Latest e-books from Michael Close

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Joe Gallant
Posts: 40
Joined: January 17th, 2008, 12:00 pm
Location: Boston

Latest e-books from Michael Close

Postby Joe Gallant » August 2nd, 2007, 7:41 pm

I recently downloaded the 2 newest e-books from Michael Close. If you have not yet had a chance to look at them, you can get detailed descriptions from http://www.forworkersonly.com/

The first e-book is volume 3 of the series The Work. Like the first 2 volumes, volume 3 focuses on palming. This time the topic is the side steal. As with the other volumes in this series, this one takes full advantage of the e-book format, combining the details of text (over 40 pages) with the visual reinforcement of pictures (over 60 photos) and video clips (14 clips). In the conclusion of this e-book, Mike states You cant get enough expert advice on this move. To back that up, Mike lists half a dozen highly recommended sources on the side steal.

The other new e-book is The Guatemalan Miracle, which takes an old Al Leech effect (that many of you probably already know) to another level by using a memorized deck (stack independent). It was a lecture by Mike about 10 years ago that first got me hooked on the memorized deck. It is always fun to learn new ways to exploit the power of the memorized deck.

Guest

Re: Latest e-books from Michael Close

Postby Guest » August 26th, 2007, 7:07 am

The other new e-book is The Guatemalan Miracle, which takes an old Al Leech effect (that many of you probably already know) to another level by using a memorized deck (stack independent).
Not to take anything away from Michael Close (as a whole), but I found the Guatemalan Miracle to be somewhat disappointing.

The copy reads:

Memdeck practitioners are always searching for powerful, commercial routines, especially routines that leave the deck in stack order.
The bit that sticks out is the "commercial-ness" of this effect. Even in its original form it's laboured, and using a memorized deck doesn't solve that.

I've performed the effect for numerous laypeople and magicians. The laypeople don't really care for it, while the magicians think it's clever (that says it all really).

I'm left feeling that the Guatemalan Miracle is a solution to a non-existent problem.

I should point out though, that the PDF is well written and very thorough in it's explanation. Detailing which cards don't work for either stack (Aronson and Tamariz) was a nice touch.


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