Magic Tricks

I was really looking forward to this lecture as I have a lot of respect for Paul Brook and have been following him for years. Unfortunately I thought this lecture could have been better.

Not many effects are taught and I felt like he rushed through the explanations. The best effect taught, in my opinion, was Juxtapose, which I already own (I bought the pdf from Paul years ago). Even with Juxtapose, I was hoping he would give some new insights that perhaps he discovered since he released it years ago, but to be honest he explains it better and in more detail in the pdf than he does in the lecture.

At least four of the seven effects taught require some kind of gimmick or something extra, which is funny because at one point in the lecture he says only one of the effects he teaches in the lecture requires a gimmick.

The pen game gimmick costs $25.

For Juxtapose, you need something (granted, which many serious mentalists already own, and that I also already own) that generally costs about $50 or more.

For Locked in Thought you need a special kind of lock that you will be very hard pressed to find unless you buy hundreds of locks (he sells the locks on his site for 45 GBP, and says he buys thousands of locks in order to find ones that will work properly for this effect).

Imp-Ossible requires a large size imp pad to employ his contribution to the drawing duplication effect, and such a large imp pad will probably run about $100 or more if you don't have one already.

The other three gimmick-less effects he taught were all pretty weak and obvious imho.

In short, I am giving this three stars because of Juxtapose and the Pen Game, which are both strong although you need gimmicks for them. I think the choice of effects taught could have been far better, and he could have taught more effects and included a higher percentage of effects that don't require extra expensive or hard to find gimmicks to perform. Also wish he would have spent more time on the explanations vs. rushing through and glazing over everything.