Smooth360? Meh! Miracles happen all the time, so what! :rolleyes:

But on a serious note, la0o9, I don't think Mark is in a hurry to divulge the secret behind Smooth360, and more importantly I'm quite sure that his goal in launching eMpower is more based around general teaching of moves and improvement of technique. I don't think he will respond to people who he thinks are looking for the diabolical secrets to his more infamous effects.

Part of being a magician is about not knowing ALL the secrets. There have always been magicians who kept their best tricks rather than selling them, some have even taken their secrets to the grave. It's an important part of magic that some secrets are NEVER divulged, or at the very least, only taught to a select few close friends.

You may have to keep dreaming about Smooth, or keep trying to work it out yourself! But in my humble opinion your best bet is to use this gift we have of Mark offering us his time, to help you improve all your magic, or even just the most important moves, for instance your Pass, second deal, ambitious routine, etc. These are the building blocks of card magic. You'd do so much better to learn stuff like that from Mark than to obsess over just one move (even though it is incredible ;) )

lol, i'm not obsessed over one move, it's just that i will take every shortcut i can, and if the short cut turns out to be a roadblock, it's fine with me, i do not think i am obsessed over one move, it's that i don't really need help with the others, all i think i need to do is practice a lot to get them down completely.

I think its good la0o9 has a good clear goal, even one that simple. I dont have any right now I am working on riffle stack (STILL HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO MASTER THIS), betwixt by helder, and a few other tricks. I have no clear goal so I keep straying on trying to learn new things when I havent fully mastered previous stuff.

---------- Post added at 09:43 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:34 AM ----------

Also I am working on repulse control and svengali control

Mark, I have a question. What if your webcam is awful quality and we can't see you or we can barley make out what we are saying or visa-versa?

Sorry dude, I'm sure you're not obsessed; I guess I didn't mean it quite that strongly. And this coming from me who's been doing nothing but the clipshift for about 3 weeks, lol. :eek:

I think I can easily answer this for Mark :D

No worries since Mark has a good webcam, great enough to see and hear. Of course, a really good one will help a lot more ;).

If he uses a crappy webcam that makes him look either like Minecraft or Picasso's cubism paintings, then I'll punch him for you kitty :)

Okay, by the power vested in me as moderator, I WILL MOVE THESE POSTS

I don't know whether that was just a joke or if you will really be moving then, but just to be sure.. keep them here. We talked enough about Minecraft already. ;)

I will always be using my HD webcam for this so the problem wouldn't be on my side. And both Tinychat and Skype have text chat possibilities so in case you wouldn't have speakers or a microphone, we can still use that.

However, I'm pretty sure you didn't necessarily mean my webcam, but just any webcam in general because of the vice versa you added. In case your own webcam quality is too bad I still hope it's good enough to see what you could improve on and whether you are taking in the lessons. Some weeks ago I had a chat with someone whose webcam was quite terrible but still good enough for that.

If your camera is really bad and you can barely see whatever you're doing, it may as well be worth it to get a new, better webcam. Great quality webcams are very cheap nowadays.

I was being quite serious! The Playground forums need something new! :D

Your a moderator david?

exactly 1 month of doing nothing but the move for 2 straight hours everyday, and a long long long period of live performances after that ^__^( yeah, that might have been slightly exaggerated, or not...). I've also been trying to do that move for a while( it's working nicely for me in magic performances, but actual card games are a bit harder, after all, i originally started learning to break the rules in case i want to save some face... JK, or am i?)

Mark, there are HD webcams? =o

I wish I had one :P

Is there some sort of attachment I can put onto the computer to make it better quality?

---------- Post added at 09:41 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:34 AM ----------

Oh, and I never got to introduce myself. My name is Kelan (Pronounced KEH-LAN). It's an altered spelling to Kellen. Anyway, I've been doing magic for about a year. I'm 13 years old and I'm striving to learn more. I'm in the midst of practicing the Repulse Control (which I think is genius).

I can tell me and Mark (or would it be Mark and I... ^.^) have different views on revealing magic. I reveal only MY tricks, mathematical principles, and tricks/sleights that are often performed bad. I respect your views so I hope you respect mine :). I want to be friends with all of you on here, so I hope my views on revealing magic don't effect that... :). I'm a boy who has a lot to learn XD

Cheers!

@Kitty

Yes, there are HD cameras. They are just more pricey than regular webcams. The quality is equal to that of a video camera. Some of Mark's videos were recorded with an HD webcam.

Seems like you got the same view on revealing magic as Albert, so I guess I'm used to it. ;)

However, we still don't approve exposure on this board. We do have some hidden place where we can talk more freely about secrets though. ^_^

Depends on how you look at it. An HD webcam is just as expensive as a regular webcam used to be before those HD cams came out. For instance, the Logitech C270 (720p webcam) costs $39.99. I remember that some years ago I bought a 1.3 MP webcam, not nearly as good as the C270, for $45. :)

I have the C310 which cost me £30 and is ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT, HD quality!

@la0o9 THis is off topic by the wya. I have been practcing riffle stacking for about 4 months and I havnt mastered it :(. I dont practcie two hours a day I usall practcie riffle stacking for about ten minutes and there was a peroid where I stopped practcing it competly but Now I am working at it again. I am currently working on stacking for 6 players my goal is to learn to stack for 9. I have cheated in card games before against friends (we where not using real money or bets or anything just games for fun, and I wanted to test if anyone would see me cheating) and I much prefer overhand shuffle stacks much easer to do

While it's true that it's much easier to do, stacking for 6 people with it is a drag( you need to keep the sight and time of your stack to a minimum, and it's quite hard to do so in a home game with 5-6 people( home game= no or small table= small circle= maximum visibility of all dirty work), and doing for about 9 is a bit...


Riffle stacking i've seen a guy did it for 7 people and still got away with it( tho, idk how long he practiced to get that good), i can do for about 6-7 in 2 shuffles atm( the most amount of people i've ever played against here is 7, 8 including myself, i'm aiming to be able to stack for 7 people in one single shuffle), i myself don't practice 2 hours a day like when i posted that, i only do around 1h30 max, and i mix it with false shuffle and blind shuffle practice as well. I've never really cheated in a game, but i have done some demonstrations before, and i've never been found out before even tho i warn them in advance that i'd cheat( tho, i mainly stack for Black Jack so it was easier than stacking a 4 of a kind for a poker game). Mastering the thing is tough... i think i heard the people who can do it said that you need to be able to do the basics when looking in the mirror like you are looking at someone else shuffling the cards for you( in other words, being able to do it without really thinking about doing it) before actually going out and practice talking normally and cheating at the same time before you can be called a Master at the thing.


P.S: man that was a lengthy post...

Back to the topic of teaching sessions, would you be happy to help with things such as double lifts, or maybe teach some that you use? WOuld you alsohelp people with effects of yours that they have worked out. (I worked out one0handed morphues I think, and If I pmed you the method and it was correct would you help wiht it?)

like he said Kieran, he will take a look at what you have, and if the method you're doing is NOT the real thing, he will teach you to use that method to it's fullest, but not showing you the real thing( you're practically asking him the same thing i did)

Yeah I am arnt I ;). I still want to know about the double lifts though because I can do a couple with breaks without any worrys of detection but I cant do any without a break without worrying about falshing so I want to know if he would be willing to teach stuff like convicing no-get-ready double lifts, because his are awesome