What's your go to quick trick

[Justinquill]

Hey theory 11 crew!

So just got home from a great Halloween, and I've had this come up a lot lately and wanted to see what you all think. When a random person who hears you are a magician *or whatever you call yourself* comes up to you and ask if they can see a trick, what do you do for them, if anything at all.
For me if I have the time, I always will oblige to that request and some of my go to tricks are a simple card switch, a small ambitious card routine, or a guess their chosen card via facial ques.
These are just some quick tricks I can show someone who finds out who I am. What is your go to?

 

[Maaz Hasan]

So if I'm bringing a deck with me, I have the Advocate in my pocket. I perform the "Invisible Card" effect, where a freely named card appears in my hand, but I present it as a joke so people are caught off guard. It also allows me to flow into a card trick. That is my go to card trick.

I also have a personnel Card to Wallet handling that I carry in my Wallet with no extra space taken up. I will normally perform it in the middle of my routine, but if I need to, I have it. I also have the Classic 2 card Monte cards in my wallet.

Besides that, I will probably have Odyssey on me, which I will perform (paired with some impromptu ring magic like "Reflex" by Patrick Kun), and If I don't have the Odyssey Gimmick, I'll do just the impromptu ring magic. That is probably my other go to effect (I'll choose between this and the card tricks listed above, depending on which one I think fits the situation better).

Lets say I don't have a deck/The Advocate or a Ring on me, I have a little list written in the notes of my phone that I perform this effect that Daniel Garcia created & taught here:

If my phone is out of charge, I have no cards, no ring, and forgot my wallet, I can always do some impromptu ring and coin magic with borrowed objects, or a PBOTH routine using paper or Napkins.

Finally, if I am caught in a situation where I can't even do that, I do a mind reading trick using a magicians choice force.

Just realized how many outs I have built in for myself...

 

[VagueTheory]

Biddle Trick!

 

[Hgagnon]

Biddle trick or be honest what is it

 

[RealityOne]

John Bannon says that he lets people ask three times before he performs.

Something else that struck me is from Darren Brown's Pure Effect. He talks about seeing Eugene Burger perform and how Eugene began by conveying the sense that the spectator was going to see something miraculous.

The idea of a quick trick is seductive - the ability to perform anything on the fly. But think about going into a five star gourmet restaurant and asking if they could whip up something real quick in five minutes so you can have it to go. It would seem that something is missing from the experience.

Wouldn't it be better to have a signature performance piece tha has all the bells and whistles of presentation and scripting? Something that engages the audience beyond the mere trick?

For me, I have a routine using worry stones where I talk about the connection between worrying and prayer and the philosophical nature of prayer - quoting a contemporary female magician, a Russian agnostic and a Danish theologian.

If the topic of conversation drifts to how magic is done, I have a story about a magician that I saw who wouldn't tell me how their trick was done. The spectator plays the part of the magician and, after performing the trick, isn't able to explain how they did it.

I love to perform my wildcard routine as I tell the story of how I met my wife.

I prefer "Let me share some beautiful magic with you" to "Let me show you a quick trick.

 

[Lord Magic]

Hey theory 11 crew!

So just got home from a great Halloween, and I've had this come up a lot lately and wanted to see what you all think. When a random person who hears you are a magician *or whatever you call yourself* comes up to you and ask if they can see a trick, what do you do for them, if anything at all.
For me if I have the time, I always will oblige to that request and some of my go to tricks are a simple card switch, a small ambitious card routine, or a guess their chosen card via facial ques.
These are just some quick tricks I can show someone who finds out who I am. What is your go to?

Picking cards and revealing them amazes the layman pretty well.
But if you mean 'quick' as in great effects that I can perform in a quick span of time, the classic fooler that involves you giving 2 cards to the spectator, so that you have the other 2 and suddenly bam! The spectator has your cards and you have theirs. Pretty simple storyline. Or the one where you show the 4 aces once, ask the spectator to remember their sequence and then you deal 3 of the aces face up and place one face down. You then ask the spectator what it is, but the truth is that the face down card is actually a joker! Quite entertaining (in the Royal Road probably).

But usually, people ask me to show something when I have no cards with me. I just do few body tricks then, or coin tricks.
I might even do mentalism at such a moment, but they are not that 'quick'.

 

[WitchDocIsIn]

Like David said above, I prefer to be in control of any performance environment and don't really do "quick" tricks.

In general if I am going to do an impromptu performance, I do one of a few different suggestion/hypnosis demonstrations which revolve around the untapped power of the human mind.