I'm a really big fan of Jerry Mentzer usually. I got his book "Counts, Cuts, Moves, And subtlety".
It was a great book so I decided to get the sequel. Packet tricks. I can say that I was very
dissapointed.
Cover and binding 2/5 The cover and binding were really bad. The paper that
they used to make the cover is like creased up and kind of ripped in a way. it has like grooves in
it and I personally did not like that. Then the binding. This is interesting. I got my copy, I read
it all, I finished it and when I picked it up and opened it again, The whole book fell apart! So now
I have 2 pieces of this. A cover piece, And the inside material. I'm not sure how I plan on fixing
this. Just a terrible start
Impromptu tricks 3/5 I would give the more impromptu tricks a
better review, Although they mostly consisted of tricks involving a royal flush hand and/or aces.
There are some neat ideas in this book. But I personally would not use any of them. The author
assumes you dont want to do these with setup so he teaches them all with no setup and how to set up
the deck durring the trick. That was pretty cool.
Special tricks 2/5 I did not really like
these special card tricks. They envolved weird cards like cards with odd backs and stuff like that.
They were all requiring you to have this really thick packet of cards that is not practical in real
world situations. I was not a fan, But I learned some new subtlety and even a few sleights
The Teaching 1/5 I hated the teaching throughout this book. All the typing was small and
everything was clumped together with like 30 steps each and you lost your position easily throughout
this. It was hard to follow along because the pictures are always like 2 pages after the one you are
on so you needed to go looking for them constantly.
The photographs 4/5 I think that the
only thing he could not have messed up on this book was the pictures. Well he managed to. They were
all blurry and had these strange glares in them and they were black and white and sometimes hard to
understand.
Overall I would have to say, Stay away from this book. It was very frustrating
to do. The tricks don't make any sense and require these big stacks of cards. There is maybe 1 trick
that I would ever consider using or even playing with. It was poorly done. Not Jerry's best
material. I'm hoping to get his newer book which will hopefully be better than this one. I loved
counts cuts moves and subtlety and thought this would be better but I was wrong.
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Naaah. I REALLY didn't feel this book. But speaking of feel, this book had the most significant
cover. It has a ridgy feel and the paper stock is very thick. One problem about this is the binding
is awful! The pages are glued together and to the cover and back cover, and if you open it up a
little too far, it starts to peel open and tear.
The material inside is a little less than
average. Some of it uses special faced cards, some use double backed etc. There are a few that use
specially cut or treated cards. Even some that use just plain cards from a deck that you can take
right from the pack and begin performing. I like how much variety is in here.
The typing
is pretty clear, but still not great. There were a lot of parts that made me have to go back and
keep reading over and over again. When I finally got through those parts, I found that it was a
simple 2 second action that sometimes isn't even required.
I think for such an old book
(1982, you decide) the photographs COULD be a little clearer. Everything is dark and it's against a
dark background so his fingers, the cards, and everything else is very dark and sometimes hard to
understand. And there is also a glare in almost every picture which got kind of irritating, but
that's just me.
I would really just have to give this a generous 3/5. I wasn't able to
modify anything and for the work, some of these aren't very good. You might like this if you are
REALLY into packet tricks, but not really a great book. I don't recommend it.
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