How to fool a magician

[RobAnderson]

Heh. Sorry, but my very first thought was, "One way forcing deck."

Sounds like your friend is a great performer, though, I'd love to see some footage of him doing his thing.

Yeah, this is the first thing that came to my mind after you said he forced it from the bottom. He must have really sold it though.

 

[RobAnderson]

i was hanging out at my LMS a week or so ago, and the guy that works there (sadly i dont know his name, YET) said something that made a lot of sense but bothered me as well. He said "why make a trick harder than it needs to be, sure you can use sleights and misdirection, but in the end as long as it fools the spectator then you achieved your goal" (or something to that effect).

It makes sense, because regardless of the tool you use, if you can get the job done then you did it. Using hard sleights where you have a possibility of flashing or messing up while perhaps make it more authentic to the magician, are ultimately unseen by the spectator.

I dont agree with it persay, but it makes a good point.

It makes an EXCELLENT point. There's a huge difference between performing for laymen and performing for magicians. The only people that are impressed by insane slights and crazy moves are magicians. When performing for a layman, the ONLY thing that is important to them is what they remember. "I picked a card, signed it, and he made it disappear and it ended up in a sealed envelope in his wallet!". They don't care if all you did was a top palm to get it there, they're just impressed that you were able to do it. If you want to impress magicians, that's when the time comes to worry about being able to do a complete ACR using only advanced slights, no DLs, etc.

*edit: I will disagree with that guy though, if he really said that misdirection wasn't important. Misdirection is of the utmost importance! In the end though, the thing that matters most to a layman is the entertainment value of what they saw. Misdirection and presentation is about 100x more important than crazy sleight of hand to a lay audience.