– Intro / Brief Overview
What’s up everybody and welcome to magic for beginners, my name is Keith and in today’s video we’re going to be looking at and reviewing Lumino by Thomas Badar. For those who went to Blackpool Magic Convention, this was generally up there as one of the tricks of the convention and I have to agree too. If you’ve not seen this yet, check out the channel for a full performance from Thomas shot at Blackpool.
– What Is The Routine/Trick?
So what is the routine or trick? This is essentially an out of this world style routine where the spectator selects a card, it’s then shuffled into the deck and then Thomas says he’s going to memorise the deck and then picks it up and then the deck is then separated into two piles which so happen to be red and black and the spectators chosen card appears in the opposite colours pile. That’s the basic premise and what Thomas was performed for me, but this could be done as a standard out of this world routine or even a basic memorised deck routine.
For the example of the trick being performed later in the video, I’ve done this as a bit of a funny and modified memorised deck routine.
– How Much Does It Cost?
At Blackpool this was priced up at £40 and Thomas had actually sold out of this at the convention and hopefully it’ll be available at different dealers online or direct from
Thomas on his website.
– Quick Performance
Here’s a quick performance of me doing this as a sort of memorised deck routine.
– What Do You Get With It?
When you purchase this, what do you get with it? You get a nice box which has the tricks name and logo on there and inside of there there’s a business card which has a link and password to the online tutorial and also a deck of cards which are sealed. This is available in both a red and blue back design too I believe.
The tutorial is an unlisted YouTube video which runs for 11 minutes and 15 seconds and features Thomas explaining the trick and routine. There’s an expiation for the trick to be performed without a chosen card, one with a chosen card and also he mentions about a Facebook group where he’s going to be sharing a routine using two jokers too.
– Is It Easy To Perform and where can you perform it?
Despite it being a memory trick, you don’t actually need to memorise the deck in the order it’s been shuffled into as is made out in a performance and because of this and the method used to perform the trick, it makes it very easy to perform.
As I said previously too, your imagination can run wild with this and you can use this in many other ways instead of the examples from Thomas, it really does open up a series or effects that can make you look truly magical without needing to be a memory genius. I mean some of us can’t even remember what we did yesterday morning, let alone remember an entire deck’s sequence after it’s been shuffled.
I did see an example of an alternative in the group about a trick which he adapted to talk about in this video and you start by taking 10 cards and having 9 red and one black and getting the person to shuffle the cards behind their back and you can then take the cards and find that one black card with ease and then expand on that and deal cards into two piles and then eliminate a pile which you know the black isn’t in. You’re left with 5 cards so you place down the black card as a prediction card and then make two piles with the other cards and eliminate one pile. Then you’re left with the three cards so show the two remaining as red and then show your black prediction card.
Before he head into talking about if this can be inspected, I need you to inspect something before we head forward and that’s to see if you’re subscribed to this channel or not. If you’re not it’d be amazing if you’re enjoying the content to subscribe to the channel as it would help it massively and if you’re already subscribed, just know that you’re awesome and I can’t thank you enough for doing so.
– Can You Inspect It?
Can you inspect this? I’d be 50/50 on if you can inspect it, half of me is saying you can inspect it and half of me is saying that you can’t inspect it, but I’d probably air on the side of caution and say you can’t inspect it after the trick, however part of me saying that you can’t inspect it actually has a card selected and the spectator holds, so it would hold up on that front as such, but I probably wouldn’t hand over the full deck.
– Is It Well Made?
Is it well made? Yes, it’s well made. It’s a bicycle deck of cards so upholds the standard bicycle deck quality and of course if you look after your cards then they’ll last a long time and allow you to do multiple performances with them.
– Positives
I’ll grab something from the tutorial video to talk about a positive on this. Thomas states that this is part of his one man show and this gets some amazing reactions from spectators who he performs this trick for and it’s also a magician fooler and seeing him perform this at Blackpool, he’s completely correct. The wife was completely gobsmacked from a non magician perspective and I was left trying to figure out exactly how it was done. I assumed markings but when I watched the video back of the performance, Thomas wasn’t even looking at the cards and still managed to get it right. So for something which is mind blowing to magicians and lay people, this is one of those things which gives it a great positive.
The fact that it’s super simple to perform too is so helpful and after watching the tutorial and giving it half an hour or so playing around, I’ve managed to get to grips with the trick and perform it with ease so that’s always a bonus, especially aimed at more beginner magicians.
– Negatives
Let’s talk about a negative, of course as mentioned, you probably couldn’t hand this out for examination after the trick which could lead people to be suspicious about the deck, but you can always just do the trick, spread both piles, pick them both up and pop them in the box and then pull out the same coloured deck and perform the next trick and nothing could be questioned. Or even using this as a closing piece in a string of routines so that it puts an end to using the deck for tricks as you’re finished after that one, so easily stops the spectator from possibly wanting to check the deck.
While that negative may stop some people from getting this trick, I wouldn’t let that put you off at all because the trick is fantastic and does well with spectators and magicians when performing for them. For the last three years, Thomas has been releasing some banger tricks and this one is no difference and appeared in many photos from people showing their Blackpool hails and there’s a good reason for that.
I hope you enjoyed the review and would love to hear your thoughts on the trick and the review so drop a comment into the video about that. As you may have noticed on the channel, the reviews have been a bit sparse on here due to not having much time for YouTube but I’m back to rocking out the videos and will be shooting a lot more content for magic reviews, playing card reviews and of course hopefully shooting some tutorials and other magical related videos for you all.
With that being said, that’s the end of this video so check out the video on the screen for more magical goodness from the channel and until next time, see ya!