Take Five (Michael Breggar)
Five way-cool sleight-lite card tricks for cool cats and hats
You may recognize Michael Breggar name by now, because he's produced quite a number of books that focus on sleight-lite magic. I have most of them, and enjoy them immensely for several reasons:
- Michael has a great sesne of humor, and his zany style is always amusing to read.
- The strength of his tricks is in the area of presentation, which is what the best magic is about: being entertaining.
- The tricks are light on sleights, which means that they're easy to perform, and don't require knuckle-busting moves.
- They're easy to read, with plenty of pictures, and well laid out with good headings.
His newest book is called Take Five, and follows the same formula. It consists of around 50 pages, and is available as a PDF download, at this stage exclusively from Kaymar Magic.
To whet your appetite, here's a full performance of one of the tricks in the book, "Decisions, Decisions", by Michael himself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUbURnD4Vts
Here's part of the ad copy, which gives an idea of the five main routines that are included:
BR-ACAAN – Michael’s newest go-to “Any Card at Any Number” routine. It is sleight-lite easy and impossible to backtrack. Based on ideas from Barrie Richardson, other magicians have called it “superb.” Audiences just call it “in-the-pocket awesome”!
Sympa – “Lippy” Liepzig’s “Sympathetic 13” gets a jazzy makeover in Michael’s mind-blowing, easy version using a single non-gaffed deck – fully shuffled by the audience!
Decisions, Decisions – Direct from Michael’s last Magic Castle set, think impossible “Blizzard” abetted by several audience members. Bebopping with your spectators, they name any card color, value, and suit to jam a card. You cleanly remove that named card from the deck and then instantly show every other card hasn’t been printed yet! Yeah, they are all blank, Hepcats!
Sherlock – A jazzy melody straight outta baker Street, Dizzy Mike takes a Harry Lorayne tune and egg-beats-it-to-the-bar. A card is selected and returned, and using Holmesian deduction and Scotland Yard line-ups, is revealed in a rather unusual fashion. But then Sherlock, also reveals the card’s three sidekick mates. But then Dr. Watson sockdollagers everyone by revealing a prediction that has been in front of everyone’s goggles from the start!
Order in the Cortex – Another frequent performance piece from the Breggar song-book. Two participants shuffle and cut an ordinary deck. Each keeps half of the cut cards, then removes six cards sight unseen from their piles. They then look at a single card of their six and swap it face-down with their partner who mixes that card in with their other five. The two six-card packets are turned face-up as the subjects try to discern which of the six cards they are looking at is the stranger from the other person’s packet. They may guess correctly, but the cool cat magician has already read the minds of both and pulled matching cards out of a jumbo deck.
Where to get it? Take Five was released in March 2023, and can be purchased as a digital download in PDF format as an exclusive from Kaymar Magic.
