Ok, i do strolling magic in public, and do magic to my friends and thier friends at school. Anyway, being surrounded with tons of attention hungry teenagers, i find that almost every time i take out a deck to do magic, someone tells me how they know this one, and that they want to do it. I usually just say no, and that i am the magician and they are the audience, but that usually gets me a bad rep as being stuck up. So do you guys have any lines to say back to this remark?

well I don't know how your personality is, but I would be straight with him and say "bring your own cards" or something like that.

You can say something like, "well, let me do my trick for those who HAVEN'T seen it and then you can amaze them with YOUR magic trick after I am finished." Kind of put him on the spot. I would leave out I am the magician and you are the audience, that DOES make ya sound stuck up. Just don't let it phase you and then proceed with your trick. And then you can hand over the deck to the guy and say get ready ladied and gentlemen, here is yet another great trick by..have him say his name and then hand him the cards. Hopefully, he has nothing and you look like you challenged and beat a heckler, if he does have a trick, well, hopefully you have a better one. Good luck, hope that helps.

I usually skip over popular tricks (ones David Blaine or other famous magicians have performed on televsion) because of this. If someone thinks they know the trick, however, I try to decide in my mind whether or not they would actually know the trick I am about to perform (opposed to one that starts the same way). If I come to the conclusion that, yes, they could know the trick, I do another trick that starts the same way, or say, "Well, I won't bore you with something you've already seen."

If I think that the trick is fairly uncommon and the spectator is probably thinking of another trick, I perform the effect like usual, dismissing his comments by saying, "We'll get to your trick after I'm done", or something similar.

Say, "well I don't really want to see someone lay out three rows of seven cards for the millionth time." Doesn't always work but when it does it's very funny.

lmao
everyone says they can do that at my school, that just cracked me up !!

Hahaha, so true Blaiky. I can't help but laugh when that one person starts dealing out the rows of cards.

What I'll usually do is follow a major rule in magic, but just apply it to the spectators: if you don't pay any attention to it, neither will the group. Consequently, what you do pay attention to will also receive the attention of the audience. I also do street magic where I'll get a whole crowd of people around. If a some other person wants to take over, I'll just say "hold on," only glancing at them for a second. If you take the time to actually let them share the spotlight and try to give them an explanation or argument of some sort, it's only going to let them keep part of the spotlight, as well as take away from some of the rapport (willingness and cooperation) that you may establish with the audience. Really, that's the only thing you need to do, and the psychology behind it always works for me.

- Nathaniel

pwrsrc0- Yeah most of the time i do ignore it if i am performing for a group, but sometimes when just performing for one of two people it doesn't work as well to just ignore them. That was why I started this post. Anyways, thanks for all the imput people.

I usually just say: "Well I'll have to do it very carefully then" and continue on like nothing happened.

This happened to me just today. Luckily I knew the persons magical skill level (which was low), so I said "we'll take turns" I went, and knocked everyone over and he didn't want to do it anymore. I imagine he was going to do some self working card trick with miserable patter. I think the thing that really killed em was the presentation and patter.

It's usually easier to let them do the trick, and here's why: When you see someone else doing magic, don't you want to do a couple tricks too? You will usually get over wanting to do them of course, if the person doing them is a lot better than you. (Think you vs Michael Ammar). Armed with that knowledge- when someone wants to do a trick be humble and let them do the trick.

As long as your tricks are significantly better, they will no longer want to do tricks for you. Of course, if their's are better than yours- it's time to keep practicing.

If you know they cant do it and its not a gimmicked trick, let them, just watch him get it wrong an then you do it right. this makes the trick even more special!

If they say they want to do a trick say "But can you do magic"? and blow them away after that. When your done say. Say "Oh, you wanted to do a 'trick' like you where going to let them all along.

good, after some really good tricks they would have to have a really, really good trick to top it.