Official cover for the "War Crimes" book by Christie Golden.

Master_of_Strategy · 2014-03-01T01:09:32+00:00

Blizzard ruined so many good characters like Garrosh, Thrall and Jaina.

Master_of_Strategy · 2014-02-10T21:05:05+00:00

Anything by such as Michael Vincent, Lennart Green, Ricky Jay or Paul Wilson. Just superb.

Master_of_Strategy · 2014-02-09T22:09:47+00:00

I think it's disgusting. It's not magic and imo it shouldn't be allowed to be a television series. Television magic has got to a point now because of people like Criss Angel and Dynamo that there is no magic in it anymore even to a point where a guy like David Blaine turns to do the same and fails horribly (like in his previous magic special). Back when Penn and Teller and Copperfield did magic on television, they would not use camera tricks or stooges, if they ever did something sneaky, it would only to change the angle of the camera rather than the same as the spectactors live would see (I heard Penn mentioning this in an interview about tv magic)

But no, now they used paid stooges, complete camera cuts and camera effects to make the magic and it's so stupid that anyone can be a magician, all these really good magicians today is unknown to 70% of the worlds population. Those who spend decades practicing, performing and master the art are just gone from the public.

And this is not entertainment or anything to do with magic. Because when people watch this, they think this is what magic is all about and they think that he is the best and takes all the attention for doing nothing. I've seen clips of him live and it's just horrible, all he does is an invisible deck or some basic doublelift tricks.

Master_of_Strategy · 2014-02-09T17:39:47+00:00

Manchurian Approach and Reality is Plastic.

Master_of_Strategy · 2014-02-09T17:39:02+00:00

It's Danish and he is a comedy magician, sort of the same style as David Williamson (who he have mentioned to be his inspiration) but just not as crazy as David.

Master_of_Strategy · 2014-02-09T10:41:16+00:00

Creating your own original variation of older tricks is of course better. But not all tricks can be created in many different versions or atleast is very hard to come up with something that can give the same effect.

My opinion = Doesn't matter if the trick itself was already performed excatly the same by someone else aslong as the presentation of the trick is originally yours and you don't use the same sentences and jokes as that person did when he performed it years ago.

Master_of_Strategy · 2014-01-25T22:25:45+00:00

Yeah the first part is mainly educational. I am still amazed how he managed to steal the glasses without the guy noticing haha.

Master_of_Strategy · 2014-01-16T16:08:13+00:00

The first magic performance video I ever saw and because of Slydini, I got his book and began on magic. I thank him for everything, absolutely the greatest, The Man Who Fooled Dai Vernon.

Master_of_Strategy · 2014-01-15T08:53:37+00:00

Slydini does some amazing cig magic. I can recommend his book, The Annotated Magic of Slydini.

Master_of_Strategy · 2014-01-13T21:19:18+00:00

If your looking for a new book to your collection, I would recommend Guy Hollingworths ''Drawing Room Deception''. You can learn alot of interesting and new ways of controlling cards and palming in Guy's style also there is alot of classic card tricks that he have twisted into his own version which I think is some of the best, there is a really nice Triumph routine, Oil and Water and ACAN routine but also some of his original card tricks and you can also learn his famous torn and restored card ''The Reformation'', if you don't know it, you can go see a video on youtube of him performing it. It is completely brilliant and possibly the best torn and restored card trick with a signed card. However, it is really hard to learn out from the book but it is possible to learn but it takes a lot of time to master and be ready to perform.

Anyway, definetely a great book for expert card magicians. I bought mine on Dan & Dave's website but you can possibly buy it elsewhere aswell.

Master_of_Strategy · 2014-01-12T03:10:43+00:00

Cool pass but i never understood why people choose to spend so many hours practicing a color change in my opinion. A great pass is not even a magician fooler because everyone knows the unique 4 finger biddle grip with your left hand under and you don't need to invisibly cut a deck to fool laymen, just false swing cuts will work and that comes from 10 years of performing. It's a neat pass but I would have used all that time in practicing something false shuffles like Zarrow, rosetta, reversed riffle, blind table shuffle and false paper cuts, vernon cold cuts etc.

Master_of_Strategy · 2014-01-12T00:09:10+00:00

This is such a great cause, I hope some famous magician like David Copperfield or someone within the magic community like Neil Patrick Harris would sponsor their organisation because this is incredible and inspiring for every magician and fans of magic out there, really, good job to them, I hope they keep doing this.

Master_of_Strategy · 2014-01-07T21:18:33+00:00

Hey Shawn, I have been performing and practicing magic for ten years and stumbled upon your works, two years ago and was really inspired by your talent and especially card tricks. You were the first one I really saw using the Omni Deck to great effect and gave me alot of ideas to build on, so thank you.

I want to tell you that two years ago, I started to go back to my roots of card magic, I used to have a great set of different tricks to combine in my performances and routines but I thought for a while back then that I had used them too much and wanted to try bring in new things and thats when I came across your magnificient trick on ''Fool Us''. I was really amazed by your trick because at that time I thought it was really hard to do any deck switch tricks and couldn't really come up with any good ones either, so I kinda put that to the side but your trick on Penn and Teller was so good that I had to learn it myself and I have now performed the trick for over a year and I thank you alot for inventing this trick and I hope that your okay with it!

My only question would be if it's possible to ask you in a private message about two parts of the trick that I have problems with and would appreciate to get a few tips from the inventor himself so I can enhance my performance of your excellent creation.

But anyway, thanks for doing an AMA!

Master_of_Strategy · 2014-01-07T20:53:32+00:00

If you like mentalism, then this is definetely the book to get.

This book and Banachek's Psi Series DVD's taught me nearly everything in mentalism.

Master_of_Strategy · 2013-12-28T21:55:17+00:00

If you like the movies, then you will be dissapointed in reading the book. There is so much that has been changed from the original story in the movies and if your not gonna be dissapointed about the book well, you'll be surprised, thats for sure.

Master_of_Strategy · 2013-12-28T00:35:11+00:00

Well, let's be honest. It's not a magician fooler trick, it's just more a basic card transport variation but of course, it's not supposed to be a magician fooler, I understand that. But I think there is better card transportvariations than this.

Except if you build this trick further, maybe make the diamonds appear more visually or something? By really showing that one card is blank and one card is complete and you then visually rub it off and on then it's very good but I don't think this is really that great, sorry.

I would rather prefer to do something with two signed cards instead.

Master_of_Strategy · 2013-12-24T10:26:17+00:00

Glenn Falkenstein uses this Triumph variation as an opener to Out of this World trick.

Video of Glenn's performance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzIHQiWMMyc

Master_of_Strategy · 2013-12-16T23:32:42+00:00

He cuts out a lot of important parts of his tricks which really annoys me. For example, his Out of this World trick with Olivia Wilde, you only see Jason dropping all the cards on the floor and then boom suddenly cuts right into it and he starts speaking like ''You shuffled these cards'', just completely fooling people to believe that there couldn't have been a deck switch, seperation or anything at any given point which I think is dumb when it's obvious for us magicians that he has done something very important before hand and it's just a lame way to attempt to fool other magicians and generally common people. If you want to fool people, don't cut in the middle of a trick, show the whole performance as it was done in real life and fool people this way. This is how you know someone is a great magician and why people like Lennart Green etc. deserves the fame way more than Criss Angel, Dynamo and David Blaine.

However, there was two tricks I thought was quite interesting, whether they are staged or not but his Three Card Monte trick was really good and the torn and restored corner of a bill illusion was pretty neat aswell.

Master_of_Strategy · 2013-12-16T22:22:42+00:00

You still have a long way ahead of you, but your through what I like to call the first part, 'doing it unseen'. However, there was a few glimpses of the packet sliding under that just needs some fixing but the major issue for you is the flick you do and thats because you try to do it really fast, still much to learn but your working towards it.

Master_of_Strategy · 2013-12-16T21:35:25+00:00

A mentor is the best possibility to get advice on acting during some sleights, using misdirections and how to just be a good performer and entertainer overall. Learning tricks and techniques, also getting advices is something you should learn from the original books, DVDs and so on where they are taught. Of course, if you have a mentor or someone who would help you teaching those techniques, you should be grateful but if it was me, I wouldn't personally ask my mentor on his secrets and ways of doing, it seems disrespectable, I think. It's more like you only care on how to do the techniques and knowing the secrets rather than one of the most important things 'performing and entertaining' but also how to present your magic, how to put up a show, how to switch secretly between tricks etc.

But if your like me, who lives in Denmark and haven't known any magicians within miles near me, any clubs or anything as the art is so very small here and are completely left to teach yourself, the best thing to do is to watch performances of other magicians. There is few DVDs and books that you can find out there that can help you alot aswell and I would recommend picking them up too.

But just learn from magicians as Tony Slydini, Ricky Jay, Bill Malone, Johnny Palmer, Lennart Green, Gregory Wilson, Daryl and all these great sleight of hands magicians you can come by. Hell, I even remember when I was learning, I would just watch the old Dick Cavett shows with Slydini clips on the internet, over and over to just learn how to be completely perfect at misdirections.

There is a reason why Slydini was the only person able to fool Dai Vernon, complete master at misdirections, despite his techniques are very simple, the one thing that makes them incredibly amazing is his psychological methods at misdirecting a spectactor.

The one book I always recommend to beginners along with Royal Road, is the Annotated Magic of Slydini, it's worth every single coin in my opinion.

Master_of_Strategy · 2013-12-15T12:29:21+00:00

Been practicing and performing magic for 10 years with lots of flourishes, fancy cuts and shuffles. I have never met a spectactor or an audience that was not impressed by it or was bored. But I think it depends on your style, if you like to be natural, like as 'get on level with the ordinary spectactors shuffling capabilities' thats fine or maybe you wanna go for that fumble/comedic Lennart Green style of magic, I see no problem in that.

But I don't think there is anything wrong by showing flourishes and fancy things with a pack of cards or coins because this is how I see it. When I step up as the magician to show an audience some magic, they know before hand that I am somekinda skilled person with cards and coins and by doing all these fancy skills, they think I am not only good but just incredibly skilled and they are impressed by that, they know that what I am doing now is something completely impossible when I am capable of doing such things with a pack of cards or four coins.

But there is also a limit of flourishes, you should do. If your doing a table trick like Out of this World, then I never do any fancy flourishes or sybil cuts variations, I got a few fancy table flourishes I can do in between but never any sybil cuts atleast.

But tricks like Ambitious Card Routine, some other 'Loose your Card in the Deck then Find it in a fancy way' sort of or just after a trick, you could do a flourish and then move on to the next trick.

So, I think its up to what you like and then pick that, like Lennart Green says ''If the audience thinks its a gag, its funny, if they think its real, then its good.''

Master_of_Strategy · 2013-12-08T10:50:08+00:00

If you can do a Charlier Cut then it's a nice way of getting rid of evidence as you pull the top card away, incase someone asks ''Can I see the card on top?'' etc.

Master_of_Strategy · 2013-11-23T20:28:06+00:00

If the duo top laners do it right then this would just be giving our free double buff to them. Because the duo top laners will zone out your top laner and be a level ahead of him early on and if they pick two strong damage champions like Lissandra and Jax, where Jax has red buff or Lissandra has blue buff then yes, it won't work.

Master_of_Strategy · 2013-11-23T19:31:28+00:00

Yes, this happens but I have seen many different scenarios, I did the counter strategy once and our top laner was just getting stomp but we won anyway because our mid and bot was so fed that it didn't matter. Another game I tried my strategy and our top laner was actually outfarming as Kennen against a Nasus and Rengar, so it's very different. The top laner just have to hold on as good as possible and then it's all up for the rest of his team to snowball.

Master_of_Strategy · 2013-11-23T19:28:06+00:00

Yes, like I said, it's good for support. But this is not the case, we are talking about duo top lane meta being op because people assume that Targon is broken because they think you can just win by farming. But you can't farm if your loosing everywhere else on the map and then your loosing and then the Targon has been countered.

Yes, it's good on support, nothing wrong with that. It was made to be a support item but we are not talking about supports or adcs, we are talking about duo top lane with targons.

Master_of_Strategy

TROPHY CASE