More Plots And Methods by Michal Kociolek. Magic Book Review

Welcome to Real Magic Review, my name is Steve Faulkner and this is More Plots and Methods by Michal Kaczorlek. Before I embark on this review, I'd like you to embark on liking and subscribing, checking out CarMagicCourse.com and getting it. That's what I want you to do. If you do like and subscribe, which you should, but in the subscribe bit do the little bell icon, that's what you want to do so you get notified of when I go live, or more importantly at the moment when I don't go live because I haven't been managing the Thursday live sessions but they will be starting again very soon, that'll be all exciting as there's lots of things that I'm working on in the background. So keep your eye on the notifications. I reviewed Plots and Methods a while ago and then before that Michal had his Polish Polka which was one of my really early reviews and I liked Plots and Methods so I thought right I'm going to get into this, I'm going to make myself learn all of these things because I know they're not for me, I'm not very good at the kind of, as he says, the mental gymnastics, but you know, how hard can they be, right? They're kind of self-work in these tricks, kind of, because he's a thinker, he thinks about these Plots and Methods and he comes up with stuff that I really go how on earth, you know, he's a genius or he's insane, one of the two, so usually it's the same thing. So it's a difficult one for me to review because I'm one of these people, I'm a sleight of hand person, I'm a kinesthetic person, I can spend hours learning a sleight, but I'm finding it very difficult to spend hours practising a non-sleight, that's why mentalism I find really, really hard to practise and I find it quite boring to practise, I love performing it, so it's a real challenge for me. And when people have said, when I've sort of taught them sleight of hand stuff and they've gone oh it's not for me, I can't do sleight of hand, I always go yeah you can, you just need to practise it and, you know, and I always felt a bit like, you know, people give up too easily, but then when I read this I get it because I read this and what I'm like with sleights, I'm the opposite with this mental stuff, with learning stuff, with your mind, you know, remembering processes, remembering sequences and things like that, none of them are that hard but under pressure I find it very, very difficult. So I'm now more forgiving when people say it's not for me, I'm not a sleight person, because I'm the opposite, I'm a sleight of hand person, I'm not a person that finds these tricks easy. But a lot of you will be, and I know a lot of you are, because I've talked to people, you know, at conventions and also people on my course that prefer the non-sleight stuff, they prefer the concepts and the methods and playing with them, and this is for you. It's really fascinating for me, this idea of, you know, I used to completely disregard things that had a long process and now I can see the joy in them and I've done a few of these tricks, you know, one that was on the Royal Road course that I've performed a few times now and people have just been absolutely floored by it. So I wonder whether there's a correlation between, well there is, between how magical something is and how entertaining it is, but it can be arguably a bit less magical or magical in a different way, in a more baffling way, but be more entertaining because you're playing with, like in this, a lot of these have got three and four spectators, so if you imagine sitting around dinner, four people holding cards out and they're eliminating cards until one person's left with one, and apparently they've done all this stuff beforehand which messes the cards up completely, and how on earth after all that have you got this one card? Now sometimes that can be more magical than take a card out, look at it and name it, you know, with a marked deck or something, because of that process, and I've experienced this again and again and again now, and I've completely changed my mind on it, but it doesn't mean I can do it, because I can't with a lot of this stuff, well I can, that's the wrong thing isn't it, but I'm not willing to, and I'll explain. Okay, first trick in this, Sink, is a do as I do trick, where you have a deck, you spread it completely mixed up, they take half, they shuffle it, they go through a process of creating piles, and basically four equal piles, and then they shuffle them as much as they want, and they sort of look at a card in the middle of one of them and cut the pack, all this stuff, but they're shuffling, shuffling, shuffling, for a certain level, a certain part of the trick, and then, after all that, you find each other's cards in your pack, you swap the decks and you find each other's cards. It's absolutely miraculous, and that's why I sort of think, is that arguably more magical? I don't know, and that's the thing, and it's nuanced isn't it, it's not quite as simple as that. And I've performed this, not very well, but even not very well, and I mean that, I kind of forgot the bit and kind of went, well what's next, and I might try and get some footage of me doing it, if I can get a chance, but it just, again, completely floored the person, they just couldn't get their head around it, and it's absolutely brilliant. So it does require you to learn a kind of cyclical stack, or something like side-steppings or anything, something which is really simple, or you might want to know a mem deck, but with a cyclical stack, that's, I think, within anybody's ability, and I think it's well worth it for a trick like that. The rest of them, as all of these, by the way, the point of this is that, he says, there's no gaff cards, these are all done with a normal deck of cards, except for the bonus trick, which is a tarot trick, which uses a normal tarot deck at the end. But that gave me a taste of what was coming, and I thought, I could do that, it didn't take me that long to learn, so here we go, so let's go on to the next one, and this is when I kind of stumbled. So Mr Liar uses a similar concept actually, but uses four spectators, all with cards each, they fan them towards themselves, they all decide on one card out of the decks, put the rest down, and anyway, you go through this process where you divine the card, you find the card at the end. Again, really miraculous, they've chosen between them what the card is, you haven't said anything, but you get that card, it's brilliant, and on the first phase of doing this trick, I kind of went, oh yeah, I can kind of do that, I know I've got to remember that process, but I've observed this, but that's fine, but then it went, but if this happens, then you've got to remember, and there was a point where I had to remember three key cards, and I kind of went, I'm out, there's just no way, because I'm not that person, but you might be, I don't want to put the work into that kind of trick, because in my work, and what I do, I'm probably not going to get much of a chance to perform it, but a lot of you will, and again, the ending is absolutely miraculous, and I would say going on, without going into everyone, or in detail, like the three H, the next one, is three spectators each think of a card, the performer locates two of the four of cards, and names a third, and again, they go through a very fair process, where at the end, you've got three cards on the table, all you've got to do is remember quite a simple 12 card sequence of red and blacks, but you remember, and it's the same sequence for the whole thing, and it's, you know, if you read red, black, black, red, one of those sort of things, if you can do that, and most people can, you can do this trick, but again, it's, you've got to really want to do that kind of trick, and it is absolutely brilliant, and again, fairly easy, that one, it's not very difficult, and he's got some lovely subtleties in there, which make it even more magical, or more baffling, depending on where you're coming from, and that, and the last one is, is the one really that I thought, I probably would, the rest I could go, if I really wanted to do that, I could learn it, this one, I kind of went, no, it uses a whole stack, and with a crib, so you don't have to memorise it, and he says, I wouldn't bother memorising this, and basically, it's, they cut the deck under the table as many times as they want, take five cards out, and you divine those five cards, very magical, a lot of work, a lot of process, a lot of learning, a lot of observing, what's going on, they put certain cards on the table from there, fan of five cards, and give somebody else one, and by, by what they're doing, you know the cards, really, really clever stuff, and that's the point of this, I said I was exhausted after reading this, and, but I did really enjoy learning the concepts, and I really enjoyed the challenge, especially that first trick, actually learnt the trick from beginning to end, the satisfaction was immense, and I think those of you that are into this kind of thing, are into it because of that, you like that satisfaction, you like that feeling of going through that whole process, the cleverness of it, the joy of it, and that is very contagious, and I'll just read you, this kind of sums it up, from the introduction, I can only assume that if you have this booklet, you're already familiar with the previous one, Plots and Methods, thus we probably both share an affection for anything that, at least at first sight, does not really fall into the commercial category of card magic, and the simple and direct slogans usually make us yawn, now I've nothing against that type of material, simply magic has more to offer than just that, and if this is your first time, you're already reading this booklet, so there's no backing out, embrace the weird and quirky, and I think that's, that's really it, and again I don't want to put in extra effort here and there, spicing things up with gaffes, but this one doesn't use gaffes, but there is a lot of effort required in this, but it's got four tricks worth, five with the bonus trick, which I can't do, because I don't know Roman numerals more than, you've got to know your Roman numerals, and that's, and the spectator might have to as well, and actually I think that's a good point, this requires audience management, quite a lot of audience management, again if you're going to work on it and you're happy to put the work in, it's fine, nothing unrealistic, but things like, you know, they've got to create four piles of cards, they've got to be equal, now for some people that's really hard, you know, you get them to cut a card, and they cut like three off, and, and they're, they've got to cut the card in the middle, so some people have never cut a deck of cards before, so to cut it in the middle, you've got to keep an eye on them, and maybe correct them if they don't quite do it, and I think there's quite a lot of that in it, again you need four, three or four spectators for some of these, so that's, that's kind of a niche time isn't it, like when are you in a situation to do that, well you're in a situation to do that after dinner, or when you're with Magic Club, or Magic Friends, where they go along with it, so I think this, this is a very much a niche book, but that doesn't take away from it, I, I love reading the thinking, I love the learning of them, I'm probably not going to perform many of the tricks, but that doesn't, that, but I think a lot of you will, and you'll get a lot out of it, so there you go, more plots and methods, Michal Kaczorlek from Vanishing Ink, have a look at the links below, thank you very much for sending it to me, and thank you very much for watching, do check out cardmagiccourse.com, please like and subscribe, hit the little bell icon like I say, and any questions, comments, please do put them below, and I'll do them in the next live session, take care, bye.