The Daily Magician – The Skyscraper Method Full Course
Finally…
“One of the biggest breakthroughs in memorized deck magic since Juan Tamariz wrote Mnemonica…”
Dear friend,
Do you have a deck of cards memorized?
If you don’t, stop reading…
…what we’re about to present is categorically not for you.
However, if you do have a deck memorized, then you should already know that the effects you can achieve using this tool are—bar none—the greatest routines available to magicians.
As German magician Denis Behr once put it to us, sleights are replaceable—but the memorized deck is not.
Which leads to the following question…
If mastering the memorized deck is MORE important than anything else…why is there so much online training on everything BUT the memorized deck?
It’s puzzling, right?
To answer that question, we need to give you a little context:
The memorized deck first ‘exploded’ in popularity when Simon Aronson published his stack in 1979.
25 years later, Juan Tamariz changed magic forever when he released his stack work, in Mnemonica.
Since then, magicians have been performing these routines at every opportunity.
(us included).
But since 2004…
…a lot about magic has changed.
As the Internet has exploded with popularity, magicians have hurried to build companies based on teaching sleights, street performing, selling premium playing cards, or even by revealing magician’s tricks to laymen.
(And just about anything else that puts pennies in the piggy bank.)
And through it all…it seems the mem-deck has been left behind.
How crazy is that?
We can find hundreds of YouTube videos and expensive courses promising to teach you advanced sleight of hand…
…but barely ANY online resources for mastering the memorized deck—a tool far more important than any one sleight or move.
We realised the memorized deck was being ‘under served’ in July 2020—and what we did next changed the game…
This is where our unique ‘set of skills’ came in handy…
See, we’re not just memorized deck nerds.
For the last few years, we’ve been doing online sales, marketing and business.
The more experience you gain, the more you realise ONE rule is the key success:
Create products that solve needs—and you’ll rarely lose.
We saw two pressing needs in the magic market:
1. The need to bring the memorized deck ‘online’ in a respectful and detailed way.
2. The need to use cutting-edge marketing strategies to grow this new resource by promoting it to as many eligible magicians as possible.
(And if you’re reading this, I suppose we succeeded at #2.)
Those two needs require skill sets that don’t often overlap—and so we decided to fill the gap.
With that said, let’s be clear:
We’re NOT Juan Tamariz, or Simon Aronson.
However, we’ve stood on the shoulders of these ‘giants’—and created something that’s never been seen before…
In other words:
Although we aren’t the world’s leading experts on the memorized deck, our combination of skill sets made us the perfect candidates for this project.
Before we created this project, we had three main goals…
The first was to collect everything you need to know to be ‘up to date’ on the mem deck in one easy, accessible place.
The second was to take some big risks—and experiment with memorized deck ideas that had never been played with before.
The third was to do it all FAST—in a matter of weeks.
We’d either strike gold, or get burned—but no inbetween. No sitting around waiting for years.
Basically, if our experiment was a failure—we wanted to fail fast.
This was going to change the memorized deck, or it wasn’t—but either way, we’d find out in a few weeks.
The Story—How 2 English College-Age Kids Built The World’s Largest and Most Successful Memorized Deck Online Training Course…In Just 73 Days
Bold claim, right?
Hopefully, if you read our emails, you’re willing to hear us out for a moment.
If you do, you may soon discover an untouched vault of memorized deck magic that very few other magicians will ever be allowed to get their hands on.
We should probably start at the beginning…
July 2020.
We had just launched The Daily Magician in earnest. Our email list was growing rapidly, but we were low on products to sell.
At first, we were selling other magic company’s products, and earning a pittance.
Soon we realised that, if we wanted to get serious about this, we needed our OWN product.
But there was a problem…
We weren’t ‘expert’ magicians.
We hadn’t won FISM, fooled Penn and Teller, or appeared on a global ‘Got Talent’ show.
But we did have one thing going for us…
We were ‘nerds.’
The kind that stay up all night cramming for tests, and walk out with A+ across the board.
Magician Adam Grace, co-founder of the world’s biggest online magic club, once called Benji ‘one of the smartest magicians he’s ever met’.
So we had an epiphany…
What if we just did what we did best and ‘crammed’ EVERYTHING there was to learn about the memorized deck into our brain?
After very little discussion, we decided that YES—that could work.
So Benji hopped onto various magic retailers and ordered a whole library of books.
But for the first few weeks, the books we were waiting for…
…didn’t arrive.
Creating an online memorized deck course, as big as we wanted it to be, was unprecedented…
…and now, we would have to start nearly 3 weeks later than we’d planned.
Finally, the books started arriving, and on July 27th—Benji dove into them like a sprinter released from the blocks.
For the next few weeks, he studied and immersed himself in the memorized deck.
The hypothesis was that a month of deep focus would rival years of regular study.
That might sound outlandish, but it’s actually rather common…
Have you ever heard of someone who studied German in high school for 5 years but couldn’t actually speak to a native for longer than 20 seconds?
(it happens all the time)
On the other hand, we all know that living in a different country can result in children speaking an entirely new language…in mere weeks.
The only difference is one word…
IMMERSION.
This is exactly the approach we took.
The result?
Benji surfaced a different man.
Like the magician-version of Isaac Newton under the tree, memorized deck ideas just fell out of the sky and started hitting him over the head.
Then came the masterstroke…
See, there was a problem.
Benji wanted his friend and fellow magician Jacob to help him create the memorized deck course.
To achieve this, we had originally planned to get Jacob to undertake the same level as immersion for the next 4 weeks.
But we were very pressed for time, and simply couldn’t afford to do so.
So we decided to do something much better—and a lot more crazy…
We filmed Benji teaching Jacob EVERYTHING he’d just discovered about the memorized deck.
(which included concepts that some of the world’s best magicians had never even considered before)
We sat down on August 28th, and filmed for 7 consecutive days, with no breaks.
Like before, full immersion was the name of the game.
The end result (before we edited it down) was 40+ hours of film.
Next, Benji decided to sit down and write out all the concepts and methods we had just discussed—which came out at 100k words when the dust settled.
The whole process—from opening the first book to finishing the write up—took approximately 51 days.
The result was incredible…
We call this training the ‘Skyscraper Method’—covering everything you need to know about the memorized deck, with a wealth of NEW effects and ideas.
But then came the scary part…
Releasing our product to the outside magic world.
We first did a test run by releasing one of the effects to a bunch of memorized deck experts.
Their feedback was phenomenal.
Wow, we thought.
But we didn’t want to get our hopes up too soon—creative projects can often astound critics but flop with real audiences.
(we won’t name names, but we’ve all seen it happen)
There was nothing left to do…
We ponied up and announced the course to our email list—and the email list of a friend.
At the time we first launched it, it had been approximately 73 days.
We crossed our fingers and hoped for the best…
The result—why nearly 100 magicians have already made the ‘Skyscraper Method’ their go-to resource for the memorized deck.
The good news:
People bought the course.
The even better news:
People LOVED the course.
Not everyone, of course.
But the majority of feedback we got was stunning—and made all the effort entirely worth it.
For example, here’s what people have said about some of the effects we devised:
“When The Daily Magician team and I recently had a magic jam session together, the effects they showed me, explained in the Skyscraper Method, left me amazed.” – Danny Goldsmith
“That […] was a lot of work, it seems! I’m impressed.” – Denis Behr
“Very interesting. I’ve never seen anything even close to this in print.” – Andy Choy
“Thanks so much for sharing your findings!” – Tim Heinlein
“Just finished reading the whole thing. WOW — you must have been spending so much time on it. Absolutely fantastic. This really makes me VERY EXCITED. This will be a fun piece for ALL mem deck users in the magic community…I think Simon Aronson would be proud!” – Arthur Poon
“Wow, this is fantastic! Combining […] is genius. Knowing that this is going to be the beginning of something bigger is fantastic! This shows once again how the right person can make something good even better.” – Jordi Thys
“I’m genuinely impressed you were able to find this!” – Chris Grossack
“Very clever. As you said, if you’re at a convention and […] it would be a real killer of an effect.” – Jim Turnpaugh
“Wow, this is a seriously cool idea!” – Marco V
“Dude! This almost makes me wonder if they made this together as an Easter egg. Really amazing.” – Randy Shirley
“I gotta say…. that is really impressive. That must’ve taken so much time to figure out. Really great stuff here.” – Kevin Gao
Here’s what people have said about the course…
“There’s so much information there that you can take as much or as little from it as you want […] it’s basically a library.”
“You’ve got all these building blocks you can just keep building upon, it opens up another world…” – Steven Bridges.
“The whole idea is great. The consecutive course structure makes it really easy to follow. I am not finished yet, but I already learned more about the memorized deck then in the last 5 years. The teaching style is also very casual and even not being a native speaker I understand everything.
Two cool guys just changing the way you see card tricks. And casually opening a new dimension to magic.” – Tamlin
“Now I have a powerful tool that doesn’t take up any extra pocket space that helps me perform real magic.
The explanations and examples about the stack mechanics are great. With a simple trick like ‘squared’ you can start playing with the mechanics without learning a stack. I am really enthusiastic about this and the material is really good.” – Randy H.
“I like having the writing complementing the video teaching style. Having two or three tabs opened to look at the teaching from a different angle does help. I am still early in the course, but I do like having the thought processes explained!”– C.M.
“I really enjoyed the thoughts about approaching the memorized deck and also the tips on how to work the mem deck into my current repertoire. I learned how to come up with ideas with the memorized deck and fit my existing routines with the memorized deck!” – Benjamin Wongyonze
“You guys are awesome!” – Filip S.
“Thanks for the incredible work you put in!” – Glen Macken
“The overall structure of the training and the insights provided have been invaluable. I’m a big fan of memorized deck work and the applications covered in this program are excellent.” – A.K.
“I have loved learning all the tricks. There have been various skill levels that I can start on and continue to build up to. I’ve learned new ways to think about the memorized deck. There’s not just one way to apply it to tricks, that there are properties that go well beyond what card is where.” – B.H.
“I was surprised how much I retained in such a short time. The memorized deck is such a powerful and INVISIBLE tool that is angle proof!!” – P.L
Even with all that feedback, we had a problem…
See, the first module in our course was all about how to memorize the deck.
As a result, some people bought the course in its entirety…but only ever completed the first module.
When we saw that…
We freaked out.
That wasn’t the point at all.
The memory-training section was simply a ‘primer’ for the rest of the content. But people were viewing our course as a ‘memory method’ rather than a boundary-pushing exploration of the memorized deck.
We realised we’d screwed up (majorly) by advertising the full course to people who hadn’t memorized a deck yet.
So, like any good entrepreneur, we decided to ‘pivot’.
The sales page you’re reading now is a direct result of that.
We decided to be VERY careful about who we offered this material to.
We decided three things:
1. We would only offer this material to magicians already experienced with the memorized deck
2. We would give them a 5-day window to purchase—after which, we would never offer them the course again.
3. We would tell them exactly the story behind how the course was created—so they could go in with ‘both eyes open’ and only purchase if it genuinely lined up with their needs and desires
If you’re still reading, good. Chances are you’ve met the conditions above.
If, somehow, you’re still reading this page even though you don’t meet the conditions, please do not purchase this product.
We automatically and instantly cancel any purchases made by people who don’t meet the criteria laid out above.
Why?
There’s this quote we’re fond of…
“Don’t cast your pearls before swine.”
This project is our ‘pearl.’
We messed up by offering it to the wrong people. That’s our mistake—and we won’t make it again.
We want to make sure that only magicians we curate and choose get a chance to peek inside our minds.
As a result, this course isn’t available via any other magic retailer.
Now that you’re viewing this page, you have 5 days to purchase…and only 5 days.
The sales page is not accessible from anywhere else.
You’re only getting this because you’re into the mem deck, and you have been enjoying the emails we sent.
So if you DO meet the criteria above, and you’re still interested in what exactly we packed into this product—excellent.
Let’s get into the juicy part…
7 Modules to Mastery—why The Skyscraper Method is an ‘oasis’ in a memorized deck training drought
As soon as you purchase the Skyscraper Method, you’ll get instant access to…
Module One ft. The Babylon Secret—how to memorize ANY deck of cards in minutes.
This module is all about how to memorize a deck of cards using our personal system. This system was designed to work with ANY stack—so you can reuse it as many times as you like.
It also shows you a method to memorize cards in seconds—which comes in VERY useful later in the course.
(We were originally planning to remove this ‘memory training’ module from your purchase, but we decided to give you access as a special bonus for buying.)
Furthermore, the methods we reveal in this module are used in some of the later effects—so we want to make sure you’re entirely up to speed on our techniques.
That said, the real ‘meat’ begins here:
Module Two ft. The Square Circle—a system for discovering the best effects in magic, plus a whole host of original routines and tricks
Module 2 is where we really hit our stride…
We start by defining our memorized deck philosophy—the Square Circle.
The ‘Square Circle’ theory underpins the BEST memorized deck magic (and is intuitively ‘grasped’ by the world’s best magicians)
Next, we get into the details of how to apply this theory via practical methods, techniques, and effects…
This module includes:
* The No.1 thing both Juan Tamariz and Dani DaOrtiz do to make their memorized deck magic both powerful and compelling
* The 4 ‘core’ categories of effects you can create using a memorized deck (there are others, but these are the MOST powerful)
* The ‘Rockefeller’ principle that explains why different magicians can perform wildly different effects using the SAME techniques. (and how to ‘tap into’ this knowledge to construct your own show)
* An idea Tommy Wonder used to devastate audiences (shared with us by underground card star Alex Slemmer)
* How to create memorable moments in your magic performances (this idea is constantly used by the world’s most successful comedians at sold-out stage shows)
* The Burj Khalifa tactic for exploring different performance styles without stepping ‘out of bounds’ (how to combine creativity with controlled construction of effects)
* The ‘Rock and Roll’ secret to creating routines that make your audience FEEL like they’re seeing real magic (this is admittedly a difficult idea to ‘grasp’, but once you do—you’ll be rubbing shoulders with the best magicians of all time)
* 7 principles that help you perform stunning magic using a memorized deck
* Our controversial stance on whether memorized deck magic is really ‘jazz’
* An effect routinely praised as the ‘single most powerful thing you can do with a deck of cards’ by celebrated performers like Woody Aragon, Richard Osterlind, and Tamariz himself.
* The ‘Kung Fu master’ advice shared by Juan Tamariz (this sounds insane but is actually, all things considered, not a bad idea…)
* The ‘key card’ concepts on steroids (if you can just understand THIS, the power of your effects will be miles ahead of most magicians)
* A natural way to ‘glimpse’ a card without calling any attention to it (plus a ‘bold’ glimpse favored by Chan Canasta)
* A subtlety used by the great Chan Canasta that makes his signature routine twice as fooling (that also gives you a perfect ‘out’ if you mess up)
* Why the ‘secret identity’ of playing cards makes performing incredible magic laughably easy.
* How to perform a seemingly impossible effect even after the entire deck has been shuffled!
* How the best memorized deck performers ‘overload’ their spectators’ system until they flat-out give up on figuring out the method
In addition, effects featured in Module 2 include…
1. ‘Predictably Unpredictable’
Three spectators each FREELY select cards from anywhere in the deck. You turn your back as they shuffle their cards.
Then, you offer to take it one step further…
All three of the spectators ‘pool’ their cards together in one packet and shuffle the entire thing.
Even after all of that, the instant you turn back around—you can instantly prove you know which card belongs to which spectator!
Here’s the really great part about this effect:
– It’s ridiculously EASY (but your spectators won’t have the faintest clue how it works)
– You don’t need to touch the cards at any point (no sleight of hand required)
– No glimpses required (this might throw even advanced magicians ‘off the scent’)
2. The ‘Per Capita’ effect
You give a deck of cards to the spectator, who freely shuffles it and spreads them on the table. You do the same with your cards.
Now, you select a card ‘at random’ from your spread, and turn it face up. You ask the spectator to find that same card in THEIR spread.
You repeat this a few times, and needless to say, an impossible coincidence follows…
You reveal that they picked the EXACT same cards as you (out of a shuffled deck)…
This effect is actually an ‘upgrade’ on a trick discovered in a magic book from 1909 (the good news is that the ‘basic’ version is ALREADY a powerful effect)
3. The ‘Ninja Warrior’ effect
The spectator names ANY card in the deck (a true free choice).
You pick up a Joker and toss it face up into the deck while dribbling the cards.
When you spread the cards, they discover that you placed the Joker EXACTLY next to their named card.
The only explanation HAS to be uncanny skill…right?
Fortunately for us, we don’t need ‘uncanny skill’ to perform this—just a memorized deck… ” />
4. The ‘Any Card At Any Dice’ effect
The spectator names ANY card. They roll some dice. You deal cards based on the numbers on the dice…and you arrive, impossibly, at THEIR named card.
This is one of my ‘pet secrets’ that I’ve never shared with anyone before now.
(I’ve never seen this principle discussed anywhere before)
And YES…
– Freely chosen card
– Zero gimmicked dice
– No advanced sleight of hand
I’ve been fooling Jacob with this for ages, and it’s one of my favorite things to do with a memorized deck.
(in the Live Session, I got so ‘into’ this that Jacob had to force me to stop…it’s THAT much fun)
But this module was just our initial exploration.
We started to go ‘deep’ in the next module…
Module Three: How To Use Our ‘Greasing The Hinges’ Tactics To Make Your Memorized Deck Invisible To Almost Any Audience
Everything has an Achilles heel.
The memorized deck is no different.
It has one ‘fatal flaw’ that, if handled incorrectly, will make it very obvious to your audience that you’re relying on a stacked deck.
This module contains our solutions to this problem, via our ‘greasing the hinges’ methodolgy.
(It also contains some of our favorite effects.)
In total, you’ll discover…
* The ONE factor that’s more important than any single memorized deck technique or tactic (you can do nearly everything else WRONG, but if you do this…you’ll still amaze people)
* Why a creaky elevator in Boston tells you everything you need to know about the danger of NOT making your mem deck invisible
* How to make your memorized deck work ‘invisible’…even to other magicians
* The 8 different ‘greases’ we use to make it nearly impossible to spot we’re using a stack
* Why it ‘pays’ to act like you don’t care (Dani DaOrtiz does this all the time, and it’s genius)
* What you should NEVER do if someone asks to shuffle the deck (this one might SOUND counterintuitive, but it’s essential)
* Why you have more control over the audience’s attention than you might think (even if you don’t know the first thing about ‘misdirection’)
* A single sentence I once heard Michael Close say that changed the way I perform memorized deck magic (you can perform without this, but chances are you’re missing out on reactions)
* A line we heard Dani DaOrtiz use that is nearly guaranteed to ‘lock in’ your effect in the spectator’s mind (to the point that they’re lying awake at night, unable to sleep because they just can’t stop thinking about it)
* How to ‘estimation cut’ to any card in the deck (and how to perform an estimation cut AND glimpse in the SAME move)
* A tactic employed by Pit Hartling that takes all the heat off of the cards while you perform the ‘move’
* A diabolically devious method for glimpsing a card (tipped by my buddy Adam Grace)
* How Juan Tamariz uses psychology to convince his audiences that he’s NOT done something he blatantly HAS (a little ‘off topic’, but so valuable I think you’ll forgive me)
* A variety of false shuffles (that you can ‘mix and match’ to your preferences)
* Why some of the MOST fooling false shuffles are actually the EASIEST (don’t underestimate
these—some of the best magicians of all time use them…)
* One of the most fooling properties of the stack
* Our variation on a Tamariz false shuffle (that uses the ‘Trampoline’ principle)
* The secret to false shuffles that FEEL like real shuffles (no, it’s not about how they ‘look’)
* A false shuffle that has been fooling audiences for over a hundred years (found on Pg 159 in a book we’ll be providing for you)
* Why you don’t need to be an expert card handler to pull off fooling false shuffles
* How to implant ‘false memories’ into your audience
* How to make the audience SWEAR they shuffled the deck (when really, everything was under your control the entire time)
* How to let the spectators ‘actually’ shuffle the deck…without putting a single card out of place
* The secret of the half-stack and ‘level it up’ even FURTHER (I’ve only ever seen Pit Hartling do this, but it’s devastating when done correctly)
* A simple tip that puts the classic force on ‘easy mode’
* A simple but elegant deck switch (that also happens to be a powerful effect in its own right)
* How to stack a borrowed deck in your memorized order (a method first devised by Louis Nikola that still works like gangbusters today)
* How to get back into stack after the spectator genuinely shuffles the entire deck (a tactic discovered in 1920 by one Charles T. Jordan for ‘unshuffling’ the deck that most magicians STILL don’t know about)
Of course, you’ll also get all these effects…
1. The &ls
