There are some tricks that are just fun to perform. They’re constructed in such a way that you feel like a little watchmaker crafting something elegant as the routine unfolds. I do the Elmsley Count here, and that sneakily positions their card so I can do the double-lift with no get-ready. And now I can do the lay-down sequence and all the diamonds will automatically be in this pile, and now no matter which pile they choose I can show them my prediction was dead-on.
Or the trick might rely on a sequence of sleights that just feel good in your hands. Like, for me, I’ve always enjoyed tricks where you’re doing a lot of small-packet counts that seem to show what you’re holding over and over. Maybe it’s a packet of jokers that turn over one at a time. And then you turn it over everything at the end, and they’re the four aces. It just feels good to me to have them watch as I count through this packet, and the whole time I’m hiding these Aces. It feels right and… elegant in some way.
I’m not denying the appeal of a satisfying method that just feels good in your hands. But recognize that this can lead you down a bad path. That path is focusing on the method rather than the spectator’s experience. Very often, the tricks that are the most enjoyable to practice are the least fun to watch.
The Cups and Balls and the Linking Rings didn’t become classic magician’s tricks because audiences were clamoring to see twenty-two variation on the same minor miracle in three minutes. They stuck around because they’re fun for magicians—to futz with, to finesse, to work out the choreography. There’s a built-in sense of accomplishment that comes from just practicing these things. “I made it all the way through and didn’t fuck up!” Congrats! Now you get to bore people with it.
We’re often drawn to the dopamine hit of mastering a complicated method. One that taxes our dexterity or our minds.
But when I think about tricks that get me the strongest reactions, they’re almost always the ones with simple or sloppy methods.
When I lean forward to grab the pen off the coffee table, I’ll stuff this deck in the couch cushion and grab the other one from behind the pillow.
It’s not fun to practice methods like these. You get no thrill out of them. The only thrill is in seeing the outcome they generate.
But, of course: That’s all that really matters.
Even for me—someone who is writing about this stuff all the time—I have to ask myself, “Who is this for?” when I have a trick that feels especially enjoyable to rehearse. Is it enjoyable for me? Or for the person watching it?
I’m not saying you need to cut every trick that leans more toward “for you” than “for them.” But if your goal is to genuinely capture people, I’d keep those tricks under 20% of your repertoire.
A few weeks ago, I got an email from reader Cadence L. that began like this:
“Here is a presentation idea I had for David Roth’s routine, “The Funnel.” It requires keeping up a very bizarre premise for a very long time: namely, that you and your friend are making commercial first contact with a federation of sentient isolationist rats.”
The method they provided was a kind of slapdash amalgam of ideas that when duct-taped together would allow you to present this story of you interacting with the rat trade delegation that lived in your heating vents.
There was nothing method-wise that was really appealing about this. But I thought to myself, “I’d love for someone to perform this for me.”
Too often, as magicians, our instinct is to say, “I’d love to do this trick.” But a better metric—the one that actually points to strong material—is when you find yourself saying, “I’d love to have this performed for me.”
