Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Discuss your favorite close-up tricks and methods.
iainduncan
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Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby iainduncan » January 31st, 2021, 6:53 pm

I was reading some way old threads on here I found about which of Aronson's works worked "commercially", so was curious to ask nowadays what the performers here have found to be the best hitting tricks in the Aronson repertoire. I have all his books and really like them, but am still new enough to performing cards to not have a good and reliable sense of which will be the most impactful and (dare I say it?) commercial. Given the quality of advice here, I'd love to hear your favourites. (This could include variants published by others too, Baker, Hartling, etc.)

thanks!
iain

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Tom Frame
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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby Tom Frame » February 1st, 2021, 8:33 am

Shuffle-Bored.

kkelly
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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby kkelly » February 1st, 2021, 9:26 am

i really like and use mis-mate and decipher.

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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby Bob Coyne » February 1st, 2021, 10:07 am


Kent Gunn
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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby Kent Gunn » February 1st, 2021, 10:35 am

Red See Passover.

I'd find Michael Closes' handling.

iainduncan
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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby iainduncan » February 1st, 2021, 10:55 am

Thanks to the four of you. I'm glad to hear Decipher on here, as I am (slowly) working up a show deliberately aimed at the tech/hacker set, so the intersection of combinatorics, cryptography, and cards is one of the themes. And it's a beautiful excuse for a deck switch into mem-deck. I will have to look up mis-mate, I'm blanking on that one right now.

Kent, can you tell me where I can find the Close handling of Red See?

My personal favourites as far as just being beautiful algorithms are Undue Influence and Topsy Turvey, but I've not yet performed them so have no idea how those play for audiences. I think I heard elsewhere that "Everybody's Lazy" and the Birthday Diary were considered strong with audiences. Thoughts on that?

Thanks, and I'd love to hear more if you have them.

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Q. Kumber
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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby Q. Kumber » February 1st, 2021, 1:01 pm

What not work on one or two that particularly appeal to YOU. Once you start you will learn a lot. Maybe you will end up not liking it or finding it complicated to remember. Or maybe you will use it for life.

The best piece of advice for learning new tricks came to me from Eric Sharp. "Don't learn a trick that if you don't do it for a month you have to relearn it." That goes for many of the packet type tricks that use different counts at different times and sometimes the last card goes to the top and sometimes to the bottom.

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chetday
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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby chetday » February 1st, 2021, 4:35 pm

Histed Heisted. I spent weeks memorizing a stack I created just so I could do this one trick, which knocked me out when I first read it in Simon's "Bound to Please." I performed the trick twice back in the late eighties, once before a classroom of high school seniors containing some really smart and some really annoying kids and received the highest praise I ever received in all the years I've been obsessed with cards: total silence with bugged out eyes.

All these years later, I still fondly recall that day. Other than getting kissed by Raquel Welch on the set of "One Million Years BC," I haven't had as much fun since. With that said, I performed the trick a couple of weeks later at our local New Orleans SAM club meeting, but I don't remember the reaction being anything special, which surprised me.

Anyway, I think it's one of Aronson's best variations. I don't recall the original source of the trick and don't have the energy this afternoon to go downstairs to my library to look it up. I guess I could call Raquel and ask her because she was always hell on wheels where original card trick sources were concerned, but she's like 80 years old and probably catching a nap right now.

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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby MagicbyAlfred » February 1st, 2021, 7:10 pm

Yup, and undoubtedly dreaming about card tricks...

(and that kiss).

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Paco Nagata
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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby Paco Nagata » February 3rd, 2021, 9:21 am

I love "This Side Up" (a.k.a. "Side Swiped").
"The Passion of an Amateur Card Magician"
https://bit.ly/2lXdO2O
"La pasion de un cartómago aficionado"
https://bit.ly/2kkjpjn

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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby MagicbyAlfred » February 3rd, 2021, 5:28 pm

Like Tom Frame, I'm going to go with Shuffle-Bored. This is one of the hardest hitting card routines I've ever performed, based on both laymen and magician reactions. I, myself, was floored by it a few years back, when a magician from out of town came into the bar and did it. He told me it was a Simon Aronson effect, but said he did not know the name of it or which book it was from, as he, in turn, had learned it from another magician. I always thought it was crass to ask a magician how an effect is done if they do not volunteer to show me - and he did not offer in this particular case. I'm sure he was delighted at my bafflement. The next morning, after some research, I figured out it was from Bound to Please, and I immediately ordered the book without batting an eyelash. I like to present it as a series of pre-written predictions that are based on a dream I say that I had. Yes, it's a bold-faced lie -- for which do not I feel even the slightest pang of guilt.

A fascinating thing happened recently over the Holidays when I performed it at a get together of family and friends, with several connoisseurs of magic present (although none of them magicians per se). And this will attest to how powerful the routine really is. At the end of the routine, after picking her jaw up off the ground, my sister-in-law, who is a very sharp cookie, announced, "You had to have done a deck switch, that's the only way that could be possible." I never in a million years thought that someone would conjecture an explanation like that, but apparently, I should have. I learned something there. In the future, I will make it unmistakably clear that there is one and only one deck in play the whole time, from beginning to end. After all, one does want even a false solution to diminish the impact of a trick, something with which I am sure Señor Tamariz would wholeheartedly agree...

By the way, here's a fantastic presentation of Shuffle-Bored by Simon himself. It's a bit too intellectual for my style, but fabulous nonetheless:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL2QaTqU5BA

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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby AZK » February 3rd, 2021, 5:49 pm

Little Bunny's Card Trick, which is Bill Goldman's take on Shuffle-Board. A charming trick and a steal of a deal from your favorite dealer, and Amazon.

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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby Jack Shalom » February 4th, 2021, 8:53 am

For non-memdeck, my favorite is "Shuffle-Bored."
For memdeck, "Past, Present, Future."

(Not impossible BTW to go from the latter to the former in a killer 2 trick set.)

iainduncan
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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby iainduncan » February 4th, 2021, 12:08 pm

Jack, I really love Past, Present, Future. Methodologically it's just so beautiful. I've not done it for real audiences though, did you find the length of the procedure problematic, or does the pay off justify the procedure? Any one else do this?

I wonder the same for TopsyTurvey too, which is also so devilish.

iainduncan
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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby iainduncan » February 4th, 2021, 12:22 pm

Shuffle-Bored is definitely on my list, currently trying to figure out which variant will work best over zoom while I can't do anything live. I'm glad to hear so many votes for it. (And Little Bunny is hilarious! I was thinking of printing my own book of some story as one option)

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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby Jack Shalom » February 4th, 2021, 2:55 pm

iainduncan wrote:Jack, I really love Past, Present, Future. Methodologically it's just so beautiful. I've not done it for real audiences though, did you find the length of the procedure problematic, or does the pay off justify the procedure? Any one else do this?

I wonder the same for TopsyTurvey too, which is also so devilish.


My audiences in this case are friends and family and it absolutely pays off. I do the ending a bit more impromptu--for the Future card, I do a reading--something like, "This is strange but I get the feeling that soon you'll fall in love with a very spiritual person. It's just a feeling. In fortunetelling, seven stands for spiritual matters, and hearts, of course, is the suit of love. I'm no real fortuneteller, but if the card in your pocket representing the Future were the seven of hearts..."

For some fortunetelling with card ideas, see here:
https://www.deceptionary.com/ftp/RWebst ... gCards.pdf

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Zig Zagger
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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby Zig Zagger » February 4th, 2021, 4:56 pm

Another vote for Shuffle-Bored and its lovely variations by both Bill Goldman and Aldo Colombini!

Side-Swiped is a killer, too, which lends itself to many humorous presentations.

And let's not forget Ad-Jacent. If it was good enough for Vernon (they say it fooled him badly), it's great for us mere mortals!
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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby Zig Zagger » February 4th, 2021, 5:14 pm

Q. Kumber wrote:The best piece of advice for learning new tricks came to me from Eric Sharp. "Don't learn a trick that if you don't do it for a month you have to relearn it."

Sound advice! I guess it would have saved me a lot of time and effort when I was younger. I seem to be below average when it comes to remembering card procedures... :roll:
So let's hope that I will stilll remember this advice one month from now!
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iainduncan
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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby iainduncan » February 4th, 2021, 6:26 pm

Does anyone on here do his Double Stop? (from Simply Simon) Seems like a great trick todo virtually. I just recently learnt it as I really like lift shuffles.

pnerd
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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby pnerd » March 9th, 2021, 10:58 am

Besides Shuffle-Bored, I like his UnDo Influence control, which is used in 'Prior Commitment' and 'Divide and Conquer'.

Jack Shalom
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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby Jack Shalom » March 10th, 2021, 4:23 pm

Zig Zagger wrote:
Q. Kumber wrote:The best piece of advice for learning new tricks came to me from Eric Sharp. "Don't learn a trick that if you don't do it for a month you have to relearn it."


LOL. That means I'm left with the 21 Card Trick--or was it 27?

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Re: Opinions on most audience hitting Aronson tricks?

Postby Bill Duncan » March 10th, 2021, 10:08 pm

I gotta say that after watching Simon do a bunch of his work on the L&L DVD set that which of his tricks is most "commercial" probably comes down to which one you love performing and have a personal connection with. The material is all solid and as done by Simon, pretty charming. So go with what feels good to you.

For me, it's Among The Discards, because
"surprise!"


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