HI Peeps!

Many people regard this book as the holy grail to card magic. Was just wondering how many of you actually have the copy of the book?

IF yes, what are the effects or insights that you have learned, and thus benifited from this book? However, you may also wanna discuss the difficulties that you might encounter in this thread as well.

This discussion should be based on nothing else but the book and its contents only.

Cheers!

dry_gin

Yes, I do actually have this book (third edition, 1954).. I didn't buy it though, it was actually given to me. (Yes you read it right, someone gave it to me. :g: )

I got this book at the stage that i was thinking of going back to the basics. Because i had started magic from a book called Encyclopedia of Magic, most of what i learnt were part and thereabouts of this and that sleight etc. From the books, it was right down way back to the basics. So i went right down back to overhand shuffles etc..

Unfortunately, i'm very very very slow - i still haven't finished the book after one plus years, so i can't say what was the best insight/effect etc that i got from the book, just to say that it is really THE book to learn the foundations of card magic.

One minor complain about it is that i find it hard sometimes to understand what the book is trying to bring across. Some of the diagrams, are not exactly helpful.

I find it really hard to read through every page of the book sometimes though. But that just me, because right off, sometimes, I will just want to flip to a certain page and learn a certain sleight rather than going through it at the 'right' sequence as it is 'supposed' to be.

A.

Royal Road to Card Magic was my first ever magic book. In fact it was my first ever magic investment.

From what I can recall, the main thing I gained from my first attempt at reading through the book was the Overhand Shuffle and the Riffle Shuffle. Reason being these 2 are the 1st two chapters of the book and I found myself trying to get the hang of shuffling before moving on to other topics.

Unfortunately the rest of my first attempt at reading through remains relatively hazy to me, probably because I just skimmed through the subsequent chapters briefly, trying to spot any interesting stuff.

Since then I've pretty much left the book lying untouched on my table, until I was shown an effect that originated from the book and was given some slight improvements, which blew me away. I went back and pored through the chapter on The Key Card, and I found a couple of gems that I had earlier disregarded and underestimated.

One thing I've learnt from the experience is never to judge an effect simply based on reading through it without trying it out and giving it some thought. Some effects don't sound so fantastic in words but play out surprisingly well when executed. Also, some effects are really not too spectacular, but the principles or concepts behind them might be worth exploring.

Just asking are there any colour changes taught in the book?
And false cuts?

hey dry_gin it depend what type of stuff are you looking for,E.g sleights ,Routines,theory..

as we all know "Royal Road To Card Magic"is one of the very well know book that recommend by most of the magicians,Mostly are very new in card magic that benifited the most, of course i'm not saying that if you are not new you can;t learn any thing from it you still can but my point of view on this book is quite boring i feel.i don't really learn much from it sad to say that..


as i say it depends on what stuff are you looking for, as for me i'm a sleights lover, i love to learn sleights that is hardly use by magicians..well some of you might say "simple is beautiful" if you are like me you can try scearching for
Richard Kaufman - Secrets Draun From Underground or Richard Kaufman Coin magic. which alot of stuff inside that i benifited alot...
anyway good luck to you :)


Kbowen

Haha Gordon, what a coincidence because i just went to kinokuniya today and checked out the book. I was actually expecting a big hard cover book but it was actually so small and tiny, i was quite surprised.

Anyway i skimmed through it, and it surely seems like a book for beginners. But from shades and adrian, it seems like there are quite a few gems in the book. I was really really hesitant on whether i should buy the book and then i decided that i wasn't going to buy it. It was only 21dollars anyway. not expensive if you ask me. But don't know leh, don't know if should buy also. Maybe will give it some thought. Besides that i was looking at experts at the card table by SW Erdnase. Was considering buying both books and working on them this school holiday. Haha, can't exactly make up my mind. I'm glad you started this thread. Maybe it'll help us make the decision

ZiAn

PS: Don't forget that you, me and jerome are going to share one copy and we're going to take turns to attend the meetings. Haha..

I don't have a copy of the book but I've looked through it before and it certainly is very clear and easier to study compared to what I started out with. I started out with Expert Card Technique and well, it's kind of very tough.

If I had a 2nd chance, I'll have started with RRTCM. I might get it in the future as a reference.

Indeed RRTCM (acronym for Royal Road To Card Magic) is more suited towards beginners of the art (the title says it all), while Erdnase's Expert at the Card Table deals with more advanced techniques.

Many people give the book a miss for a few reasons:

1. They don't like to read books and prefer DVDs or videos.
2. It's OLD and so the contents are probably dated stuff.
3. They skim through the contents page of the book and come to the conclusion "I already know most of these, and the parts that I don't know don't seem useful enough for me to want to know them."
4. It's not produced and marketed by E! (Ok just kidding :lol:)

I would say it's good for revisiting the basics: learning what you didn't know, correcting what you thought you knew was right, and reinforcing what you already know. Further more, it's hard to beat at its price point! I have the Card College 5-volume set as well and there is no doubt that Card College contains much more stuff in much greater detail (duh, it's 5 volumes versus 1, and Card College was published much later than RRTCM) compared to RRTCM, but hey, the price of RRTCM can only buy you 1/3 of 1 volume of Card College.

I wouldn't go as far to say that every serious card worker should have this book in their magic library (after all it is a book geared more towards beginners), but if you've got 21 dollars lying around, why not? ;)

AdrianLee

P.S. If you don't have 21 dollars lying around, skip 4 lunches/2 movies/1 clubbing session/<insert whatever it takes for you to save 21 dollars>, and there you go!

Royal Road to card magic is a great book. However, it was published decades back, hence some materials/sleights were modified by magicians along the years (but its still a good book with much content).

The content is suitable for beginner and intermediate level. Advanced magician should also benefit from some of the gems in it (but i suppose most advanced magician would have already had the book along their magic career). It is at a very affordable price, a good investment for card magic lovers.

Thanks for starting this Thread Gordon.

The Royal Road to Card Magic is a gem of a book. It contains much of the 'modern' material that people claim are 'underground'. Actually all it takes is for you to take the trouble to READ the book and actually TRY the effects.

It's not good enough to read the description of the effect. You have to try it out yourself to decide if it's any good. I mean - how many card plots are there anyway? Most of the time the description is simply, "Spectator selects a card; Magician finds the selected card." With most descriptions, you don't really get any idea how much impact a particular effect will create unless you take the time to walk through the process of performing it - first for yourself as you're learning, then at gatherings with people.

And for those of us either too lazy (yes; the word really is lazy - any textbook is boring and hard to read - hence the ones who take the extra trouble to slog through it get the A) or too busy (LOL - yes, this might be a possibility in today's world) to go through the material, you have little to no idea what you're really missing out on.

As for those guys who claim that they love SLEIGHTS - you've not really read the book either. Royal Road to Card Magic takes you from Beginnner level to Intermediate level easy. And yes - the PASS is Beginner - intermediate level work. It hardly qualifies as advanced work.

Along those lines, SMC aleady has plans to conduct a "BOOK SESSION" based on "The Royal Road to Card Magic". Details will be made known later in May - after Pambudi's lecture. This is a special focused session where we sit down and DEVOUR the book - chapter by chapter; from beginning to end. It might take a few months of such book meetings but at the end of the sessions, I guarantee that those of you who come will walk away amazed at what you missed.

The only condition of course, is that you own a hardcopy of the book.

More details to come! :)


Shade

I learn a lot of stuff in this book. It was my first few magic books I bought haha. Quite a lot of the effects I usually do are found in this book. The effects are all very easy to do but packs a high impact to the audience. That's what I like about the book. B)