Now that's a great piece of advice, Bruce! Not "grumpy old guy speak" at all! I only found out much later how important CLEAN HANDS and FINGERNAILS are as well! Ask any female that's seen a close-up worker with dirty hands/fingernails!

Our hands are the primary focus of close-up and card magic, other than the props!

Just my $.02

Doug

I selecting a few tricks for a magician with a limited repertoire, I suggest the following objectives:

(1) The trick should work for close-up, platform, and stage.

(2) It should pack small and play big.

(3) It should be one of the classics of magic--these tricks last.

(4) It should be grouped with two other tricks that make up a sequence where one trick flows into the next.
This is a recommendation of Mike Skinner in his book Classic Sampler. Doing this ensures that your
show flows smoothly and

(5) It should be well rehearsed and should follow a written script that is memorized.

(16) It should fool the pants off the audience.

Your selection of Extreme Burn (or Hundy 500), is a good one. It is a bit small for a big stage, but it works well in close-up and platform shows. You might add a couple more money tricks to the mix. Start with Extreme Burn. Then borrow a spectator's $1 The audience will think you are about to turn that into a $100 bill. Instead perform pen-thru-dollar. Then finish with something having a strong climax such as the Floating Dollar or maybe Bill-in-Lemon.

Whit Haydn's Chicago Surprise definitely is not an easy trick, but it is great if you are willing to devote several months to working out the details. One reason why it is difficult to learn is that it has multiple endings and multiple tracks to each ending. Thus it is hard to keep everything straight. It works well for close up and platform but not too well for stage. As it is a fairly long trick, this is one where there is not a lot of need to group it with other similar tricks. On the other hand, I really like the Brainwave finale that Whit recommends, although I haven't seen him use it.

Some other classics you might look at are Died Silks (Ron Wilson version), Egg Bag (Johnny Thompson), Torn and Restored Newspaper (Gene Anderson), Ninja Rings (Shoot Ogawa), Rope Routine (Daryl--includes cut/restore and Professor's Nightmare), Slydini Knots (Bill Malone L&L), Card-to-Pocket (Sankey from Francis Carlyle), Card-to-Wallet (Mike Skinner), Autome (Max Mavin), Whispering Queen (Ron Wilson version), Six Card Repeat (Hugard), 20th Century Silks (Silk King Studios-expensive).

If you spend the time to perfect the above tricks, I believe you will have a repertoire that will be with you for your lifetime. These are classics of magic.

I hope this helps.

Good stuff Jim. I especially like your suggestions for the Extreme Burn routine, ending with Bill in Lemon. That could do some serious brain frying.

My favorites include:
* Card Warp
* Color Monte
* Sponge Balls
* Bet-cha (playing card to dollar bill)

Cards up the sleeve worked very well for me and cost only the price of 10 assorted playing cards and a little practice.