What'll be the next big thing, when people can relate less and less with card games? Or when coins are losing their value, so that it's no big deal if some small coins are multiplied? Some (maybe not so far) day we will have to find new things to do magic with. What do you think about that?

I believe there's a shift due any time now. I think audiences are growing tired of the style of magic that has been at the front of the market (mainly cards) for the past couple decades and something more meaningful is wanted.

I know where I'm taking my performances - much more mystery focused and cerebrally based.

Hm. Interesting question.

Cards have been around forever, and I don't think they are going away anytime soon. Card magic is changing, for sure. For instance, cardistry is becoming very big. Changes like that will probably continue, but I somehow don't think card magic is going away in the next 20 years or so. Cards and coins offer the advantage of giving the audience a feeling of wonder right under their noses, with no technology. Tech can do anything, but when a magician does the impossible with an ancient analog object, it fries muggle brains pretty effectively. I watched Bebel leave an audience in tears. The impact of his card work absolutely moved and amazed them.

But I hope to god magic changes a lot in the upcoming years, mostly to see the death of the linking rings. LOL! (Except Pop Haydn's routine, cuz that's not rings, that's a brilliant oblivious sucker routine that just happens to use rings as a prop.)

You know, sometimes what's old is new again. You know what makes an audience flip out? A freakin' rabbit out of a hat. It's cliche. It's a caricature of magic. Everyone has heard of it, but no one has seen it because it just isn't performed much anymore. So when they do see an actual, adorable, cute as pie, real bunny pop up out of a top hat, hearts soar, not so much with wonder but with nostalgia and cuteness. So maybe someday, after linking rings are long dead, it will rise to become once again a wonderfully surprising, nostalgic piece. But they have to be killed dead first. So let's start with that.

People don't have linking rings at home nor do they have large, curtained stage props that can roll around with people appearing and disappearing. People also don't have industrial-sized band saws that can appear cut a person in half.

Almost every household does have a deck of cards that people in that household have used and associate with entertainment.

Card tricks are popular, and will always be popular, because they employ something almost everyone has used in their lifetime....a deck of cards. There is a personal connection to a deck of cards unlike any other tool used in magic. People envision themselves being able to perform a card trick and thus can relate to a card trick's effect. It will never go away nor do I expect to see its popularity wane in years to come.

Wholeheartedly agree!

I wonder if this is still true.

I couldn't say for sure that anyone in my family other than me owns a deck of cards.

The very ubiquity of card tricks is, ultimately, I think what will cause it to wane in popularity. Though I doubt card magic will ever disappear completely, I do think it's much harder to make card magic seem genuinely magical these days than it was in the past.

Shin Lim winning America’s Got Talent last year for performing card tricks seems to suggest that the popularity of card trick isn’t waning yet. However, people may start expecting card magicians to up their game after seeing the wonders that Shin Lim produced.

Shin Lim is an excellent example. Flawlessly executed, beautifully choreographed - it's pretty to look at, but what does it mean to the audience?

How many laymen do you think will be sitting at coffee in ten year's time, get a wistful look on their face, and say to their partner, "Hey, you remember that time Shin Lim made a hundred cards float in the air in the shape of a seven of hearts on TV?"

No one on a significant platform is offering alternatives at this time. If someone steps up and finds their place with something more meaningful, I think the popularity of card magic would decline back to just being another thing magicians do, instead of being THE thing magicians do.

This is an interesting question -- unanswerable, of course, because even magicians can't actually predict the future.


It was popular, 30 years ago or so, to say that "The Novel is Dead." Last time I checked (yesterday), the novel is thriving. And the college where I teach has a board game club -- and I don't mean video games, I mean good old fashioned board games. As Dana suggested, there's something about what's tactile and real, not just an image on a screen, that is still powerful.


I agree with WDChris that cards aren't a staple of households anymore (nor pianos, for middle class families). But I'll venture to guess that there will always be audiences, even if they form a niche group, who love magic, including card magic. Look at all the interest on Youtube, for instance.


And honestly, how can card magicians up their games any more than they already have? I realize that people are still innovating, but to say that they'll have to up their games even more is to set the bar so high that no one except the geniuses will be able to perform card magic.


One last story. Many years ago, at a modern dance concert, I saw the most unusual and -- dare I say -- magical number. All the lights went out, and there was a slow strobe light coming on intermittently. The timing was such that we saw the dancer only when he was high above the stage. The effect was of a man gracefully floating through the air. Of course the audience *knew* that the dancer was jumping while the strobe was off, but that did nothing to diminish the sense of wonder. By the standards of the time, that was pretty low-tech -- which was precisely why it was so beautiful.


--- My (electronic) two cents.

FWIW, it still is for me and my circle of friends and family. I don't know of any household in which I would not expect to find a deck of playing cards (of some kind).

The part I'm questioning is the "almost every household" part.

I know a lot of people who don't own cards because they don't play card games (And aren't magicians). There's a very strong chance I would not own any if I weren't in magic. The first deck I remember buying for myself was when I wanted to learn a card trick at 26. I'm willing to bet most of my friends don't have standard playing cards either. They play games like Cards Against Humanity, Munchkin, Fluxx, etc.

A little PS to my earlier post: I never liked card game much. Gambling routines leave me cold. Yet I love card magic as a whole. Perhaps I'm atypical, but my point is, let's not assume that if people are playing cards less now, then they'll be less interested in card magic. The opposite may turn out to be true: cards will come to be seen as exotic tokens of the past (think of the Antiques Road Show), all the more interesting because they *aren't* household objects. Who knows?


I think this kind of speculation about the future lends itself to anxiety. If we insist on worrying about the future, let's worry about something important, like climate change or China's surveillance society and its attempts to influence countries by selling them its surveillance technologies.


Wow, that's another two cents! Total: 4.

Which gambling rourines "leave you cold"? Or are you just generalizing? Some of my impromptu card gambling routines have made jaws drop all over the word for decades.

I thought I was pretty clear. Gambling routines don't interest me because gambling doesn't interest me. Utterly general. Nothing personal about it.

I just wonder if you've ever seen anyone do them ENTERTAININGLY!!! For people who were interested in gambling or not.

In some parts of the country, gambling is still a big thing. There are TV shows about high-stakes poker. My uncle used to make his living with poker. Part of that time, he was a dealer, but for over 20 years he was a high-stakes player and made anywhere from a minimal to a very good living. I asked him once if he knew any card tricks. He was never interested in doing tricks with cards. Never learned even a simple one. Just poker.

For those who do gambling tricks, the one thing I have found really jarring is when it is clear they don't actually know how to play the games they are supposedly demonstrating. (This isn't directed at you, Harry - but I bet you can think of several folks who are exactly what I'm talking about.) When you get anyone talking about "how they do it in Vegas," even though they don't actually know the rankings of poker hands, that rings false. That's the sort of thing that I think ruins gambling themed tricks, myself.

But I do agree that other card-based games have made the standard deck less ubiquitous than it used to be. Still, I think it will be a long time before cards actually vanish from the landscape.

I have found that although I love watching card magic performed well (Bill Malone!), I don't actually enjoy doing card tricks. They are a branch of magic I appreciate as an audience member, but not as a performer. I think it is worth knowing at least a couple of decent card tricks because it really isn't hard to find a deck of cards if you want to show a trick to someone, but I don't personally find cards very compelling.

Future of card magic? I suspect we will continue to see cards at the front of the magic scene for a long time to come. They are compact, cheap, and the potential for tricks seems infinite. Or maybe one day there will be 52! tricks out there and that will be the culmination of all card potential, but that could be a while yet...

-Patrick

What it boils down to - simply and obviously - is to make your card magic, whether it's just locating a chosen card, ACAAN, ace assembly or location, gambling, whatever - ENTERTAINING!!

In the "gambling" area you might want to check out my CARD SHARP & THE FOUR GAMBLERS, LORAYNE'S POKER DEAL (#1 AND #2), 10-CARD POKER DEAL, A MUCH BETTER CHANCE, MAGICIAN VS. GAMBLER - and quite a few more that I've published over the decades.

I feel like playing cards are on the come back actually. New decks are being released constantly. The values of some of these decks is skyrocketing. Cardistry is getting bigger and bigger. So it seems like the future of card magic is heading towards more flashy/technically challenging tricks.

I don't think cards will disappear because some people are trying to step back from technology. This will always lend its self to tech free entertaiment.

I often hear from people of all ages when I'm out performing that they LOVE card magic.
AGT as well as Fool Us, I think, has spurred interest and enthusiasm. But as Harry L. stated above,
It must be ENTERTAINING.