grip) for longer than two seconds. Not only is it uncomfortable looking, I think it’s a tell for many people that you are about to execute a sleight, or are currently executing one (which for most people is the only reason to hold the deck like this).

The reason that this is bad is because a normal person doesn’t need to hold the deck with both hands. It’s not heavy, so unless you’re protecting it against some kind of crazy gravitational failure, you don’t need to hold the deck from above and below.

So, my plea is that magicians worldwide hold the deck and execute moves with both hands only in circumstances where they have motivation to do so. Such circumstances could be to square the deck, shuffle it, reposition it or move it from one hand to another (all acceptable covers for a move). But don’t dwell on it - move straight on to a grip that looks more natural for longer periods.

Follow the Two-Second Rule. And vote Gladwin at your local election.

Magicians love stuff. We have drawers full of stuff (you can read that either way). A new thing comes out on the market, we buy it. We have to know how it works, and how it differs from that other thing we bought last week.

One item that seems to appear every few months is a new way to carry the stuff that we have. You have no doubt seen these contraptions. The Assassin Pouches, the Pro-Carriers—you know what I’m talking about. I can see how some of these products are useful to a working professional. However, I like to keep it simple so I usually just carry a deck of cards. If you’re like me, you probably look for innovative ways to carry those 52 pals. Below you will find my top five products for carrying a deck of cards.

5. Engraved Metal Case - $18.00
4. Mulholland Brothers Case - $38.00
3. Home-made Duct Tape Case - About $2.00
2. Body Harness - $175.00
1. Preferred method: Left Pants Pocket - FREE

Although, I must say, the harness is a very close second.

I’ve recently been experimenting with Marc Oberon’s “Master Deck” and thought I’d share some thoughts with the hope that it helps potential purchasers make a decision on whether the deck is suitable for them. I also hope that my thoughts will assist those that already own the deck, with some tips on building such a gimmick into your routine.

For those that don’t know, the “Master Deck” is a moderately-gimmicked, completely-stacked, yet almost-examinable deck that allows you to locate a named card in seconds. Marc uses the deck for a guerrilla-style sequence in his act where he locates five or six selections with a crescendo and it’s pretty amazing to see someone find so many named cards at that speed.

On the surface, this is like a memorised deck without the memory and I’m sure many people will consider it as such. However, on closer inspection it’s a little less versatile than your average mnemonic stack. The main similarity is that with the “Master Deck” you are able to find any card in the deck, but the main difference is that you don’t actually know its location. This means that it opens you up to just a small number of the functions of a memorised deck.

When thinking about uses for the deck one might be tempted to say that the possibilities are endless. And they probably are. Marc Oberon’s deck gives you the ability to get any named card under your control and with the exception of six or seven short effects, you’re left to come up with the rest yourself. For some, this is a great thing, but for others who aren’t so interested in experimenting with an idea, I think this might be a little restricting. I heard on the grapevine that Marc will be releasing additional routines using the deck in the future, so that will probably help anyone who purchased the deck and doesn’t want to create their own tricks with it.

Due to it’s very nature (and intended purpose), I can’t imagine using this deck for a trick that doesn’t start with the words “Just name a card” and end with the revelation of that card. Some of the examples that Marc gives mostly cover the obvious applications of such a deck (Ambitious Card, basic card revelations etc) and then border very slightly on the more esoteric. But, by the nature of the deck being “name a card and I’ll find it,” I have to question how many of these effects that you can really feature in your act. I agree with Joshua Jay who on his Close-Up Up Close DVD set rightly points out that the more times you find a named card in succession, the lesser its impact gets. This isn’t a problem that Marc needed to solve when creating the deck, it’s a problem that all users of the deck need to solve for themselves and find a way to structure their use of the deck so that each revelation is stronger than the last and that they find the optimum number of times they use it in a routine.

On a similar note, I guess the important consideration to any user of this deck is that by using more than two or three, “you name a card and I’ll find it” tricks is to dispel the audience’s thought that you’ve purchased a special deck of cards that does just one type of trick. It’s the advanced magician’s equivalent of a layman buying a Svengali deck and only performing in tricks that use the Nine Of Diamonds! That means, to really get the most out of this deck, I think you’ll need to find a way of either switching in the gimmicked deck and/or intertwining other effects around it.

A definite plus for the deck is that it’s certainly possible to find quite a view effects that could be performed with the deck that don’t actually use it’s secret mechanics. Of course, one must hope that you wouldn’t compromise your performances by finding tricks that merely fit your routine in method and not in effect. These are, I guess, the same limitations that apply to a memorised deck, but the fact that the “Master Deck” is gimmicked adds a number of small complications that might require a little imagination to solve.

And one final thought: while the advertising proudly states that the deck removes the memorisation from a memorised deck, I don’t think that’s its only appeal. For the most part, it also removes the skillful estimation that is often required to perform the same tricks that you’d use the “Master Deck” for. And to me, that’s a massive plus for anyone that wants to spend the time working such a trick into their act because many people learn a memorised stack and that get disheartened to learn that they can’t perform this kind of instant card location without spending an additional few months perfecting their estimation skills.

Are you using the “Master Deck?” If so, maybe drop us a comment below to share any of your thoughts or experiences!