I can't push the button on performing weighing cards because it is kinda boring/less impressive then many of the other possibilities.

I was having a conversation with a laymen about feeling for cards the other day, and demonstrating that through the sensitive nerves in the thumb (and with enough practice) you can detect how many cards you were holding at a time. This wasn't a pseudo demonstration, I was doing it for real. Started with 3 or 4 and moved up and down a small scale (nothing like the amount or speed you can do with mem work), and in my mind it wasn't fun.. his reaction was muted admiration for the work I had put into the craft, and I feel like the weighing cards effect is a just that.

The reaction is purely skill based admiration. I understand that fundamentally every reaction is an admiration for the skills you have honed, because pretty much everyone knows magic isn't real.. but other tricks (especially some of the mem deck ones) offer a sense of magic (even momentarily) that takes the breath away from the people viewing. Weighing cards creates an inevitable "ok, so what?" moment in the minds of the spectators unless specific conditions are met. magicians who display card control techniques fit those conditions for the most part.

I much prefer tricks like mnemonicosis, because WHEN DONE RIGHT, it's just so *** impossible. This was the kind of trick that I got into magic for, and there are many others like it. I know many magicians that throw "weighing cards" routines into their mem deck work and I really wonder why.. it doesn't fit the rest of the magic they are demonstrating..

I'm rambling now. I don't think it gives away methodology, as long as a couple of false shuffles are thrown in there.. just hate it when the magicians conflate magic with believable demonstrations of skill (and it's possible applications).

Obviously not saying anyone here is doing that, I just know many that do.

I can understand that. However, you might want to do it exactly as a skill demo (I think this is how Richard Turner uses it in the midst of a gambling demo), which is what I'm aiming for. It can be part of a three or four way skill demo, as per Darwin Ortiz (weighing, instant memorising, psychic sense). But yeah, on its own, it's not a huge kicker - but it can be part of a nice more fully fleshed out routine, IMHO.

Yep those are the conditions where I think weighing cards makes sense. It floats well in and amongst other demonstrations of skill, e.g. Any gambling routine.

I have noticed many who will perform ACAAN or any other impossible feat with cards, and weighing cards will be in the same performance. I always question why, as it only leads a viewer down the path of "that must be a technique he uses to complete/help with the previous or following tricks". Surely this isn't something you want to do if you want to sell the impossibility of the effects. I hate giving an audience an out for explanation, if what I do seems so impossible.

Weighing cards will work for you terrible wizard, as you seem to understand the logical framework that the effect needs to be placed in. That framework isn't my style, but it's a great one to go for. And now you have me pondering how much of a kicker ending you could have with the weighing cards plot alone.. that sounds like a fun restrictive challenge.

Nice thoughts

Memorising the stack in my opinion is one of the most difficult things to do. Once you have done that, to perform some amazing miraxles you should in my view aim to master false shuffles, peeks, pass, culling and centre dealing.

Darwin Ortiz has some great books that deal with mem decks.

Some good effects: last laugh, test your luck. best of the best

[quote]On Nov 11, 2017, Harry Lorayne wrote:

Doing magic for pay hasn't been part of my life for about seven decades. So over those decades when friends or anyone who knew "me and mine" and if they wanted to see me do some magic - they had to have a deck handy. Many times people ran out to buy a deck. I simply will not carry my own deck unless I'm showing stuff to other magicians - never/ever for laymen. That way I never hear - haven't for those decades - "Impossible; has to be a trick deck"

That's interesting. I am a security officer at a hospital. Once I ran into a nurse that I worked with at a different hospital and she knows that I do magic. She had gone on vacation and bought a deck of cards with a picture of the hotel she stayed at on the backs. She asked me to do a trick with them. I think I did a sandwich effect I learned from Chris Power. I did it for her and a bunch of other nurses. When I finished the effect one of the other nurses said "trick deck". The nurse who bought the cards corrected her by reminding her that she had bought the cards.

PO