I just bought some of the old favorites, Cups and Balls, and Professors Nightmare. I have seen many great variation on each, one of my favorites being Dave Regal's Cups and Balls and Cups and Balls. Does any have any variations they would suggest so I can work on these as I bring my skills back up to par?

I absolutely love the Professor's Nightmare. Not much variation needed with that one. It looks so powerful as is.

My favorite Prof's Nightmare is Insomnia by Timothy Wenk. With the proper framing, it gets gasps from the audience.

Carrie

I highly recommend learning Dai Vernon's Cups and Balls routine as is. It is in may ways the seminal routine of the genre and is still hard to beat for clarity of effect and elegance of method.

Another classic worthy of work: Dai Vernon's Linking Ring Routine for the reasons stated above. Best,

There is a great book by Ron Dayton on The Prof Nightmare.

http://www.shopmagicvault.com/Professors......153.html

it gives many handlings and script/patters. If anything, it will stir some creativity.

For the C&B, check out the LL Videos on it. They feature so many different views on it.

Oh, I have a great Prof Nightmare routine, you can even get the audience involved in it.

I aree with Brad, Vernon's routine is classic. One day be sure to checkout Tommy Wonder's Cups..routine.

Bring the oldies back and make them new, not necessarily make them "street" lol but update them.

Sometimes in my view old style tricks makes for a stale performance.

Magic is an art where ANYTHING can appear to happen and we should try to surprise our audiences, if they see some old props come out, they may know exactly what is going to happen and have probably seen it happen the best way it can!

And for those who own Combo Cups & Balls, look at John Mendoza...

Cardamagically,
Dom