Capitulating Cards
Also known as Capitulating Queens, this has been one of my favorite card tricks for a long time. It's is a small packet card trick that has a lot of magic packed into it. The creator of this mystery is a magician/author James Swain, so I have included a link to his website (jamesswain.com). You can also see his work on Youtube at youtube.com/c/jimswainmagic.
The performance included here is my own handling of it, and since it isn't my secret to tell, I have not included an explanation. If you do own this card trick, I hope you'll find it interesting, informative, and entertaining to see another magician perform it.
Part of my philosophy is to pack as much magic into the amount of time you have to perform.
An old friend of mine once said to me, "When it comes to your performance of magic, do it as if your life depends upon it because, in reality, it does."
A pretty strong statement, but when it comes to the performance of magic, you do need to get in as much meaningful content into the shortest amount of time possible while shooting for the most substantial amazement factor you can. The Capitulating Cards is one of those kinds of card tricks with a lot of magical punches packed into a quick moment that includes getting your audience involved.
Thinking about all of this takes me to the following. This same friend of mine also said to me as we spoke about one of the tricks he regularly performed, "That routine is 2.5 minutes in length; I get two big laughs, three small ones, and six magical moments." I hadn't ever looked at my performance in that way until he brought that to my attention—a definite measurable way of looking at your performance. By recording your performance (audio only is the easiest), you can assess the length of each trick, identify the strength of reactions, and count how many magical moments you do have within that timeframe.
So, a card trick presented here on my blog for the fun of it, along with some inner thoughts concerning what's important to me as sort of performance building blocks.