Review for Darwin Ortiz At The Card Table
Everything I’ve said about CardShark applies here as well. You can go read that. However, you can bet there are more magical effects in this book than in CardShark. Some magical card plots you might be familiar with thats in this book is Do as I Did (spectator and performer cuts to the same card from two different decks – I was badly fooled, it’s real magic!), Signed Card-to-Wallet, an Ace Assembly (what people know as Jazz Aces – his sequence is very nice), and much much more. His gambling routines are superb . . as always. There is one (ok all of them but this one in particular) in here that was way too good to be revealed. It will leave people with the impression you can do anything with a deck of cards – as you demonstrate control of all 52 cards by dealing grand slams in a bridge game.
I should mention what I failed to last time that Darwin Ortiz belongs to the traditional school of sleight-of-hand. His main concern is how to entertain an audience with a normal deck of cards. Unlike some performers, Darwin Ortiz gears his routines to fool even the spectators on his left and right. His routines are not angle-prone like some tricks sold on the magic market today. You’ll really love his routines in that he’s very practical for fooling a small group of people with sleight-of-hand – just as one might expect from a real cardshark. No, he’s not a flashy, finger-flinging performer – but I remember after watching his performance that he was one person I did not want to play poker with – in fact, I was very afraid because he could hustle me without my realization.
I believe books written by Darwin Ortiz are superior to any of that I’ve read from others. His books are collegiate level. He does not offer quick tricks that stuns them for a brief moment. Every routine has the right performance duration, twist/climax, and end clean. How every trick should be performed by every performer. If you’re ready to take your card performance further that to a professional level, study his books.
Another A+. Consider this and CardShark as the same only they cover different grounds with a slight more emphasis on magic (if weighed on a balance scale). You should begin with this as it predates CardShark and also because it contains more magic schemes than it does gambling.
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