Guys like Daniel Garcia, Paul Harris, and Bizzaro think up amazing new tricks faster than the rest of us can even learn ‘em.

Calen Morelli invented a new trick every single day, for 177 days in a row.  How is that possible? How do magic inventors think up new illusions?

There are 3 different ways.

1) Start with the effect, worry about method later. Let’s say you’re working on a TV commercial for an exotic pet store. You decide that you want to make a chameleon appear in a shoebox. Boom—that’s your trick: The Appearing Chameleon. Now you just have to figure out how to make it happen. There are only so many ways. You can secretly load the chameleon into the box or you can begin with the chameleon inside the box, obscured in some manner—perhaps by an extra cardboard flap. So figure out how to secretly remove the flap and go from there.

2) Start with the method, build the effect around it. Stare at the chameleon and ask yourself, “What traits does this thing have that could be exploited for magical purposes?” Before long, it’ll come to you: If given enough time, a chameleon changes color. So put the chameleon in the shoebox with, say, an orange piece of paper on the bottom. Give the lizard time to adjust. When you open the lid, the chameleon will blend into the orange background. Invisible. Close the box, crack open the lid, reach inside and remove the paper. Then open the box again, before the chameleon has time to adjust from orange to beige.

3) Start with a trick you already know, adapt it to your specific need. You don’t know how to make a chameleon appear in a box, but you do know how to make a rabbit appear in a hat: A table load steal. Simply substitute the hat for the box and the rabbit for the chameleon, and you’ll be in business.

If you tried to create magic in the past and you failed, I bet you only used one of these three techniques. Why not go ahead and give the other two a chance?

Oh, and if you can think of a fourth way to think up a new trick, I’d love to hear about it. Tell me all about it in the comments below.

Rick Lax is a theory11 artist and creator of Vertigo, Detach, HighRise, ReCord, and Filter. Check out his work on theory11 and on The Wire, with his latest release Soul Paper.

David Blaine is mysterious. Steve Cohen is classy. Juan Tamariz is crazy. Mac King’s goofy. Penn & Teller are clever. And Copperfield’s suave.

Seems like all the great magicians have unique performance styles. So how do you develop a style of your own? Start with the cliché: Be yourself.

I don’t think Mac King sat down and said to himself, “When I go on stage, I’m going to be goofy”; I think Mac is a genuinely goofy guy. And Tamariz? He’s naturally wacky. Now he might play up his wackiness — but he begins from an authentic place.

And then Teller. On stage, he’s honest, sympathetic, vulnerable, childlike and dark. How’d he get there? In his own words: “Very often, taking something away helps people like me develop a style. I dropped speech. By dropping that, I found a lot about what connects me to an audience.”

Don’t worry about adding to yourself. Worry about bringing forward the qualities you already possess.

“For me,” Teller continued, “style is just taste become visible. I like stark and simple. I like instrumental solos and chamber music more than I like orchestras. I like ‘Psycho’ better than ‘Star Wars.’ So what I do (and what Penn and I do) doesn’t come from a love of scenery, or a love of light and sound overwhelming the spectator. What we like is ideas, funny and dark and curious and honest.”

Now, if you struggle with introspection and don’t know who you are, here are two tricks you can use to bring out your true character:

1) Do a couple tricks for your friends and family. Ask them what one thing they like about your performance. Next time, bring that one thing to the forefront.
2) Study the magicians you admire—the actors and musicians you admire, too. Ask yourself what, specifically, you admire about them. Why you relate to them. Use that as a jumping point.

“Create your own visual style. Let it be unique for yourself yet identifiable for others.” – Orson Welles

If you do all that, before long, you’ll have a style of your own. And before long, people might be imitating you.

Rick Lax is a theory11 artist and creator of Vertigo, Detach, HighRise, ReCord, and Filter. Check out his work on theory11 and on The Wire, with his latest release Soul Paper this past week.

Back in high school I was serious about playing the piano. I practiced every day and
I took on extra-difficult pieces like Chopin’s “Fantasie-Impromptu” and Jack Fina’s
“Bumble Boogie.”

I performed Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” for the big Senior Concerto concert. All my classmates and family showed up to hear me. I was playing by memory, and ten minutes into the piece…my mind went totally blank. I had to stop the show, stop the band, apologize, walk off stage, get my sheet music, walk back on, and finish. I was so embarrassed. Just crushed.

Most performers—myself definitely included—get nervous from time to time. And realizing that everybody gets stage fright is the first step to moving past it.

The second step is messing up. Just as it’s okay to be nervous, it’s okay to mess up, too. When I perform a trick for the first time, I just assume I’ll mess it up. I look at my first five performances as disasters through which I have to wade. If one of those performances hits, well, it’s a bonus.

I don’t do these first five performances for just anyone; I do them for trusted friends and fellow magicians—people in front of whom I feel comfortable messing up.

David Copperfield recommends beating stage fright by growing your audience little by little. Start small and work your way up.

“Begin with small groups,” he advises. “Many performances for many small groups, and then you work up gradually.”

If you follow Copperfield’s tip, the third step will come automatically: Let confidence come to you. It doesn’t happen overnight; but it does happen inevitably. When you perform a trick 100 times, you can’t help but grow confident. Doesn’t matter if you’re performing in front of a TV camera or in front of a 500-person audience. Eventually you’ll get used to it; eventually, you’ll relax a little.

Want to squash stage right? Then go perform. Right now.

The 1st time will be scary, the 10th will be stressful, the 20th will be okay, the 50th will be smooth, and the 100th will be amazing.

Rick Lax is a theory11 artist and creator of Vertigo, Detach, HighRise, ReCord, and Filter. Check out his work on theory11 and on The Wire, with his latest release Soul Paper this morning.

Editor’s Note: This article is the fifth in a new, weekly series by Jason England: MYSTERIUM. Each article in this series will be posted on Wednesday at 11:00am EST – every post on a different subject. This week, Jason talks about how to manage performing for “difficult” spectators.

It’s better to maintain control than try and regain it.

As I type this, I’m sitting on a cruise ship docked in the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia, Argentina, at the very southern tip of South America.

While I’ve been on the ship the past few weeks, I’ve been performing close-up magic shows for approximately twenty guests at a time in a small theater that’s been set up on board just for these performances. It’s very much like performing at the Close-up Room at The Magic Castle, only without the raked seating. Still, the room is intimate enough that sight lines are not a problem and I don’t need a microphone.

Over the past fifteen or so shows, I’ve begun to realize that I don’t have a lot of the problems that other, less experienced close-up performers often have with non-magician spectators. Until I gave this some thought recently, I had always shrugged off my success with “good” spectators as mere luck. Now that I’ve been thinking about writing an article once a week however, I’ve begun to analyze my act a bit more and I think I realized something these past few weeks: I’m not lucky at all.

I’m actually coaching my audiences and I wasn’t really even conscious of it.

Let’s back up a bit. How many of you have ever had this experience: you have a spectator select a card, memorize it, and perhaps show it around to others nearby. You then perform a swing cut of the deck and ask them to place the card onto the half in your left hand.

If you’re fortunate and have a cooperative spectator, they’ll do exactly what you ask and you’re able to continue without any problems. But many times the spectator seizes this opportunity to try and dictate the terms of the selection’s return to the deck. They’ll insist that they be allowed to shove the card into the middle of the deck and square it up themselves, or they’ll try and circumvent your cut by lifting up some cards of their own and dropping the selection deeper into the deck than you had intended. Although this exact thing has happened to me many times in the past twenty-plus years, it virtually never happens any more.

Now, you might read that and take it to mean that I still do the swing cut and ask the spectators to return the card and if they try and take control I just insist that they do things my way. That’s not what I’m talking about at all. The way I handle selections these days actually removes the possibility from ever occurring.

The method is very easy. I almost always work with a table, but these ideas can be adapted to entirely in-the-hands methods also. I ask the spectator to slide a card out of the face-down spread. As soon as they do this, I gather the rest of the cards as I say to the spectator, “I’ll get these out of your way.” I then turn my back and ask them to show the card around and replace it face-down onto the table so that I can turn around again. When I turn around, the selection is face-down on the table and I swing cut the deck and use the right edge of the left-hand half to scoop up the selection and “lose” it into the deck. Sometimes I hold a break, sometimes I use a crimped card, and sometimes I know a key card or the numerical position from the top.

The only time the spectator can potentially achieve the upper hand is when they have the capability to hold the selection “hostage” until it’s returned to their liking. By having them place the card onto the table, they no longer have the ability to seize control. Preventing the problem through a minor restructuring of the effect is the name of the game here.

A similar problem comes up frequently just as the performer is reaching the ending of an effect. Let’s say you’re performing Dai Vernon’s Triumph,* and you are just about to spread the deck to reveal that the spectator’s card is the only one that is face up in the face-down spread. You look at your spectator and you say, “Name your card!” In a perfect world, the spectator names her card and you spread the deck to amazement and thunderous applause. Unfortunately, what often happens is that instead of naming her card, the spectator often says, “Aren’t you supposed to tell me what my card is?” While a completely innocent and natural (albeit erroneous) question, this has the effect of derailing the climax of the effect until the performer can reply, reassure the spectator that naming the card aloud is for dramatic reasons only, and then attempt to restart the “magical moment” to end the trick.

How do we avoid this problem? Again, the solution is a sort of “pre-emptive strike” against the spectator’s line of thinking. In the first solution, we controlled the physical location of the card (we got it out of their hands before it was returned). In this example, we have to anticipate the objection of the spectator and address the concept of “naming a card” for magical or dramatic reasons ahead of time.

Don’t get me wrong; I wish we didn’t have to do this. But I find it takes only a second to say something like, “Now, I’m not a mind reader. I can’t tell you which card you chose. I honestly don’t know what it is. But I’ve got something amazing to show you. Please name your card out loud.”

I can promise you that if you say something like this to your spectators, you’re going to have far, far fewer problems. Only the most dedicated “troublemaker” spectators will stick to their guns and insist that you tell them the card. If that’s the case, then you have to finish the effect however you can and immediately get them off the stage and away from you.

I should point out, that I don’t say the exact words I wrote above. In fact, what I say isn’t even close to that, but the concept is the same. I’m removing the very idea of resisting from their minds by planting the (better) idea of a dramatic build. The end result: they cooperate every time and never realize that they’ve been manipulated in the least.

The really nice thing about using this strategy is that it doesn’t have to be repeated for every effect in which a spectator names a card. Once you are a few items into your show, the audience should come to realize that cooperating with your instructions provides them with a better experience than trying to take charge of the show at every turn.

There are other problems that come up from time to time that can be addressed in similar ways. Some spectators want to shuffle the deck after choosing and returning a card. Others want to grab the deck between effects, remove a single card and insist that you tell them what it is. Still others remove a card from the deck and “protect” it with both hands to the point that it’s mangled beyond repair and then try and return it to your deck. We solve these problems the same way the two problems in the examples above have been solved: we anticipate the issue ahead of time and either restructure the effect to eliminate the possibility of a problem, or we plant a better, competing idea in the spectator’s mind – one that obviously coincides with what we want them to do.

Analyze your effects and your act, and I’m confident you’ll find places to apply these and other techniques to improve the experience for your audiences.

* I don’t actually ask the spectator to name her card before I end Vernon’s Triumph. I just used that effect as an example of a situation where the ending was all but over and the performer wants the spectator to name her card out loud. I don’t necessarily think Triumph needs that element, so I thought I’d clarify.

Editor’s Note: This article is the fourth in a new, weekly series by Jason England: MYSTERIUM. Each article in this series will be posted on Wednesday at 11:00am EST – every post on a different subject. This week, Jason describes a practical way to practice and master The Bottom Deal.

The Bottom Deal is a classic sleight-of-hand card movement that enables you to covertly deal the bottom card of the deck while in play. With practice, the move can be done without detection.

Come Sail Away - A Practical Way to Practice and Master the Bottom Deal

I no longer have a set practice schedule. These days I find that frequent performing, even if they are only informal performances for friends and family, is enough to keep my physical skills with the cards reasonably sharp. I do still practice quite often. It’s just that I no longer need to sit down for formal practice sessions every day like I did when I was first starting out in magic.

One thing that has stuck with me however, is the concept of drilling a given movement over and over again in every imaginable way. Let me give you an example of a drill that I still do at least once a week, and sometimes much more often. It involves practicing the bottom deal.

I set up a large working area. Usually this is my kitchen table with an oversized close-up pad, but I’ve also used my blackjack table, a regulation poker table (my favorite) and even a chair turned inwards towards the couch for this drill. The idea is to give myself enough space to really sail the cards into a large number of positions.

I always practice sailing the cards. I almost never practice “placing” the cards down to the table the way we often do in magic routines. The only reason is that I’ve found that I don’t need to practice that type of bottom dealing. We get enough of it in regular magic effects to not have to worry about practicing it. Plus, it’s such a simple thing to begin with. I feel my time is better spent practicing the things that are actually difficult!

I then take several decks of cards, in various states of wear. I usually use three decks. One is brand new, one is rather old and is often a deck I’d normally throw away, and the third is usually in an in-between state of wear. I pick up any of the three decks and immediately begin to deal the cards clockwise around the table to 10 positions. When I get to the 10th position (myself), I deal the bottom card. I do this for all five rounds. All of the cards are dealt face down. I do not bother to pre-set a hand like four Aces or a Royal Flush to bottom deal; I just deal the cards.

I then gather all of the cards and deal another ten-handed “game.” This time I deal the cards to the 9th position which is to my immediate right. Afterwards, I gather the cards and do it all over again, dealing four or five bottoms to the 8th position, then the 7th, the 6th, and so on. If you’re a right-handed dealer like me, you know that it gets a bit tougher to deal bottoms as the position moves counter-clockwise around the dealing surface. It’s much easier for a right-handed dealer to deal bottoms to someone seated on his right (positions 7, 8, 9, etc.) than it is to deal to the 1st or 2nd position. This is because removing the bottom card and continuing in the same direction of travel is easier than having to reverse directions as soon as the card comes off the bottom.

After I’ve moved all the way around the table and I’ve dealt bottoms to all ten positions, I change the format to a nine-handed “game” and begin again.

This time, to speed up a bit, I’ll often only deal bottoms to the 9-seat and the 8-seat, but skip the round where I should’ve dealt to the 7 and 6-seats. I’m skipping these rounds because as I’ve already stated, dealing to those positions is inherently easy for me. By skipping these “easy” positions, I spend more time practicing the positions that are the most difficult for me.

After completing a nine-handed game, I move to an eight-handed game, then a seven-handed game and so on. As before, I tend to skip a few of the easier positions and focus only on dealing bottoms to the spots where I have the most difficulty. If you’re a beginner, I do not recommend you skip any positions. You need all the practice you can get. You’ll probably notice eventually that dealing to the right (assuming you’re right-handed) is easier, but continue to deal to these positions for the practice. If you’re already an accomplished bottom dealer, then you can skip a few of the really easy position combinations, but I recommend you still do some of them, just like I’ve outlined above. In other words, don’t always skip them just because they’re a bit easier.

If you follow this progression from a ten-handed game downwards, you’ll eventually find yourself in five-handed, four-handed and three-handed games. I suggest you return to dealing to every possible position once you’re into these smaller numbers. The turn-around time between bottom deals is getting smaller and that makes dealing to these positions a bit tougher. I’m using the phrase ‘turn-around time’ to refer to the amount of time between bottom deals. For instance, in a nine-handed game where you’re dealing bottoms to yourself you have eight other normal deals between each bottom. That’s plenty of time to do any pre-loosening actions that you might need to extract the bottom card. But when you’re dealing a three-handed game, you only have two cards in between the bottoms. For those who prefer to use a tiny loosening action like I do, that’s not a lot of time!

Finally I like to practice bottom dealing to two positions. I envision a “head-to-head” poker game and I alternate bottom dealing first to myself and then I gather and re-deal this time bottom dealing to my opponent. Even though I’ve been using an imaginary hand of four Aces or a Royal Flush for most of the previous deals, for this round I continue bottom dealing cards either to myself or my opponent until I’ve dealt out about half of the deck before stopping.

The last thing I do before changing the deck is to deal some consecutive bottoms. I practice this in two ways: the first is to deal them directly to myself in a small pile. The second way is to deal the cards clockwise around the table (as if I were dealing a game of poker) but with every card coming off the bottom.

It’s pretty difficult to do and I always start over if I mess up. I only allow myself to call it a day when I’ve gotten all the way around the table a few times without a mistake. At this point, I switch the decks and repeat the same thing.

To be honest, I don’t deal the cards back at every single position. As before, I tend to skip the positions that are easier and concentrate on the harder spots. Naturally your skill level will dictate how many positions you should be skipping if any at all.

Once I’ve done the drill with all three decks, the bulk of the Bottom Dealing session is over. I have similar drills for Center Deals and Greek Deals. Second deals are a different animal entirely and may be discussed in a future article.

Editor’s Note: This article is the third in a new, weekly series by Jason England: MYSTERIUM. Each article in this series will be posted on Wednesday at 11:00am EST – every post on a different subject. This week, it’s all about one question: why?

Mysterium: Why Am I Here? – By Jason England

I’ve often thought about my job as a magician in relation to the job that a filmmaker has. I see a lot of parallels between magic and film. In fact, I think there are a lot of parallels between magic and theater in general. Naturally, there are some significant differences as well. Let me explain what I think my “job” as a performing magician is.

Movies enable the audience to experience a variety of emotions whilst simultaneously traversing a narrative. We traverse the narrative by seeing the onscreen images, and listening to the dialogue and score. Although it’s possible to have a great visual experience without a story line (the movie Koyaanisqatsi comes to mind) most films combine the two elements of story and visual to produce those emotions. Likewise, although some magic is performed silently, the majority of magic also combines a narrative element with a visual element.

Like a filmmaker, I feel my job is to provide the audience with a feeling.

In a horror movie, the primary goal is to frighten the audience. In a comedy, naturally the goal is to make the audience laugh. In a drama the goal is dramatic tension and in an action movie the goal is to provide a sort of theatrical adrenaline rush. It should be pointed out that these goals aren’t mutually exclusive. You can have a horror movie that’s very funny, a drama that has action sequences, etc. But there is one feeling that modern movies have a difficult time providing. That is the feeling that one has just witnessed the impossible. That’s where I come in.

The “problem” – such as it is – with movies these days is that anything is possible. The combination of classical film special effects, elaborate practical stunts/effects, and CGI have taken movies to heights that only a few decades ago were impossible to achieve.

Whether or not modern CGI has had an overall positive or negative influence on movies and moviemaking in general is a point for others to argue, but it’s difficult to deny that today’s audiences think nothing of seeing aliens, other worlds, super-heroes, ancient civilizations or anything else that a screenwriter can dream up. If it can be written it can be “shown” on film.

The reason that modern audiences aren’t blown away by the visuals is that we all know and understand what CGI is and what it can do: it can do anything! It’s become our “catch-all” explanation – even in some cases when CGI wasn’t used at all!

Magic is different. With a good magic effect, there is no “escape valve” for the audience’s “how did he do that?” line of questioning. Take Vernon’s Triumph for example. If that sequence of face-up and face-down shuffles and the subsequent “righting” of the deck apart from a selection was shown in a film the audience would conclude that either editing, or CGI, or a gimmicked deck was in use. With a live magic performance, they know that clever editing and CGI couldn’t have been used – this is live! They may suspect a gimmicked deck, but a good performer knows how to either prevent that beforehand or at least convince the audience that the cards are normal afterwards.

The closest thing a magic audience has to a “catch-all” explanation like CGI is sleight-of-hand. Virtually all magicians have had an audience member state dismissively that what they’ve just seen was “some sort of sleight-of-hand.” There’s not much you or I can do for such people. I typically ignore them and vow not to perform for them any more than I have to. But, even the audience members that bring up sleight-of-hand in a respectful and positive way are often using it as their catch-all explanation. Again, a good performer has ways of routining and choreographing his effects in such a way that hopefully the sleights are not seen directly, but are only inferred and grasped at like straws by their blown-away audiences. If that’s the best I can get, I’ll take it!

The point is, once all the potential methods are eliminated, the audience watching a live magic performance is left with only one “emotional” conclusion: they just witnessed the impossible. Call it a “moment of astonishment” or a “magical moment” if you want. Most of those terms are pretty much interchangeable to me. Regardless of what term you use, the audience feels that what they’ve just seen has no explanation. That’s my goal.

It’s important to point out that neither I, nor most filmmakers are after any sort of intellectual belief from their audiences. Steven Spielberg isn’t trying to actually convince you that an alien has been stranded in a Southern California backyard or that there’s an island in the Pacific that’s populated by genetically cloned dinosaurs. What he is after is emotional belief that those things exist, for the duration of the film. Spielberg doesn’t care if you settle down and “realize” that dinosaurs are long extinct after the movie, as long as they frightened, thrilled and amazed you during the movie.

I feel the same way about my magic performances. I’m not after long-term, intellectual belief from my audiences that I can “correct” a face-up/face-down deck with a snap of my fingers, or that I can invisibly cause a signed playing card to appear on top of the deck after burying it in the middle.

Nor do I want them to believe that I can cause a card to dematerialize from the deck and reappear in a sealed envelope inside the zippered compartment of my wallet any time I want. At the end of the day, I’m happy if they attribute these things to “sleight-of-hand,” although magicians know that’s an over-simplification.

What I am after is that in-the-moment feeling of astonishment. I want to know that as the card is being shown around after being removed from the wallet and envelope, that they’re left with no logical explanation.

It is in that split second, after their brains have considered gaffed cards and discarded that hypothesis (the cards were borrowed), have considered duplicate cards and discarded that explanation (again, borrowed cards and the selection was signed!), and considered sleight-of-hand (“…but how could he have known where the card was if John shuffled the deck?!”), that they run out of possibilities and are left only with impossibilities.

That’s what I’m after. That’s why I’m here.

Editor’s Note: This article is the second in a new, weekly series by Jason England: MYSTERIUM. Each article in this series will be posted on Wednesday at 11:00am EST – every post on a different subject. This week’s article is all about the count…

Mysterium: Card Counting History & Methods – By Jason England

Within the realm of gambling games using playing cards, the concept of keeping track of cards that have been played has been around for centuries. In some games, mechanical devices have been used to assist the player by displaying the number of cards of a given value that have appeared.

The game of faro comes to mind. The faro ‘casekeeper’ is a wooden frame that resembles an abacus. Beads of wood or ivory were used to keep track of the number of cards that had been removed from the deck as the game progressed.

After the deck was exhausted, the beads were moved back to their starting positions and the next game started anew.

In other games, it’s just as crucial to keep track of the cards that have been played, but it’s up to the individual players to do so on their own. The game of Gin Rummy comes to mind. To be successful at this game, you must have an excellent memory for what cards have been played and what cards have been picked up by your opponent.

In the late 1940′s, there were a number of “systems” players that apparently managed to play winning games of blackjack by devising a crude, but effective strategy through sheer brute-force observation and some rudimentary mathematics. Depending on how you define the game of blackjack, it’s possible that similar players had been attacking the game, in its variant forms, for decades.

In the 1950′s a group of mathematicians at an Army base in Maryland developed the first mathematically derived basic strategy for the game of blackjack.

This basic strategy has been refined over the years, but the essence of it came from this team of Roger Baldwin, Wilbert Cantey, Herbert Maisel, and James McDermott. Basic Strategy is a compilation of all the correct ways of playing the various hand totals against the possible dealer upcards. For instance, when the player has a total of 13 against a dealer upcard of a 9, the player should hit until he or she has a total of 17 or higher, or until he or she busts.

If the player has a total of 11 against a dealer upcard of a 6, then the player should double-down. Basic Strategy has been confirmed as accurate by the computer simulations of millions upon millions of hands of blackjack. It is absolutely the right decision to make in any situation, unless you have other information that you wouldn’t normally have. And that concept brings us to card counting…

Building on the work done by the group of mathematicians led by Roger Baldwin et al, a professor from UCLA named Ed Thorp devised what most experts consider the first truly accurate card counting system#. He called it the “Ten Count” and published it in Beat the Dealer (1962).

Beat the Dealer took the nation by storm and scared many casinos into changing the rules. However, when they did this, the players stayed away in droves. Eventually the casinos decided to change the rules back to the old ways, and the players began to return to the tables. Blackjack remains the most popular table game on the casino floor to this day, surpassing craps in the late 60s or early 70s.

Thorp’s original Tens Count was very difficult to play in a real casino environment. More than likely there were just as many people losing money with the system by using it improperly as there were people making money with it. But, a breakthrough was just around the corner.

In Thorp’s second edition of Beat the Dealer, he introduced a new card counting system called the “Hi-Lo.” The Hi-Lo was actually invented by Harvey Dubner, and refined over the years by Thorp, Julian Braun of IBM, and Stanford Wong.

The Hi-Lo is easily the most popular count ever developed. It works like this: the 2′s-6′s are counted as +1, the 7′s-9′s are 0, and the 10-valued cards and aces are counted as -1.

If you begin your count at 0, then the 20 low cards (+1) will perfectly balance out the 20 high cards (-1). The 7s, 8s, and 9s don’t change the count at all. You should start and end your count on 0 if you go all the way through a normal deck of cards.

When your count is in the positive numbers, then this means that more low cards have been removed from the deck than high cards. This is good for the player, because the deck is now rich in high cards. This means more blackjacks for the player, more 10-valued cards when the player doubles, and more busted hands for the dealer.

When there are more low cards left in the deck (a negative count), this is not good for the player. The dealer will make a good hand more often, the player won’t get as many blackjacks, and doubling down on totals of 9, 10 or 11 won’t be as profitable.

Basically all card-counting systems boil down to tracking this relationship between high cards and low cards in the deck. As I stated earlier, more high cards left in the deck is good, more low cards left in the deck is bad. When the deck is positive, the player should increase his bets, and when the deck is negative, the player should decrease his bets to the minimum, or not play at all! Incidentally, it’s no more difficult to count 2, 4, 6 or even 8 decks of cards than it is to count a single deck. Granted, it takes longer to get to the end of the shoe in multiple deck games, but the actual process of counting is no more difficult. Movies like Rainman perpetuate the myth that counting into a 6-deck shoe is a nearly impossible skill. Wrong. Anyone can learn to do it in a matter of weeks with some simple practice.

The Hi-Lo is a simple level one count. This means that none of the count numbers are higher than 1. There are level-2, level-3 and higher counting systems that have been devised. A powerful, but very difficult to play, count is the Revere Advanced Point Count. This is a level-4 count that was devised by Lawrence Revere (not his real name) and was popular amongst serious players in the 1980s and 90s.. The problem with multi-level counts is that though they are often more accurate, they are so much more difficult to play that the mistakes made with them more than make up for their increased accuracy. Most players get by just fine with a level-1 count like the Hi-Lo.

Other card-counting systems that had various degrees of popularity and success include the Hi-Opt (two versions), the Omega II (aka the Canfield Master), the Red-7 Count, the Uston APC and the previously mentioned Revere APC.

A relatively new count that was first published in 1996 is the K-O count. The K-O count is named after its inventors, Ken Fuchs and Olaf Vancura. The K-O is an excellent count for beginning counters and is almost as powerful as other level-1 counts.

The K-O count tracks cards as follows: 2s-7s are + 1, 8s and 9s are 0, and 10s and aces are -1. Notice that this is very similar to the Hi-Lo, except that 7s are now counted as low cards instead of medium cards. This small change has some interesting consequences. First of all, the K-O is not a balanced count. There are now 24 low cards, 8 medium cards, and only 20 high cards.

This means that if you start on 0 you won’t end on 0. You’ll end on -4. Or, you could begin on -4 and then you would indeed end on 0. This is called an ‘unbalanced’ count and there are several of them. If you’ll recall, the Hi-Lo had the same number of high cards as it did low cards. The Hi-Lo is an example of a balanced count.

The advantages of an unbalanced count revolve primarily around the calculation of the true count vs the running count. Let’s talk about that distinction.

Although I didn’t mention it earlier, the Hi-Lo (and other unbalanced counts) needs an adjustment before it can be used at a real table. Let’s say you’re playing in a 6-deck shoe, and the count in your head (using the Hi-Lo) is +9. Let’s also assume that 3 decks have been dealt out and 3 decks remain in the shoe. You must convert the count currently in your head, called the ‘running count,’ into what is known as the ‘true count.’ This involves dividing the running count by the number of decks remaining. In this case, 3 decks remain, so you would divide +9 by 3 to come up with a true count of 3. You would use this true count to make your betting and playing decisions, not the running count of +9. However, you would continue to count from the running count of +9 when the next hand was dealt. Making this constant conversion back and forth in your head can be difficult to do initially, but gets easier with practice and experience.

So, when using the Hi-Lo, a player must keep the running count at all times, estimate the number of decks remaining before each hand, divide the running count by the number of decks remaining to get the true count, and then bet and play according to the true count all while continuing to add to the running count! And all of this must be done in a split second, under the watchful eyes of the dealer, the floor person, and the eye in the sky.

The K-O count solves some of these problems. Like many unbalanced counts, the K-O doesn’t need a running count to true count conversion. This makes your life a bit easier at the table, since you don’t have to estimate the number of decks left, nor do you have to do mental division! The K-O does give up a bit of power and accuracy in exchange for being easier, but many players find the trade-off to be a good one.

The casinos responded to the card-counting phenomenon by changing the rules and the format of the game considerably. Gone are the days when games were dealt down to the very last card. Most current blackjack games are dealt from multi-deck shoes, with 4 and 6-deck games being the most common. Some of the playing options of the past, such as early-surrender, are now difficult to find and often don’t stick around for very long even when they are re-introduced. Although counting cards can still be used to make money at blackjack, it’s a much more difficult and involved process than it was 30 or 40 years ago. In fact, many professional advantage players have moved on to other concepts and methodologies and now only play “regular” blackjack when ideal conditions present themselves. But those are topics for another time.

With this post, so begins a new series of articles presented by Jason England every week, as a sort of digital “column” here on theory11. For those curious as to what each post will contain – the answer is anything and everything.

Our goal is to present a diverse array of topics, from sleight of hand to card cheating, interviews, inspiration, and everywhere in between. Check back every Wednesday for the latest post, and feel free to comment and ask questions in the forums. Our hope is for this series to be less of a monologue, and more of a dialogue. So on that note – let’s get started!

Mysterium: On Tangential Subjects – By Jason England

I’m frequently asked for a list of the best magic books to improve one’s technique, effect construction, presentation, routining or showmanship. The answers for technique depend largely on the specific techniques in question, but classics like Expert Card Technique and the Card College series frequently make the lists. For good effect construction advice I always point people to Darwin Ortiz’s Designing Miracles, and to his Strong Magic for advice on showmanship and presentational ideas.

What are the best non-magic books that you feel have helped you in some way to become a better performer?

But recently I was asked a very interesting question: What are the best non-magic books that you feel have helped you in some way to become a better performer? I thought about the question and managed to assemble an eclectic list of books that I admire for one reason or another. Although in some cases, the specifics of just how these books changed me as a performer for the better are not entirely clear; my instincts tell me that they have. Your mileage may vary.

The list is varied and somewhat long, but I think there’s some great information here. I have presented the books in the order that they’re sitting in a pile on my desk at the moment. Don’t read anything into the order of the books beyond that.

A Challenge For the Actor  – Uta Hagen

If you adhere to Robert-Houdin’s oft-quoted observation that a conjuror or prestidigitator “is an actor playing the part of a magician,” then it would behoove you to study some acting and theatrical techniques. Whether or not one needs to be an Actor with a capital “A” to be a good magician is a point best left for others to argue, but few would disagree that Uta Hagen’s A Challenge For the Actor is a great book on the craft. See also her first book: Respect for Acting. It too is considered a classic in the field.

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! – Richard Feynman

Apart from just being a great read, this book is a terrific reminder of what it means to be passionate about a subject. Or in the case of Feynman, to be passionate about a great many subjects. Can I point to a specific part of this book that made me a better performer/magician? No, but I consider myself to be a better-educated person for having read it – and I have to think that that has a way of spilling over into my performances in small but meaningful ways. Although I didn’t like quite it as much, the sequel to Surely is called, What Do You Care What Other People Think? and is also worth reading.

What Einstein Didn’t Know – Robert L. Wolke

I’m a big fan of lay science books that explain everyday phenomena in easy-to-understand language. The Wolke series (including What Einstein Told His Barber and What Einstein Told His Cook) are really great. Although I don’t have any specific presentations that come out of these books, I’m convinced that there are some great ideas for magicians lurking within these pages. Some other great books in this same vein by other authors are: 101 Things You Don’t Know About Science and No One Else Does Either by James Trefil, How Can You Tell If a Spider Is Dead? by Don Glass, Nature’s Curiosity Shop and Why Nothing Can Travel Faster than Light by Zimmerman/Zimmerman, and Radar, Hula Hoops, and Playful Pigs by Dr. Joe Schwarcz. In fact, all of the Schwarcz books on everyday chemistry and science are worth reading. Amazon.com will turn up a half-dozen or so and they’re all excellent.

The Power of Logical Thinking – Marilyn vos Savant

I’ve been a fan of Marilyn vos Savant’s “Ask Marilyn” column in Parade magazine for years. Many of her answers have been collected into a series of books. Ask Marilyn and More Marilyn are the first two in the series and they’re all quite good, but I’ve always been partial to The Power of Logical Thinking. She had me at the dedication.

Gambling Scams – Darwin Ortiz

Of all the books on this list, this one is perhaps the most obvious one to turn to for presentational ideas. The notion of the magician as an expert at gambling/cheating (“I’d hate to play cards with you!”) is both natural and ubiquitous in the eyes of the lay public. Gambling Scams will help you sort out the real information from the magician-patter bullshit. Other books in this genre are Gamblers Don’t Gamble by MacDougall, Scarne’s Complete Guide to Casino Gambling by John Scarne, Dealing With Cheats by A. D. Livingston and Marked Cards and Loaded Dice by Frank Garcia. However, in my opinion Ortiz’s book is the best of them all by far and should be the first one you read.

Freakonomics – Steven Levittt & Stephen Dubner

In recent years, some great books have been released that attempt to explain confusing and often counter-intuitive phenomena using some very basic economic thinking and theories. Although you don’t often come away with any life-altering information, these books are quite popular (many have been best-sellers) and fun to read. I’m convinced there’s presentational fodder in them. While Freakonomics and the follow-up, Super-Freakonomics are some of the best-known titles in the genre, other really good ones that you’ll enjoy are Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, and The Economic Naturalist by Robert Frank. Although they don’t fall neatly into the lay-economics category, I find that books like Sway by Brafman/Brafman, The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, and all of Malcolm Gladwell’s books (The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, etc) are good candidates for presentation-mining as well as just good reads.

The Art of Learning – Josh Waitzkin

Josh Waitzkin is the subject of the book and movie Searching For Bobby Fischer. He was a chess prodigy and went on to achieve the rating of International Master (the second-highest rating below Grandmaster). As an adult, Waitzkin retired from competitive chess and became a world-champion martial artist. His Art of Learning is the story of Waitzkin’s ascent to the top (or near the top) of two very different worlds. I found myself making many comparisons to magic while reading it.

Innumeracy – John Allen Paulos

John Allen Paulos’s bestseller had a tremendous impact on me as a young man and ignited a passion for lay mathematics and probability books that I still have to this day. His follow-up books Beyond Innumeracy, A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper, Once Upon a Number, etc are good, but the first one is the best.

Story – Robert McKee

Robert McKee is a somewhat controversial person in the film and screenwriting world. Nevertheless, his Story is an excellent introduction to dealing with character, structure and other story elements that many magicians will find useful. I can’t guarantee that you’ll write the next great screenplay after reading this book or attending one of his seminars (McKee himself hasn’t had a screenplay turned into a major movie), but for magicians I think reading this book is time well-spent.

Mastery – Joan Ames

I ran across this book when it was first released and have recommended it to people ever since. Ames takes 30 remarkable people and interviews them about their accomplishments in their field. Their answers are thought provoking. I’ve always wanted to write a similar book but concentrating only on the world of magic.

Casino Game Protection – Steve Forte

Earlier I listed Darwin Ortiz’s Gambling Scams and several other books on cheating at dice and cards that I recommend. Forte’s Casino Game Protection wasn’t on that list but has been placed here separately. What’s going on you ask? It’s simple. The previously mentioned books were primarily aimed at the public, not casino personnel. Forte’s book is different. It was designed and sold as essentially a textbook on the subject of protecting casino table games. As such, it’s the best book on the subject ever written. It’s also quite expensive, frequently selling for much more than its $200.00 publication price. But if you want the real information on this fascinating subject, there’s nothing else like it in the world.

Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women – Ricky Jay

Ricky Jay is one of a handful of authors whose books and other projects I’ll buy sight-unseen. I have all of his major publications with the exception of The Magic Magic Book, which routinely sells for several thousand dollars. Learned Pigs, like his follow-up books Jay’s Journal of Anomalies, Dice: Deception, Fate and Rotten Luck, Extraordinary Exhibitions, and Celebrations of Curious Characters shows not only the depth of Ricky’s research, but also the depth of his passion for collecting and writing about con-games, cheaters and grifters, unusual performers and other “curious characters” from history. I wish I understood magic the way Ricky Jay understands the subjects he’s passionate about – magic included.

Martin Gardner (too many titles to list)

Martin Gardner is a special case on this list. He’s written so many great books, primarily in the fields of lay mathematics, lay science and skeptical issues, that it would be impossible to choose just one title to represent him. Instead, start with his collections of columns from Scientific American magazine and then branch out into whatever other titles of his that catch your eye. The columns books are: Hexaflexagons and Other Mathematical Diversions, The Second Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles and Diversion, The Unexpected Hanging, Mathematical Circus, Mathematical Carnival, The Last Recreations, Fractal Music – Hypercards and More, Wheels – Life and Other Mathematical Amusements, Time Travel and Other Mathematical Bewilderments, and Knotted Doughnuts and Other Mathematical Entertainments.

Once you’ve read those (and you should read them all!), you can look for his Colossal Book of Mathematics and his Colossal Book of Short Puzzles and Problems. Both are excellent.

This list represents about 10% (possibly less) of Gardner’s total output. I don’t believe a complete Gardner bibliography exists anywhere, although there are some lists that have all of his major publications cataloged. Suffice to say he wrote over 100 books and all of them are worth a look.

How to Reassess Your Chess – Jeremy Silman

You might think it odd that a chess book aimed at medium-strength amateurs would make a list on books that I feel have improved my magic. I agree. In fact, this is one of the books that I had in mind earlier when I wrote that it’s not always clear just how some of these titles have improved me as a performer. With How to Reassess Your Chess, all I can say is that I distinctly remember being blown away by how Silman managed to write a chess book like no other. I began to wonder if it was possible to write a magic book that would fundamentally alter the way I would look at the subject so completely as this book had with chess. Although I’ve yet to write (or read) that book, I am convinced it can be done.

The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy – E. D. Hirsch et al.

If you had to pick a single book to study before becoming a contestant on the game show Jeopardy!, you would probably want to locate the most up-to-date edition of The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy that you couuld find. I’ve read through my copy so many times that it is literally falling apart; the binding has become separated and entire sections are loose. This is one of those books that improves your knowledge on a great number of subjects, which can in turn make you a more interesting person and performer.

This week, Zach and Christen showcase new theory11 stickers included in every shipped order from our store. Christen fills us in on the latest and greatest in magic news including a new Blink 182 Promo featuring Calen Morelli, creator of Dresscode.

Zach discusses the newest effects from The Wire and Michael fills us in with a sneak peek of the new Rebel’s Ace of Spades.

Check out the episode here.

Want to be the life of the party? Here is your chance. iPredict+ is a mind-crippling prediction from a borrowed phone! A powerful effect where the spectator’s card is mysteriously revealed through a recorded voicemail or text message.

The phone call or text message looks completely real – because it IS completely real! On their OWN phone. Even an old Nokia from 1997!

Listen to the exclusive podcast with Greg Rostami.