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What does she mean "get you anywhere"? It'll get you somewhere. If you want to become a professional magician, then magic is quite a key element to concentrate on. If you want to be a surgeon or a scientist, maybe not so much, although I would suggest that developing manual dexterity with...

If you're happy with it just being a hobby, you can find a lot of pretty decent tutorials free on YouTube or Kardistry.com. You'll find that some prerequisites are assumed in many tutorials (such as a working knowledge of Dan and Dave's material or some of the one-handed cuts from Jerry's...

First off, what coin magic books/DVDs/downloads do you have? It's important to have a clear idea of your goal before you start practising, so having a good description or demonstration of the technique is key. When you're sure that you've understood exactly what you're aiming at, then effective...

You could use four (apparently) randomly chosen ESP cards: circle, wavy lines, cross and star. Then they could be divided between curves (circle and wavy lines) and points (cross and star). You could imply that the curved shapes tend to appeal to certain personality types and pointed ones to...

One of the benefits of being a wonder worker is that our ambition doesn't have to be limited by the narrow confines of the possible. As magicians, we know that anything we can imagine can, with a bit of appropriately applied glue, a special pocket, the right angles or a repetitively practised...

Thanks very much Jason! I'm not particularly well-versed in tabled shuffle work so it's good to get reassurance I'm travelling in the right direction from someone further down the road than I am!

I don't own The Code, but surely the system isn't just about baldly telling someone their card. The important thing is that you know a freely arrived at selection under circumstances in which, apparently, that's impossible. If you can't think of any applications for that then I've got some good...

Do you think there are disadvantages to building up your "shuffle muscles" by deliberately making tabled shuffles harder for yourself when practising by laying a very small (or no) bed?

Many years, I'd struggle to pick one particular release. This year, however, I have not the smallest corner of a shadow of a doubt. The best release this year was the Hofzinser book set from Conjuring Arts.

Thanks for the clarification, Jason! Any and all improvement to my Erdnase knowledge is gratefully accepted!

1. Do you think that it's harder to get audiences to suspend their disbelief now everyone's more familiar with the possibilities of technology? 2. What qualities or attributes do you think divide great stage illusionists from those (to paraphrase Derren Brown) just showing off props they've...

If you're not interested in sleight-of-hand then your best bet is Karl Fulves' "Self-Working" series of books.

I think that, possibly, this discussion might turn out to be founded on a misleading premise. Sure, we could discuss why Blaine, Angel and Dynamo have TV specials, but they got those shows in an old media paradigm and the way that they got famous won't be the way the next generation of magicians...

Agreed. While the Ackerman set has much to recommend it, there is a lot in Erdnase which isn't covered on the DVDs. I think that, as it stands, there isn't a good video resource that covers everything in the book. Having said that, though, scattered throughout various videos, there are instances...

Check the time on your confirmation email. That's my tactic anyway!

Are you only talking about card moves? I think everyone who wishes to describe themselves as a magician should learn a false transfer of a coin or other small object, even if they intend to specialise in cards. To my mind, the archetypal magic effect is to make something disappear. It's the one...

The procedure sounds very much like a standard "Cards Across", while being cunningly presented as something different. If you research methods for "Cards Across" (or study David Blaine's performance of the effect on Real or Magic), you'll get a good idea of how this could be achieved.

I highly recommend Shoot Ogawa's Master of the Muscle Pass DVDs. Not only does he teach the move in exquisite detail, slowly building the difficulty level, but he also teaches some excellent applications for the move that aren't just the standard falling-up effect. As Steer and Rick have said...

I think perhaps "growth" isn't what cardistry needs. Maybe what it needs is focus. What's the point of more and more people doing more and more of the same? Whether there are a thousand or ten million people making cardistry YouTube videos doesn't really make much difference to the development...

I think a good starting point for this idea would be to set up a blog (or mabe a podcast if time and inclination permit) which featured in-depth interviews with people who might be able to signpost some future directions cardistry could take. People who understand what cardistry and non-magical...