This is the most covert and DIABOLICAL gimmick I have ever seen in over 45 years. The teaching is
superb, the effects created are miracles. One of the finest principle's ever used with cards. a must
buy!
6 of 6 magicians found this helpful.
The gimmick can easily be made at home. He states the thickness but I don’t see how that aids in the
effects at all. It also has two sides that have to be hidden if performing close up overhand
shuffling but only one method requires it to be hidden. In all honestly this works really well and
looks totally fair. You can easily do a real overhand shuffle and keep a stack of up tonthirteen
cards imperfect order and place that stack anywhere you want easily. This won’t keep an entire deck
in order but a small stack, yes. Mark is a great teacher and explains everything clearly. This
should be fine for beginners who do tricks with small stacks. Shuffling then finding the aces would
be good for them. Not too impressed with the gimmick but the possibilities are endless so I am not
disappointed. It is way overpriced though.
4 of 4 magicians found this helpful.
I'm still practicing with this wonderful utility and my hands have not yet memorized enough to
perform. Therefore I will comment on the instructional vid only. Mark's instructions and
demonstrations are through, straightforward and filmed clearly. One of the most useful tutorials
I've watched since the start of home video. I'm going out on a limb here but, along the lines of the
Anti-Sales Pitch, Mark seemingly shares some results of his own jazz genius which the SSSytem
affords. I like how that sense of improv is conveyed.
5 of 7 magicians found this helpful.
Simple, but clever gimmick. When I first got it, I thought "Meh!". But what intrigued me was the
casual, devil-may-care, throw the cards all over the place, have the spectator shuffle into chaos
that appealed to me.
Pros:
1. I was able to improve an existing routine I was
doing with a stacked deck. While I performed it well as is, I felt I needed a way to eliminate any
suspicion I was using sleights. This kicked up the trick a notch for me.
2. Mark's
tutorial, was, uh, a bit offbeat, but really laid out the potential of the gimmick (Nice shout out
to Nick Locapo, btw!) and got my creative juices going.
Cons:
1. Price, but maybe
not. Several reviews have indicated that the price is too high. True, if you only price the
product. IMO, not high enough if you calculate the IP (intellectual property) that Mark provides.
To me, it was a bargain.
3 of 3 magicians found this helpful.
Mark Calabrese is a serious thinker about the work he releases. He battle-tested this for years and
completely schooled a room of serious workers. The ad copy is 100% accurate. Spend time working on
your presentation: Calabrese has done all the heavy lifting for you regarding method.
6 of 10 magicians found this helpful.
I *love* this! Fits my style perfectly. When I got it and first opened it, I dropped the gimmick and
spent way longer than I thought I would trying to find it - that's how inconspicuous it is. Super
simple, super direct, Super Shuffle System!
5 of 8 magicians found this helpful.
I think relative to other products of this caliber, the price is too high. In fact, this could have
been a download.
1 of 1 magicians found this helpful.
I’m another in a long line of full time pros that Mark totally nailed with this. Great tool, easy
to use, practical...worth the money if you want to do miracles. Period.
1 of 1 magicians found this helpful.
First the bad, I think that this is a little expensive for what it is and when I started watching
the tutorial, it seemed a bit familiar - I have seen at least three other magicians teach very
similar tricks but the additional feature that this brings is quite inspiring.
I had one
thought about how to get a phone number which isn't too creepy - just seek out your chosen spectator
as early as possible (depending on the circumstances, this could be hours or days) and tell them
that you have lost their phone and could they ring it. As soon as you hear your phone ring, thank
them and don't even look at the screen so that they may not even think about it later.
Also, when I was trying to find good banknotes (for their numbers) and finding it a bit awkward,
I had the idea of using lettered cards such as I remember using with an old game called Lexicon and
that way, a whole fully formed word or name could be revealed. I know that Bicycle produce such
decks but I just found that there are loads of old Lexicon sets on eBay (note to moderator, these
are vintage games not magic items and no longer produced so I don't think that this counts as
referencing products not supplied by Penguin) and apart from being cheaper, they bring a story with
them; e.g. 'maybe you remember this game from your childhood...' etc. (I could almost see Derren
Brown doing it if he still used cards). There are other similar games - one I remember called
Kan-U-Go but the cards were significantly smaller than a regular deck so wouldn't handle very well.
Anyway, as I said at the outset, quite inspiring.
It comes with a gimmick that can be easily be made at home for another deck.
The videos are
accurate!
You can use the deck as a regular deck and ring in the gimmick if you want.