Tricks Every Magician Should Own

It's the one question I get asked the most, and I am finally going to answer it. For the past several years, I've been toying with the best way to write an article on this topic without it feeling like a blog post or a sales push. I'm not at all affiliated with any of the items listed below (though friends of mine published some of them).

What I will say is that I've come at this from the perspective of someone who works behind the scenes on TV magic shows. Something most magicians often forget to consider is that TV magicians will perform upwards of one hundred tricks in a TV series. That is an insane number of new magic tricks to learn and shoot – often in a very concise period.

TV magicians very quickly become masters at taking home the tricks for the next day's shoot and learning how to perform them at home that evening. It will never fail to amaze me when a TV performer arrives at a shoot and can expertly perform a trick that didn't exist a week ago and was only put in their hands the night before. A lot of them will make changes and improvements to them, too.

So, I'm going to outline what essentially is the tool chest of any magician hoping to one day be on TV in some fashion. With the tricks below, you'll be able to cover almost every genre of fresh-feeling magic in adaptive ways. It's a grab-and-go style list of material magicians should really own and learn if they want to work with consultants and producers and turn around new magic fast.

Cards

I have never worked on a single show where the channel didn't plead with us to avoid using cards at all costs. The stats do not lie – people change the channel or switch off the TV when you pull out a deck of cards. However, cards are an easy fallback and their uses can be adapted for other tricks.

Forces

The three best force decks for television are the Mind Power Deck, the Pop-Eyed Popper Deck, and the One Way Force Deck.

If magic product reviewers didn't care about pocket space so much, they'd tell you the same. Luckily, TV magicians do not need to worry about pocket space, and neither do the majority of dedicated hobbyist magicians around the world.

Peeks

I recommend getting your hands on an Extractor, which allows you to remove a signed card from a deck secretly. Then, if you want a marked deck, I always suggest The Code. Finally, if you're made of money, you can buy one of those fancy decks of cards with chips in them that a reader can sense from a distance.

The truth is that TV allows for TV-specific methods that avoid the need for such props, and I struggle to recall a time when products like these were strictly necessary – or used on screen (we usually cut their uses out of the final edit).

Transpositions

Intercessor is really all you need to perform amazing card transpositions for any TV scenario. It's one of the best utility devices ever created, and of course, it was invented by Gaetan Bloom—a true inventor of magic in every sense of the word.

You can go into any scenario and find somewhere for a chosen playing card to end up. In many ways, this is the perfect press trick for magicians who tour and need to go into morning news shows or similar. It's very easy to find somewhere when you arrive for the playing card to end up impossibly.

Words & Objects

Moving on from the playing cards to something much more universal: words. The buckets of things we come up with tricks to do with that often have universal methods tend to involve forcing words and objects. Let's get wordy.

Forces

If it's off-camera, you should use a Digital Force Bag, and if it's on-camera, you should use SvenPads (any brand is fine). If you're forcing multiple words, then use a Clear Force Bag or an AmazeBox with multiple-colour slips of paper.

Digital Force Bag is excellent and one of the most incredible magic tools of all time. But it's not a TV trick – using it on television is not only an act of laziness as a magician but as a human being, too. It would be like a comedian on TV going into their phone in the middle of their act to check their notes.

Care enough to write up the options in a notepad; otherwise, it'll come across as convenient (which works fine in the real world but not on TV) or worse—it'll look like you need to use the notes app because it has something to do with the method.

It's also just so not visually compelling on TV—how is a director meant to shoot you swiping through your phone to open your notes in a way that will have anyone at home following it as they eat their dinner and try to get their kids to eat their food, too?

Peeks

If it's on camera, and it's rarely on camera, then I'll always opt for a homemade carbon paper option. If you want to buy something ready-made, then I highly recommend Psypher. I also do think there's something rather captivating about using Akkelian Envelopes – you can use them like a peek wallet but with more natural justification, I believe.

I went to a magic bar in Bristol once, and afterward, every single one of my layperson friends individually told me they thought it was weird they had to put the business card back into the magician's wallet after our friend wrote on it. Writing something down and sealing it inside an envelope seems to be much more logical to me than returning it to the performer's wallet – although I've known many respected magicians to disagree with me on this thoroughly.

I cannot stand any of the electronic impression pads, though I'm friends with people who make them. TV magic is too high stakes to worry about technology when it can be easily avoided in ways that work just as well.

Performing solo – those fancy-pants impression pads likely work wonders: brilliant tools – but in TV, a consultant peels open the carbon paper pad off-screen and radios the word into your ear. I'm not risking my job for the sake of saving me from having to peel open a carbon paper pad.

I will forever admire anyone who uses the centre-tear method, though it's not something I've ever seen anyone use for television.

Predictions

If you're not using one of the forces mentioned earlier in this article, then you are likely switching out the prediction. For television, this can be as easy as switching it over the shoulder of a spectator (I'm not kidding) and cutting it out from the edit. But let's outline the more commercial options.

Master Prediction is by far the most incredible prediction utility ever invented, and it's amazing to me how few magicians own one.

PreVision is the second most incredible prediction utility ever invented, and it makes sense why so few magicians own one—it's a premium, well-kept secret.

Unbelievalope is a practical smaller version for a wider range of settings, like morning show appearances or similar.

The Invisible Deck is really the only prediction effect you need with a deck of cards, and I find it remarkable how willing audiences are to see it again and again.

I have to tell you – if some of these tricks had easier names or if some of these magic shops had easier layouts, it would have been much easier for me to check the names of these magic tricks!

Nail Writer

SuperSharpie is really the best of its kind now that no one really uses pencils. Did people use pencils back in the day? Or did I use pencils because I was a child before SuperSharpie was released?

It is super rare that we would force a TV magician to do something as challenging as nail writing, but the truth is that it's a skill worth learning and a great backup for a variety of last-minute magic tricks.

Reels

Wraiths were all I and anyone else used in TV for so long that I didn't actually realize it was a branded product name and not the name of the kind of reel until I was researching this post. It appears there are a lot of remotely triggered electric reels online, and you should definitely own at least one of them.

On the topic of how rare it is for TV magicians to need to do something as challenging as nail writing – we always aim for a big chunk of those 100 tricks to be ones in which the magician does a magical gesture and someone off-screen presses a button that makes the trick take place. The number of versatile TV magic tricks that can be invented with one electric reel never ceases to amaze me.

I have this small prediction that this is the way the magic product market is moving, too, as magicians appear to get more and more upset about buying a trick to find there is, in fact, a method for it. Magic companies will make more money, have fewer annoyed customers, and the costs will soon come down when building these button-pressing toys for magicians (it's a big reason why I think Leviosa has sold so well when it's almost impossible to imagine anyone watching it is fooled).

Button press magic tricks! You heard it here first.

TV Heroes

Finally, it's time to discuss the often-forgotten TV hero tricks. When you appear on a TV show like Fool Us, AGT, or really any TV show, you will be asked to shoot some heroes.

These are shots of you backstage, against a green screen, or in a smoke-filled room performing fast visual magic to the camera. If you do not prepare for this, it will end up being a shot of you fanning or springing your cards—boring.

You should own five options for magic trick heroes, as it is likely you will be asked to record multiple or ditch ones that the directors do not like. Pick tricks that are easy, visual, and fast and are performed with your face in the frame. I've had to seriously disappoint magicians in the past when I've told them the only trick they prepared will not work because it is performed at waist height – unless they're also a contortionist, they'll be forced to perform whatever I can find on the day instead.

Any show I've worked on that involves heroes has always had this vibe on the shoot day: a bunch of wizards arriving at a Hogwarts lesson with a trick they found online and learned for the class—a show-and-tell of visual magic.

Zapped and Pyro Kinesis are two perfect examples of visual magic tricks that take place with your face in the frame. Remember, these tricks will take place in concise shots, likely with interview audio playing over them. Choose simple, visual magic tricks that ideally lean into wish fulfillment – refilling a drink, lighting matches on fire, making money from receipts, turning cards into a winning set.