I love watching Mark at conventions, he is just the best demonstrator there is.

Can't wait to sit down and watch the lecture!

Great lecture. I think he proved how difficult this very one-sided format is, even for the best performers. But I think Mark did as well as anyone could do. The effects are amazing. No BS. Just rock solid magic.

- Stuck-on Monte- killer
- Solo- killer
- Word in a Million ("Book Test" to be used with ANY book) - killer
- Card under Glass to Mouth (2-card Transposition) - killer
- The Attitude Card Force - killer
- Card to Breast Pocket (and out of Breast Pocket) - killer
- Think of a Card (I am still totally amazed on how he does this!!) - killer

Think of a Card, one of my strongest tricks since I saw it on his DVD several years ago. I don't have the nerve to repeat it but it works nearly every time.

Brian, you have very high standards, so I'm so glad to see your post because I feel the same way about what Mark taught.

I would have paid the price of the lecture for the card to breast pocket.

I'm only part way through this lecture but, Brian, with regards to the format, I actually think some lecturers have really made it work. Danny Garcia's and Josh Jay's were both fantastic as their more conversational style coupled with a small audience made the whole thing feel very intimate and personal. I'd actually go so far as to say that the Garcia lecture is the single best Garcia product on the market. Just from watching the first couple of effects, it felt to me that Mark's more scripted form of close-up mixed in with a less-than-small audience resulted in something a little more awkward. But I think when the performer syncs with the format then the online lecture format is pretty great.

I keep coming back to this lecture again and again. I think this just may be, if not one of my favorites, perhaps my favorite Penguin Live lecture! I see that at least three of my favorite routines have a lot of that lecture in them. For example, I do something similar to the Stuck Up Monte. I sell it as my favorite magic trick. I use the two Jacks instead of the nines he used and they stay in the deck paired up so they are always ready to go. Also, the rest of the deck is totally regular, so I can use it without the jokers afterward. In my routine, one jack ends up on top of the deck and I pretend to do a rising card routine. I DL the top card to show an indifferent card, riffle the cards and confidently remove "their" card. The top card has magically change, but unfortunately, it is not their card, but the joker. I then break to explain why magicians always remove the jokers because they screw everything up. I then do the monte as an example of how the jokers mess things up. I am not a fan of the, IMHO, overused "I'm going to show you how con-men do the monte scam" routine. So, this is a fun alternative. The ending is the same with their card appearing. I use an Ace to contrast with the Jokers and in the end, the Ace disappears and their card appears. I find that many people are familiar with the typical "monte" premise and toward the end of the monte style routine, they are sort of onto that the card is not going to be where expected. In my routine, I lead them in that direction so they think they have correctly guessed the position of the Ace and suddenly it changes to their previously selected card. I just love this routine, and people are just amazed!

KJ