I don’t really like ambitious card routines. EDIT: I despise mostly all ambitious card routines. Every magician I know has one and they just border on the boring. So you have these magical powers and the best you can do is bore me with making a card rise to the top of the deck over and over again.

No matter how cool the progressive rising is, I really think if you repeat the same basic plot more than once or twice then it’s overkill.

So with that in mind I’ve been working out the solution to a fairly simple and visual rise of a card. And it happens once. I want whoever watches it to walk away and be able to say in only a few words everything that happened. I want there to be simplicity and clarity with the things I do.

I’ve definitely had my share of routines that were only really good for magicians. And I think that’s what happened. Magicians will eat up new techniques and slight variations on plots. And so the evolution of the ambitious card routine has become the evolution of an effect for magicians.

I’ve never had people come up to me and beg me to make a card come to the top of the deck over and over again. Because it’s a plot that’s only exciting to magicians after 15 seconds.

What I’d like to do is distill that plot down to the strongest elements and instead of making a routine out of it, I only want to make it a moment. It can be a very powerful moment. Especially if they touch the card going into the middle of the deck immediately before it comes to the top. But once it happens the first time it’s more than enough for me.

There’s actually a good little bit that I enjoyed in Luke Jermay’s new book 3510 about simplifying your magic and routines that I think echoes my particular thoughts on this plot. At least what he preaches could definitely be applied to this routine. Which reminds me that a proper review of 3510 is in order…….

My current lack of ambition may have spread from card tricks to writing anything else at the moment. But either the next post or two will reveal all my thoughts on the latest offering. And maybe I’ll share some bits of my Not Very Ambitious Card Thing.

You never know…

…Jason

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