Losing cards in the deck.

I came across this site .. www.jbtv.co.uk which is a British web site run by Mark Mason. JBTV products are easily found on a lot of dealer sites but this is a site not only for his own products but also for other stuff he sells in his shop.

The best thing about the site is the large quantity of demo videos. But while watching one it reminded me of something in magic that drives me crazy.

Watch the demo of 'Holes'. It's not a terrible idea. But in the performance we see a classic stupid concept taking place.

The guy doing the trick points out that the selection is being put in the middle. He draws attention to the fact before pushing it in. But then makes the classic mistake and even patters about it; "We can even give the deck a few cuts and shuffles to make sure its lost in the middle".

I see this time and time again. Why bother to stress the fairness of the return of a selection and then cut and shuffle the deck? It makes no sense. If a card is put into the middle of the deck why would you then shuffle the deck other than to get the card some place else?

Lay people are not as thick as many magicians would like to believe. Why insult their intelligence?

Learn a control that secretly gets the card to the top for tricks like that. Putting it fairly in the middle and then cutting the deck makes no sense and you're not fooling anyone.

MW.