Neil Patrick Harris deck by Theory 11, the deck features a VERY interesting USP that I shall discuss later on in the article. We all know that Theory 11 is a leading authority within the playing card industry, known for their luxurious designs and impeccable handling, let see how the NPH deck compares! To start with let’s take a look at the design, the tuck box is gorgeous with metallic gold, silver and red ink embossed upon a soft touch tuck box, with an elegant seal to finish things off which is of course also metallic ink, the detail is exquisite both on the front and the back, the more yo ..read more

Hello everyone, Matt Homer here and in today’s playing card review, I shall be taking a look at the Dynamo Abandoned playing cards designed by Rick Davidson, for the infamous street magician Dynamo in conjunction with his “Abandoned Room Show”, I will give my honest, unbiased opinion based on my experience and love for the pasteboards. There is no question that Dynamo is a leading authority within the street magic scene, it’s time to see if his playing cards live up to everyone’s expectations! Starting with the design, the tuck box is undeniably stunning, the gold and electric blue create an ..read more

So Steve Dela’s Night Flight Deck landed through my letterbox this week.  “Do we really need another marked deck?” I hear you cry?  If you’d asked me before I might have been unsure, but these Night Flights have gone some way to stealing my heart.  Let me tell you more. Who’s Steve Dela? If you’re not familiar with Steve’s work, where have you been?  He’s a busy and award-winning close-up magician.  He’s responsible for the fabulous Will To Read (which remains my absolute favourite take on this type of Free Will effect), the awesome All About Eve book test and an At th ..read more

Sweet Simplicity is the latest in a number of John Carey releases we’ve reviewed here at Bicycle-Cards.co.uk.  There are lots to like about this DVD from Big Blind Media full of straightforward close up (mainly card) magic.  Let’s get straight into the tricks… Sweet Simplicity – the tricks… 1 in 52 John Carey is a bit of an equivoque fan – and this is essentially another take on the imaginary card plot using this technique.  I didn’t feel like there was anything particularly new here – but my opinion with equivoque is that the more different approaches you see the stronger your ..read more

Principia is a book I’ve been excited about reading for over a year. Unfortunately life circumstances have prevented me from spending any time within its beautiful covers… until now. So here, probably in time for the second print run (!), is our Principia review… If you’ve not come across Harapan Ong, he is a Physics teacher from Singapore, and also a very talented magician. And in this unusual book, he merges those two worlds by teaching some of his excellent magical material in the style of a series of science papers. Excursus on style I think reading John Bannon’s seminal Dear Mr Fantasy wa ..read more

The Ultimate Self Working Card Tricks series is one of the jewels in the Big Blind Media crown. It’s some years (2014) since we looked at the last volume in this series – though there have been some side volumes (a bit like the Star Wars spin offs) focused on individual creators. But it was worth the wait. Let’s get straight into… The Tricks Karmatic by John Bannon The DVD starts with a corker. This is the Mighty Bannon’s sort of take on the Trick That Cannot Be Explained. Which is to say that it relies on a certain amount of ‘jazzing’. But the premise and method mean that the jamming doesn’t ..read more

John Bannon is the king of packet tricks and Buzzkill is a really fun little fooler with plenty of built in laughs. In essence you have four cards printed with cartoon flies, and four blank ‘fly papers’ – and the fly papers separate from the flypaper and end up getting squashed! What do you get? You receive a link to a 19 minute download of the instructions and all the necessary, custom printed cards. There are fun graphics on the cards and on the explanation! As you would expect, everything is clearly explained at an easy pace. The one exception to this is the Elmsley Count – which is not tau ..read more

Rogue has been sitting on my review pile for woefully long. As you may have noticed, there’s been a bit of a delay in reviewing recently due to other pressures. However, Steven Palmer’s new (ish!!) DVD from Big Blind Media was well worth the wait. Let’s talk about the tricks first. Deviant Shuffle This isn’t a trick, but is rather a technique used in some of the routines. It is a sneaky combination of moves which allows the spectators to shuffle the deck whilst retaining a stock of cards. There are no ‘moves’ to speak of here and it does look pretty fair. Neato! He also explains some subtletie ..read more

It doesn’t seem that long since we look at Life’s a Beach Vol 1 – but given how strong the material in that book was I was very excited to get my hands on Vol 2. So let’s get on with the review! After a down-to-earth foreword by Gary’s good friend Mark Bendell (and by the way if you still haven’t seen The Unknown – you really must – it is brilliant!) and a brief encouragement from Gary to actually try the things out (!) we get straight into the tricks. First up is a cracking self-worker called B’Waver. If you can imagine B’Wave plus card to impossible location you’ve got the idea. And it’s so ..read more

Maxims of a Magician is the second book by Richy Roy that we have reviewed here. You can read our review of The Wealthy Magician here. The Wealthy Magician was a very applied book – looking at the business side of marketing and sales and value for a magician. Maxims of a Magician is a very different kind of book. As its name implies it is full of short ‘maxims’ followed by a brief (paragraph) unpackings of the same. There are 116 maxims in all. It is a very difficult book to review because of its format and content. Some of the maxims seem to obvious that they hardly need stating (e.g. “Every ..read more