Collins Extreme & Gangsta's Paradise - My Review

I just watched the two clips by Peter and I really would like to say "really great and excellent" materials here.

I really liked both of the effects. Very strong and I am sure you guys will enjoy these two effects! The best part is, both effects are not very difficult to do. Of course, you will need some practice. For Collins Extreme, I thought the effect finishes with the Kings and Aces just like that with the awesome combinations of Triumph, poker game theme, etc. When the Kings are turned over, I immediately caught a fever!

I really liked this time being fooled by Peter! I also liked each of the phases, very visual changes take place.

For the gangsta paradise, again, (I suggest that you watch the clip) again Peter nailed me with this one.

I thought the Jacks in the box are going to be something else, again I was wrong, the transposition effect here with the signed card (no force!) really amazed me. I really look forward to fooling my friends with this one. Awesome stuff Peter. I think Peter has done a wonderful job in providing the explanation in great details.

You don't need to worry whether you are not familiar with this or that. He covers most of the moves in great details. I highly recommend these two effects! I think it's a very good offer and you really can't get better than this! Get these two effects while you can at www.peterduffie.com.

Zany - My Review

Kyle has done again with a wonderful collection in this new e-book. And I should say I'm impressed of his creative thinking and approach in magic.

I really enjoyed the material in this collection because it has more card magic. I will go straight some of the interesting items in this e-book. For the first effect, I really like Property King with a bonus idea from Dave Forrest. Again, I really like the EXCELlent Deceit. Previously, I enjoyed his effect which utilised the Excel and this time, I like this most because you can detect when the spectator is lying or telling the truth. Excellent! The third one Hoffie Beans. I really like the idea here simply because its kicker at the end of the routine. I think Kyle has asked me quite a number of times whether I enjoyed in this collection or his previous publication Syncopation.

I would say in this collection again because first, as I did mention his approach in magic improves a lot and secondly, I really like his thinking and ideas behind all the tricks. To me, ideas mean a lot to me. I think you will find some interesting stuff in this e-book.

Sandwizard - My Review

I received a card magic e-book from Kyle MacNeill recently and today I spent my time in going through his stuffs. I find that the front cover of the e-book is interesting and it is no surprise that the entire e-book talks about card sandwich tricks. It contains 5 sandwich effects.

The author starts off by explaining about his interest in card magic and the card sandwich history at the introduction section. At the table of contents, I find them very useful as upon cliking the links, this will bring you to the particular page and I also like the simplicity of the layout in the entire e-book.

So, what about the quality of the materials? I should say the materials are quite decent and if you expect high quality card sandwich effects, perhaps this is not a preferred e-book. But, one thing I should say or impress about this chap is; Kyle is just 13 years old and I can see his enthusiam shines through the entire e-book. The reason I say that because I personally also had gone through that stage. I think Kyle has the potential of coming up good quality card magic in the future. However, there is one interesting idea which I found in this book; that is BLT - Borrowing Looting Stealing. I find that there are too many handlings to tackle this plot and it would be better to streamline the handling.

Even though Kyle offers this e-book for $4 at http://www.lybrary.com, I think it's worth checking out at least sometimes, when you read someone's materials, you may challenge yourself and perhaps even think out a better solution to tackle a particular plot.

Dr Leon's Magic World - My Review

I just bought a Mandarin-version magic book written by Hiro Sakai which is a Japanese magician.

For those of you who have been in the art of magic for quite some time, I think you may familiar with Hiro Sakai as he has been creating many magic effects in the past which you could find them in Harry Lorayne's "Apocalypse", Steve Beam's magazines and others.

This book is actually catered for beginner or intermediate magician and I bought this book is because Hiro Sakai is my idol. Best of all, this book also comes with a 100-Minute DVD which I thought would certainly add value in your learning. I have studied quite a number of his brilliant items in Steve Beam's magazines which I thought truly awesome. In this book, I found quite a number of interesting items as well. I will list out my favourite items in this book but allow me to walk you through the essential information in this book.

This book has 111 pages and with a foreword by Lu Chen. I am certainly certain that many of you will quite familiar with this Taiwanese magician.

I am not going to relate more in depths about him perhaps in my next review would be on his awesome DVD. The content of this book is divided into 5 sections. These sections are categorised as Card, Money, Handkerchief, Basic object and Parlour Magic.

You may ask, perhaps this book is catered for beginner, are the materials interesting? I believe you will find something of interest and as you know, Hiro Sakai is now a big name in the world of magic. According to this book, his next move is to conquer China with his magic. Without further ado, I will review some of my favourite items in this book.

Card Magic

• The Mystery of the A & K

This is a wonderful routine and immediately this goes to my repertoire. This is a hands-off approach where the magician does not touch the deck and the spectator would be able to find the four Aces and Kings by merely cutting and dealing out the cards making four piles on the table. The cutting sequence which I thought very cunning and effective!

Money Magic

• Miracle Illusion

I think this item is "worth" the price of this book. Basically, the magician causes two paper notes to penetrate each other visually. When I watched this, I am thinking of Andrew Mayne's "Ghost Bills". In Sakai-san 's version, you need to have a gimmick bill in order to perform this which you can make or prepare in less than 1 minute.

I listed the two items above are my personal favourites. I am sure perhaps you will find even more favourite items in this book. You will find other excellent items such as producing a bottle of champagne out from an empty paper bag, producing a mobile phone from your shoe, causing a signed-coin to appear in a sealed teabag which everything can be examined, and many other nice impromptu magic.

The only comment that I would like to make is, I am actually hoping that each of the effects or routines would be properly cited or credited in terms of providing the sources or the originator. However, Sakai-san did mention (at the "Introduction" section) there were two effects which independently created; the first one "Miracle Illusion" belongs to him and the other "Magazine Trick" which belongs to his friend.

Other items (classical tricks) I could not find the credit sources which I thought something lack of. In my opinion, I think this book could do better in terms of providing all the respective information to the readers whether the particular effect they learn is based on a classical magic and the originator must be made known. This allows the readers know (even they are beginners) and truly understand the world of magic even more in depths.

Overall, I really like this book very much as some of the items are interesting perhaps Sakai-san did enhance some of the effects but he did not make known in the book. If you are a beginner in magic, I urge you to get this book and at the same time, you may watch and learn how Sakai-san performs in a real-life situation.

Highly recommended!

ALSH

A Cut Above the Rest - My Review

Aldo Colombini's "A Cut Above the Rest" is a 22-page book which contains 25 impromptu card routines. Yesterday I went through the whole book in the evening and I would like to say some of the materials are good.

If you are looking for a truly wonderful card magic, perhaps you may disappoint as the materials here are simple and some rely on card principles. You may find card principles such as "Stay Stack Principle", "Jim Steinmeyer Principle" and others which perhaps useful to study them and to expand your horizon in card magic. Others I found quite interesting like the application of Kosky Switch by Robin Robertson, another method of doing John Bannon's "Discrepancy City Prediction" by Aldo Colombini's "Discre-Panza" and many others. Of course, you will find some spelling tricks; card tricks that involve "Down Under Deal", "Reverse Faro" and others.

There are two routines that I really like especially that deal with prediction by Reinhard Muller and Werner Miller. The pioneer guy in this field is Werner Miller as I recalled some of his materials that I read in the past. I urge you to check out his materials which I read quite a number of excellent materials in Peter Duffie's popular books previously such as Card Conspiracy - Volume 1 & Volume 2. This guy is really pioneering in mathematical principles that apply to card magic.

In a nutshell, there were quite a few couple of items that I found them interesting as shown below:

1. Strathjack (Roy Walton)
2. Only a Game (Peter Duffie)
3. Bubble Sort (Werner Miller)
4. Guatemala (Aldo Colombini)
5. De-Illusion (Aldo Colombini)
6. Primal Scheme (Ryan Matney)
7. Eight Bites is Enough (Jack Avis)
8. Slow Approach (Aldo Colombini)
9. A Bunch of Blarney (Aldo Colombini)

However, the others I just found them like decent materials. In fact, this whole manuscript caters for simple and easy to do card tricks. Afterall, the manuscript just costs only $10 so if you are looking top quality card materials, you may try to look other books. I found quite a number of items that I will use in my repertoire such as Peter Duffie's "Only a Game", Aldo Colombini's "De-Illusion" and Jack Avis's "Eight Bites is Enough" which I really like them.

Andrew Loh

Card Fusion Concept

I came up a card magic idea recently. Well, it's not really a new idea but an idea which is a combination of plots. I think most of you will familiar the card fusion concept. I am glad I tried out this routine with my friends and I have to say they received a huge great reaction. Perhaps you may try to test out your friends, family members and see how's the reaction when my new ebook is released.

Perhaps the nature of this concept plays very well to any layperson which I can attest to that. However, in my version, it's totally different and everything can be examined right after the performance. Of course, the cards can be signed. I should not say this is my new idea or improvement but I would rather say it's something that I really enjoy performing. The most important criteria is that, it makes sense and logic. In addition, the handling is not too demanding.

I really have no idea when is my available or free time to put my this idea into script but I really hope perhaps after May 2010 (which after my final examination) I would be able to write this up.

Thanks for your support always.

Andrew Loh

Some Videos Posted

Some of my short card magic videos were posted at my facebook. However, only my friends are able to view the video clips. I also did upload my two routines in short video clips performed by Mike Powers. I hope you enjoy those short video clips.

It has been a long spell I never take my own card magic videos as again, due to time constraints in my personal homework at my university. I hope after my this semester, I would capture some of the beautiful routines in my act for your viewing pleasure.

Andrew Loh

New Year 2010 - Challenges

My MBA class will start on the 5th day of Chinese Lunar New Year. Well, actually, in this Chinese New Year, I find that it is not as merry as the last few years. Perhaps I should say since I stayed outside (Subang Jaya), I distance myself far away from my parents.

Normally, my hometown neighbourhood before the Chinese New Year celebration comes, they will quickly hang up the lanterns around their house or some sort like having a competition among themselves but the thing is, there was no reward to be given even you were the fastest. So, what do you think or what motivates those uncle or aunties hang up those lanterns before the 1 month of Chinese New Year?

I used to enjoy celebrating Chinese New Year but as time goes by or perhaps I am getting to become an adult, this is where adults actually don't find themselves really enjoy Chinese New Year. Maybe yes maybe not? You have to clean the house, tidying up the places, preparing food, and have to prepare some red packets which you have to fork out your money. Well, to the certain extend I am still not at this stage yet. This only applies to those who have married.

To be honest, this new year 2010 will be a very busy year to me, but I still hope that I would be able to catch up the workload and also able to write up some of my magic materials.

Andrew Loh

Jacks Union - New E-Book

Just would like to let you know that my latest "Jacks Union" effect is available at my site. This is quite a rather demanding effect which requires you to use a very visual sleight to cause the disappearance of the Jacks to trap the spectator's selection.

The idea is very simple, you place the two Jacks on the table. A card is freely selected and signed before it's lost in the middle of the deck. One of the Jacks is placed on top and the other on the bottom of the deck.

You wave your hand over the deck and the Jacks instantly vanish. In the middle of the deck, you will find the Jacks trap a face-down card which proves to be spectator's selection.

I have been using this effect in my repertoire for about 3 years and I really enjoy performing it. Please note that you can perform this effect with any borrowed deck, no special or gimmick cards.

Andrew Loh