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

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year 2010

Time really flies and we've reached the end of the year. I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2010!

I believe everyone has their new resolution in 2010. I hope in the year of 2010, I would be able to bring more quality card magic products for those who support me over the years. For that, I really would like to say thank you and appreciate so much for supporting me otherwise, I lack the momentum of publishing my materials.

I have a few projects still in the process and hopefully next year would be a fruitful success.

Andrew Loh

David Gemmell's "Pasteboards Paradise"

Today I managed to secure a new copy of "Pasteboards Paradise" e-book from one of the greatest mind in card magic, his name is David Gemmell. Well, you may think what's so special about this new e-book with this title "Pasteboards Paradise?"

I really like the front cover of showing the waterfall which is serene in view. As I have been reading most of his works and I am so used to his front cover e-book. What I mean is that David will usually put an image which in-sync with his main theme of his e-books. Only when you read further of his works, then you will get to know more about his approach in magic and why did he put the waterfall image as the front cover of his e-book? It's a riddle. Of course, there's a reason for that and I will let you to find out yourself.

When I opened the e-book, I was intrigued by the number of effects contained in this document. There are more than 25 effects in this e-book. Don't you think is a great deal? I haven't started my reading yet but I believe David's works are truly remarkable. You will realise that his thinking and approach in card magic are truly unique. At times, you will surprise how David tackles some complicated card effects and tranforms them into simple versions or even spice up the whole effects.

I will post up my next mystery e-book review on next week so keep coming to my blog for more interesting tidbits.

Andrew Loh

51 for Two - My Review

This is my first review on David Gemmell's "51 for Two" ebook. To be honest, I really have no idea about his work as this is my first time to come across his work. But, I would like to say I'm impress of his work. This effect is a solution for the classic Open Prediction (Paul Curry) / 51 Faces North (Steward James) effect.

This is a 6-page ebook, the document is well-laid out as well as credits and sources are provided very detail I would say. For those of you who think that this routine is achieved by using palming or awkward sleights, well, I have a good news for you as this is not a knuckle-busting effect. However, it does involve some clever use of forces to achieve this effect.

I was really surprised of the simplicity of this effect which two spectators do all the work. Another strength for this effect is that, it works 100% on an incomplete deck. You can even perform this effect using a borrowed deck. Best of all, you never even touch the cards throughout the process. Or did I mention that you don't even need to pre-set the deck? Without doubt, this is a very strong effect and only will work when an effective presentation is incoprated in this routine.

Well, his work doesn't end here which I believe he has other excellent card magic ebooks on sales and I have read many rave reviews about his work particularly his "Lecture Book 2009" and others. I really look forward to reading his other ebooks.

All in all, I would say this is an excellent version of the above mentioned plot. If you are like me, sometime I like my hands to rest for a while during my act, I would recommend you this effect as I said, all the work is done by the spectators. So, just concentrate your presentation and let the miracle happens in their hands.

Highly recommended!

Andrew Loh