Allow me to give you what is the reason behind including the tricks you see in Royal Road.
There are many beginner card magic books outthere that you won't believe ( just check a local bookstore ). Royal Road sets itself from the rist because of two reasons.
1- The sleight-tricks teaching system. It teaches a sleight, then gives you multiple tricks you can do with it. This is simply an amazing thing for a beginner, since he'll be spending 2 or 3 weeks working on that overhand shuffle, it'll be extremely frustrating for him that after all this work, he can only do one trick. Royal Road fixes this problem, in other words, once you get the sleight at least well enough to do in a performance, you'll get 6 tricks to play with. You only then need to work on the BASIC presentation, which is included in the book.
The above point has been re-done again in Card College as well in various magic books. The other point, is where Royal Road excells above all the rest, Card College included.
2- The teaching of principles of card magic methodology. Each single trick in the book uses a unqiue method/card principle behind it. Learning all the effects will make you knowledgble in many card principles. The Glide, 2 effects, one using it as a vanish and other as a switch. Key Card, many effects, each using the key card in its own way ( distant keycard, face down key card .. etc ), and so forth. BECAUSE OF THIS, i.e, the focus on the methods, many effects might be inferior to the versions. I personally advice you to learn all of them, at least trying them out with yourself and understand how the trick work. This way you'll be fimilar with the card principles used, and then practice the ones you like.
Card College tricks selection focuses on teaching certain principles on misdirection and examples on how a trick should be constructed and presented. Royal Road focuses on how card priciples can be used in making effects, math based or sleight based.
If you're a beginner, you may use some effects. As you go into card magic, you'll come back into the book and add more and more touches to the effect, and you'll be suprised how effective some tricks can be.
I do Everywhere Nowhere, Observastion Test, Designed for Laughter, Poker Puzzle, Card to Pocket, and Gathering of the Clan. I don't do them as taught in the book, my card knowledge is good, so I smoothed out the handlings ... etc.
Cheers,
