Product description: If you like three card monte and Mark Mason’s magic, you will like In the Middle, this is an ultra visual 3 card monte routine, where a queen goes on top everytime, travel and finally vanish to reappear where you want! It’s a nice combination of 2 known principle, one from Solo (by Mark Mason) and the other from Cardshark. Melted together, they allow you to perform a really pleasing routine which you can build as you want. Let’s dig into this review!
Price and where to buy it: This is sold at $30 and you can find it in here : www.magicdream.fr.
What you get: You get the standard packaging from Mark Mason, inside a squared cardboard DVD case, with inside the link to watch the explanation online, Mark is a great teacher and explains his main routine with it. You also get a small plastic card holder, with inside 2 gimmicks and a queen of hearts inside, the queen of hearts is made out the same “thing” as the gimmick, which is shame. But you can replace it with a regular Phoenix queen of hearts. The gimmicks are really well made and they are both identical. They’re similar to his Solo trick, with Cardshark technology inside so they are as thin as one card. They allow to do some very visual moves. Overall, it’s not that expensive and you get several gimmicks. I’m not disappointed with it.
The pros and the cons: Here is the core of my review, let's begin with the cons, as I will usually be doing, I prefer to keep the good things for the end.
THE CONS:
The gimmicks does most of the job for you but it’s not an automatic trick, it requires work and training before getting it smooth like Mark Mason.
Under certain light condition, gimmicks can be seen so make sure you test the gimmicks before.
THE PROS:
It’s very visual and it’s so rare to find a visual three card monte, I like the fact you feel the Mason’s touch with In the Middle.
The gimmicks are really well made and the combination between principle from Solo and CardShark technology “Double Decker”, this gives a unique feel and look to the gimmicked cards.
The idea with In The Middle is that you can build up your own routine since the gimmicks allow you to do anything you want from making a card appear or disappear when you want. For example, you can find the Queen of Hearts in the spectator’s pocket at the end or maybe in your wallet along with the spectator’s ring for exemple.
If the gimmicks break, they’re not hard to fix at all, if you have a bit of gimmick knowledge, you’ll be able to fix this in seconds.
Overall rating: This is a nice little three card monte, with some visual touches, not something I would perform but a very good routine and gimmicks, 3/4 hearts.
As for the difficulty level, this will require a bit of manipulation and you have to get used to the gimmicks, 2/5 stars.
Similar products: Simplex Monte by Rob Bromley is another very visual monte, you have also Bonneteau Escorial by Gaetan Bloom which is very visual and also the monte in the Twizted DVD by Eric Jones.