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I used to find Jay Sankey really annoying when I'd only seen him on video, but then I saw him perform live and he was hilarious, along with being a superb magician. I don't understand what the issue is with this clip. What's the problem?

The guy who does Pass With Care is called Peter Cassford, and, to be honest, opinion is divided on whether it's any good or not. The more generally accepted good source for the pass is Richard Kaufman's On the Pass, but if you can find Ken Krenzel's video The Pass (not yet available on DVD as...

I think that Gems don't necessarily reveal their beauty until they're cut and polished. And with that pretentious extended metaphor I'll give an example of what I mean. The most powerful effect in my repertoire is forcing a card and then reading the spectator's mind. It started off as something...

A cull shuffle is one in which a group of desired cards, possibly distributed throughout the deck, are gathered together, usually at the top or bottom of the deck. There are several different types of cull shuffle, with the most high-profile probably being Erdnase's system of cull shuffling and...

That's lovely. I've got a routine I use the Impulse change for at the moment that this change would suit beautifully.

I'd like to pick up some points made by other posters on the 1-on-1s. The Diagonal Palm Shift and the SWE Shift are not gambling or card table moves. They could potentially be adapted into a magician's gambling routine, but they were never intended to be used to cheat. If you actually want to...

Really? I will admit that the stuff taught as "NLP" is a combination of common sense, classic hypnosis and bull excrement but (as far as I'm aware), eye-accessing cues were first codified by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, and therefore part of NLP. It's these cues that form the majority (but...

Have you read Pure Effect? In there he goes over his technique for telling whether someone's lying and it's pure, classic NLP. Admittedly, most of his stuff is merely presented to look like that, but he does occasionally use that technique.

Allen Ackerman goes over a lot of deals on Advanced Card Control Volume 2. It's basically a lot of the material from Marlo's Seconds, Centers and Bottoms, plus a couple of ideas from Mr Ackerman himself. Gene Maze and the Art of Bottom Dealing is a brilliant book that I only managed to get hold...

I've never really understood the appeal of Dynamo. On his TV special, there were a some sloppy moves and I never really felt much charisma or engagement with the audience. He got the same reactions any half-competent amateur magician would have done. I can see that there may be a niche for a...

If you're gripping with your pinky, does that mean your taking the card out the front of the deck?

I think people like "straight to the point tricks" if the tricks are more interesting than the performer, and traditionally, a lot of magicians haven't really bothered with such gimmicks as charisma and stage presence. This is not to say that effects shouldn't be simple, but ideally, the...

Tricks of the Mind is available pretty easily anywhere, as it's more for the general public than magicians only. Don't pay $1000 for it, unless someone's got a platinum, diamond-encrusted copy. His earlier books, Pure Effect and Absolute Magic are quite hard to find, and therefore expensive, but...

I prefer the Master Grip to be honest. The Erdnase grip is a bit unstable for my tastes, and I think you get more knuckle flash when you push out the bottom card. However, I think a good bottom deal grip is something that is specific to your own hands. Dai Vernon said that the best bottom deal...

Just to clarify, I didn't say that De'vo claimed the Double Charlier and Running Charlier. I meant that others had erroneously credited these moves to him.

Well, actually, on a similar note, I've seen the "Double Charlier" and "Running Charlier" (taught on XB), credited to De'vo, whereas the technique was published in Hugard's Card Manipulations series under the heading "Variation of the Charlier Pass".

Sorry to correct you, but I think you mean Charles Bertram, rather than Ross.

The godfathers of gambling routines are Darwin Ortiz, Martin Nash and James Swain, so have a look at their DVDs. I would also suggest the work of Jack Carpenter, but I don't think his material has made it onto DVD yet. Alternatively, you could go with your own suggestion and pick up Ben Earl's...

I think they were both moves that kind of floated around from magician to magician by word of mouth in the 1800s. Charlier was working in the late 1800s, so I would imagine that the first publication of his pass would have been in Professor Hoffman's More Magic in 1889. There may be an earlier...

I've just heard that Dan and Dave Buck, and Daniel Garcia are going to be there, along with all the quality acts already booked, like Jeff McBride, Joshua Jay, James Randi, Ian Rowland, Michael Ammar, etc., etc. Should be a good one. If anyone feels like meeting up for a drink and a session...