Down To One (and Crystal Card Guard) by Jon Allen Review

Hello my name is Steve Faulkner and I'd very much like to welcome you to my review show which is called Real Magic Review and today on Real Magic Review I shall be reviewing John Allen's Down to One. Before I do this review of John Allen's Down to One I'd like you to look at my online magic course or resource because there are over 500 videos on it. It's at onlinemagic.co, have a look at it, 500 videos, live sessions every week. Last night we had a session from Looch, Mentalist Looch, which was absolutely brilliant. That will be uploaded on to the course, I've got some very special guests lined up which I haven't released yet but it's all very exciting and I've just recorded a new coin magic course which will go on you. You get that all for your membership of £9.99 a month so check that out, it's well worth it. Have a look at the testimonials, everybody loves it and do like and subscribe, thanks a lot. I'm really interested in John's stuff, I've reviewed a lot of it because he is one of those people that goes out, performs the stuff you know he has and doesn't just put stuff together to sell. I've talked to him about all of his things, we always have a chat, he talks through how he uses them and I really, really have a respect for him as a creator and a performer. So when he brings something out I always have a look at it and he brings things out that when you first hear about them sometimes you go okay that's cool and then when you read into it you realise how good they are and this is one of those things. So what this is, I'll just tell you what you get when you buy this. You get the instructions, the written instructions which is always lovely. There is a video on it that just shows you the moves that you're going to have to do which is actually really, really useful, it's really good to see. And you get this coin which is red and black and you get an envelope to do the final reveal and the reveal is this, well the whole process is this. And you might not have seen it, if you've done a lot of dinners you would have seen MCs, not magicians, sometimes play a game with everybody at the dinner, hundreds of people, you can get huge dinners and you do a coin toss thing. So basically you heads or tails, everybody in the audience chooses heads or tails by putting their head on their hand or on their back and you eliminate everybody down to one person and usually at the end of it, if it lands on tails then you'll do heads, you sit down. Also, basically you're making people sit down through the whole thing, this is one of my brilliant, brilliant explanations again by the way, as you can see, it's so precise, so precise. Basically, I'll get there in the end, the MC does heads or tails, people sit down, so there's three people left, you get those people on stage and the last one wins a prize usually or something like that. There you go. You toss a coin and place it on the back of your hand, everyone then guesses which side of the coin is showing and whoever guesses correctly stays in the game. You keep playing until you are down to one person. So the reason why MCs do this and compares is because it's great, it gets everybody involved, the audience absolutely love it, they love the feeling of doing it, it gets them involved in a way that isn't intimidating, there's a prize at the end and it gives you loads of material, it's a really fun thing to do even without it having anything to do with a prediction or magic. The great thing about this is that you do that thing and then it's... Inside your envelope is a prediction that not only describes the person perfectly... It says the luckiest person will be a woman, what happens? The luckiest person will be a woman. Or a man, or a man. And he'll have jeans and a white t-shirt. Jeans and a white t-shirt and will be wearing a check shirt to finish the casual look. He will have a beard and tattoos. He has a beard and tattoos. He will be wearing a black t-shirt. He will be wearing a black shirt, black trousers and brown shoes. But also predicts their lucky winning guess. It says his winning call will be heads. Heads, give it up. Give it up for the luckiest person in the room. His lucky winning call will be heads. It's not the first time this has been done. This is based on a Ken Dine idea where he uses a coin spin to get down to one person and it's a prediction and there have been different versions of it. He based this on a version he saw on Penn & Teller. I'm not going to go into all of that. You can read it in there. It's all in there. He's very good at crediting, John. The thing he's changed about this is a couple of things. One of them is very, very important. On this one, you toss the coin first and then they can do heads or tails. They do not do heads and tails, which is the second thing. They do red and black. Red head, black back, which is nice because they can see. You show them what it's landed on. The audience can see that. They can see that from a long way away. These are people who can't quite see. Obviously, people can tell them. But it's nice. You've done the whole thing. They call it and then you show it. It's really, really fair. Don't forget, when you're doing this, they might not know there's going to be a magic trick involved because we're going to play a game. It gives you that safety. Some people are going to want that because there is a move in this, but it's not the move I thought it was. When John told me there was a move in this, I thought, oh, it's going to be that move. I'm not going to buy that. It's not going to be that good. It's not that. It's actually really good. It wasn't what I was expecting at all. But it is going to take a little bit of practice. But once you've practiced it, you're going to feel really comfortable with it. That's what I like about this. It's really clever. It's actually very magical. If you think people go through this whole process, they get to the end. You've predicted it. Obviously, you can predict whatever you want about that person. You get your mark. You make sure that the person's in the room and they're at the dinner. Then you can do your prediction. Great. You can choose anybody you want. You can have someone wearing interesting clothes. It's obviously them. It's all that stuff in here. There are some great ideas in here. You don't have to just do heads and tails or reds or blacks. You can ask the audience a question, which I really like. Who came here in a cab tonight? If you did, put your hands on your head for red. That's a boring one. But obviously, you can get more and more interesting. But the idea I really like is really boring. Don't do that. Don't do who came in here in a cab, because that's tedious. But what you can do is you can get people beforehand, get the person organizing the event to bring questions with you. People bring questions with you. You can read them out, which I really like the idea of that. You can obviously choose the ones that are funniest, first of all. It's way more than meets the eye. I find that with a lot of Jon stuff. I am going to perform this in my show. I'm doing a show on May 26th with Jon Archer and Tom Elliott, Jon Archer Headlining. I'm going to do this as my opener. That's the faith I have in it. Because it's great. It's a no-brainer. It gets everybody involved. It's really good fun. Even if you don't add all the funny bits, I think it's still funny. The whole process is funny. And then you've got this prediction at the end, which is really cool. I mean, imagine it. You can go from 100 people, which I'm going to do, down to one person. They're on stage. They open the thing. And there's different ideas with lottery tickets and different predictions and things like that, which open it up to a lot more things. And I think because of the simplicity of this idea, you're going to very quickly be able to tailor it for specific events. And I think that the organisers of those events will thank you for it, because everybody wants people to be involved. I don't think there's anything else I really need to say, other than it's a great idea. It gives you loads of material. Lots of presentational ideas I've got in here. You've got the QR code, which gives you access to the videos. And it's easy. It's easy. Obviously, there's not really an angle issue. You're going to be on stage. The only thing about it is you need a certain number of people, which is why I haven't got no footage of me doing this yet, because I haven't had a chance to do it. He said he's done it to tables of like four teams. It's not like you need hundreds of people. And I think that'd be great. And there's loads of ways you can play with that. But for me, I really love the idea of taking it on stage and doing it as a big opener with a hundred people involved. I think it's great. But you can do this with a small number of people. So I really like it. Just quickly, over here, and I did mention this on my live show, is that John's also released a card guard, which I really like. He calls it a crystal card guard. The difference with this is, well, first of all, it's a nice card guard anyway. Now, a lot of people, if you get the geopourpointers, think it's really important that they're exactly... I don't know much about that. All I know is that it's holding my cards well. I've been carrying these cards. I got these from Cascade Juggling in Edinburgh. I love Cascade Juggling. They do magic stuff as well, but they're a great juggling shop. So thank you to them for sending these false casino cards. And they're beautiful. But what I like about this is, I think the cards look great in it. It's very sharp and slick. Some of these things are really plasticky and they dent up or scratch really easily. This hasn't. But he's got the cutout, which is such a subtle thing, in the card guard. So you can open the cards in it, get the cards out, and keep it in the box. Now, I know that's not a massive thing, but it's quite nice. I quite like that. You can just keep it in there and use it. And I've been playing with it with a card on the box. I like the weight of it. So if you've got a nice deck of cards, even a deck of bikes, by the way, they look quite cool. And I think that to have that and get the card under the box and have it like that and have that weight to it is really nice. Subtle thing, I know, but I really like it. And that's only a tenner. That's on his site. All the links will be below. Check it out. All good stuff. Check out all of John's stuff. And he has re-released his Destination box, which I'm very excited about. I'll do a whole new review on that at some point. But keep your eye out for that. He had it in Blackpool, and I think it's getting an official release very soon. And by the time you've watched this, it might already have. Take care. Have a great one. Please like and subscribe. Check out onlinemagic.co and get your Spread Kul course, a course on the Spread Kul, absolutely free. And you'll see the link below, but it's onlinemagic.co forward slash courses, forward slash Kul, C-U-L. Take care. See you later. Bye.