For years the Masked Magician has been exposing magic tricks. But can he really perform magic? Well, he tried to perform a simple card trick on TV recently…..judge for yourself….
How did the clip make you feel?
Update: Over at the Edinburgh Secret Society blog, we have just announced our next event -
Sing-along-a Wickerman!
He definitely showed that “magic is for all ages.” A toddler or a centenarian could screw that up just as badly and be equally unable to recover.
She didn’t follow the instructions correctly, but he should have noticed that. You start the deck with all four aces on top. Then you create the four piles, which means that the four aces are now on top of the fourth pile. Then for each one, you take three off the top and put them on the bottom, and then deal the next three on to the other three piles. This means by the time you get to the fourth pile, there are three cards on top of the aces. You take those off and put them on the bottom, and then deal the next three cards, three aces, on to the other three piles, leaving one ace on the fourth pile. Then you turn over the top of each pile to see an ace.
What she did was remove three cards and then deal one other card out. How he did not notice this is baffling. This is a trick I learned when I was about 8. What this meant is that she wasn’t having any effect on the aces until the second last pile, when she put one card on top of four aces. Then she took three off the top – a random card and two aces, and put them on the bottom, and then put one card – an ace – on the first pile. At this point there would be aces on top of the first and last pile, and the other two aces would have been on the bottom of the last pile.
You really shouldn’t give away a magician’s secrets. Now people won’t have an incentive to buy his DVD. Oh wait…
She followed his instructions exactly. He said, “Take 3 cards, put them underneath, then put the next card on top of there.” If he doesn’t know his own trick then that’s all his fault, not hers. I thought his trying to sort it out was extraordinarily amateurish – looking through each pile, what the …? He should have just accepted defeat and moved on.
That’s what I thought, wrong instructions.
xDDDDDDDD
He seemed to be floundering from the start. He took the wrong pack out of his pocket, then he was checking his pockets, and then it was like he was distracted for the remainder of the trick. It was like he’d just had some bad news right before going on stage, and then was completely unable to focus.
It might have been better if he’d said something like, “I’m sorry. Something went wrong. It happens once in a while. Let’s try again/ another trick.” I would think magicians would have prepared things to say or do in situations like this, but maybe not always. It seemed he was trying to salvage the trick but should ended it earlier before looking at all the cards.
edwardv, I don’t think he’s a magician. He just exposes other magician’s tricks. Big difference.
“But can he really perform magic?”
Well I’d have to say, probably yes. We may disapprove of how this individual has chosen to make his living (by exposing the hard won skills and techniques of performance magicians), but it’s my understanding that he performs and explains magic very competently the vast majority of the time. Therefore my predominant feeling when watching this single clip is of one of schadenfreude: that he failed, and so spectacularly failed to cover up his fail. But yes, absolutely no reason to think that he’s not an otherwise very competent stage magician…
LMAO, that was awesome, why did he keep going once he realised he’d messed up, surely he knew it wasn’t gonna get any better. It was like a child doing a bad trick that you just need to persevere with until the end and smile encouragingly.
Is he the original Masked Magician? I don’t know by his voice.
Live by the sword,…………………!
Maybe he was possesed by the spirit of Tommy Cooper, tho’ I only laughed once when he turned over the five.
I thought I was going to feel sorry for him, but he was so unprofessional in the way he dealt with his mistake that I didn’t.
This guy is annoying. I don’t care if it’s magic, illusions, stunts or tricks, call it what you want, they’re fun to watch and I personally don’t need someone, regardless of his motives, spoiling the fun for me.
“Very Special” indeed…
I think going on television with a trick that you obviously haven’t rehearsed enough and can screw up that badly is probably more damaging to the profession of magicians than all his reveals have been put together.
I was prepared to say it proves something I’ve said for a long time: small magic is harder and more impressive than grand illusion by far. The real work in grand illusions is done by engineers and designers and builders and stage hands, often well in advance of going on stage (though some of those designers and builders are also the illusionists). Small magic is all in the hands of the performer on the spot. But I can’t really say it proves that, the trick shouldn’t have been all that hard, he just blew it.
What if the guy in the video was NOT the “real” Masked Magician (Val Valentino, supposedly) and had purposefully shown two decks at the beginning, failed the trick and recovered with such lack of professionalism? This way he could ruin the reputation of the Masked Magician, and no TV show would invite him anymore…
. This was just to highlight how easily we can be fooled – and end up saying whatever comes to our mind – when people use masks (“We are Anonymous”… but who is “we”?).
Thank you for following this “conspiracy” special
That just made me squirm. Not even any schadenfreude. There is nothing worse than seeing someone screw up so badly and then fail in their attempt at recovering the mess.
This explains the mask, I’d wear one too if I were that crappy.
That’s four minutes of my life that I’ll never get back…
It made me feel very special.
My favourite part was “the fifth ace”
I’d wear a mask too if I was so embarrassingly bad!
I liked the bit where the trick went wrong
“and there’s the fifth ace”….
It’s some guy wearing a mask. How do we know it’s THE “masked magician?” Can’t just assume because the mask looks like the one the “real” guy wears that it’s actually him.
It sounds like him@johnnybunn, but yes I do have to wonder if it is actually him, because he already exposed himself, so why would he have to wear the mask again? I don’t really get that. But, if it was him, then epic fail! I agree with you rufusx, smaller magic tricks are more impressive and nicer, because they all have to come from the magician, whereas with illusions etc, they also come from the engineers etc that you already mentioned. But whoever this person was regardless, he wasn’t a magician, to have stuffed up such an easy trick and then carry on with it even though we all could tell it was an epic fail! lol Yeah I’d defo want to wear a mask if I was that embarrassingly bad.
To be honest I find the simpler tricks better and nicer, and a lot of the time magicians don’t even use real decks of cards, they use magic set decked cards that act in certain ways etc, very rare you will see many card tricks performed by magicians by genuine decks of cards. You get the odd times but not very often.
” very rare you will see many card tricks performed by magicians by genuine decks of cards”
Rubbish. Beyond the level of hobbyist any magician worth their salts has a bank of sleights he can call on to control, force and reveal a card effectively. Your assertion that magicians only use gaffed or gimmicked decks is wrong. Go read “The Royal Road to Card Magic” or “Card College”.
This is a self working effect that he is so bad at he manages to mess up. As a magician it makes me feel embarrassed for him, then a little angry he would add this dreck to the damage he’s already done to magic.
“probably more damaging to the profession of magicians than all his reveals have been put together”
Exactly how much damage did this performance on some obscure Asian TV show do to “the profession of magicians”?
“probably more damaging to the profession of magicians than all his reveals have been put together”
right because everyone knows magic is real
wow!!!!!!! you are the greatest magican