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Think Different

By Damian Jennings - Thursday, July 11, 2019

An interesting thing happened at a gig last week. I was performing for a local business. Two hours mix and mingle walkabout.

A few weeks ago, I had picked up Joshua’s Phantom Deck. It’s a few years old now, but I never got it when it was out and wanted to try it as a replacement for Omni Deck.

I’m glad I did. For two reasons:

Here’s why it is better. You get the same initial amazement from the spectator, but with Omni Deck that is where the trick ends. With Phantom deck, you then get the second phase where you reveal their card in the middle of the see through cards. It’s not a throwaway kicker ending. It is a much better climax.

It’s so much stronger.

Anyhoo, off I was going, round the groups, doing different effects and I thought it felt right to try this new routine.

At the end, the lady I was performing for said that she had seen a magician do something similar at a wedding, but he only had a solid block of plastic and how this was so much better.

Interesting. So it’s not just a magician that can see how it is better, but a layperson who had seen Omni Deck a few weeks earlier.

Now, this being said, I don’t want all the workers to start doing Phantom Deck, but there are three things to think about here.

Don’t do the same tricks as everyone else. How many times have you heard tales from people saying they saw a magician and you ask what they did and it’s Double Cross, Omni Deck, Sponge Balls and Ring Flight?
Don’t be satisfied that the end of a trick is as far as you can take it. Joshua took Omni Deck to a new level. What popular tricks can you think of that you could “level up”?
Go back and look at tricks from the past. Maybe you didn’t get something when it came out because you didn’t like the idea of it, but your tastes may have changed now. (“doth not the appetite alter”).

Featured image photo by segagman. Published under Creative Commons.

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