Gimmiked Decks VS Pure Sleight

???

I'm just wondering what people opinions are about using gimmiked decks to achieve what can be done with sleights.

My personal example is the 4 aces routine with a short card. I realised it'd be much more effective if the spectator could return the 4 aces after doing it once and still I'd easilly find them. I experiment with reavling the 4 aces then replacing them with indifferents and having them replace the indifferents with out knowing. This led to all sorts of problems first among them being getting the short carb back in position because by replacing the aces with indifferents I first had to move it. As you can see this trick was rapidly getting more and more complicated. Then it hit me, why not just start with 8 aces! Find 4 have them return them and then find the remaining 4!!!

I'm just wondering about peoples thoughts on similar situations where it can be done very well with a sleight but a small gimick makes it much easier (Derren Brown's excellent Queen of Spades trick on the devils picturebook is another example!).

P.S. By my reading of the rules this isn't a reveal as I feel I've only described the effect without divulging the mechanism. My humblest apologies if I've stepped over the line but I'm new to this area and couldn't find a precedent!!!

oeb

Alot of people get caught up in the gimmick / no gimmick debate, and it's kinda pointless as far as I am concerned. What it basicially comes down to is : "Does this effect entertain your audience and do you feel comfortable preforming it?". If the answer is Yes, then by all means preform it that way.

Dupes are common, any deck I leave the house with has at lease one normal dupe (For transpo effects) and one stranger dupe (For the likes of overkill etc). Other gimmicks are equally common, short cards, double facers, etc. What magician does not own an invisible deck? Look at the popular magicians around at the moment? Nearly every second time Keith Barry is on TV / Radio he uses an ID, and why not? It's astonishing and it's really difficult to be busted with due to bad angles etc.

I think where this gimmicked vs un-gimmicked debate really shows some kind of basis on reality is when it comes to the close-up/table-hopper magician. Pocket Space is at a premium. For example should you carry an ID with which you can prefrom one effect? Or a normal deck with which you can preform hundreds? If you decide to carry both do you still have room for your sponge balls?

Popinjay

Have to agree with oeb here. The sole purpose of a magician is to entertain, not to make yourself feel big because either a) you have the best new gimmicks all the time or b) you don't use gimmicks because you think their 'dishonest'. Both attitudes can be pretty common but it would appear that there are also a lot of reasonable people out there who realsise that it's not about them, it's about the audience.

dionsiseire

I personally would not use a gimmick apart from an ID

i like to start and end as clean as possible and leave the crowd asking to examine, which they can when im not using gimmicked materials

hada

with that said, with the likes of a stripper deck, the audience can examine the cards and unless they know what they're looking for (which they most probably won't) they won't be able to tell the difference if it's a gimmiked deck or not!