I was on Paul Daniels website recently, and I noticed he had written that just five or six great tricks should suffice to a routine. This seems a bit few. Is this right? Thanks

I think that's about right for say a close up show. I suppose it depends on the setting though.

If you are doing 45 mins of children's magic you're probably going to have twice that number, but a lot of the time will be spent on shouting, by play, and "business" rather than actual magic going on.

Close up type stuff is quite intense and requires a lot of concentration from the audience, so if you are doing more than four or five effects, you could split it up with an interval or other stuff like music or comedy routines.

That's enough for an act.
It depends on the venue, length of the show and length of the tricks.

For strolling magic a rope routine could be a basic cut and restored lasting a minute or two. For standup it could be extended by adding some knot effects, etc. On stage Pavel's rope show goes on for several minutes.

Well it all really depends on how you script it in my opinion. You can edit and change the effect and add bits in or take them out and eventually you may end up with three effects that last ten minuets or six effects that last six minuets.
For a table routine I would suggest staying for ten minuets before moving on,
a child’s show would be about an hour or maybe less,
A stage show can be from 8 mins to two hours long,

It really depends on what you are performing and whether you like to change and personalise the effects.

For the second 'real' gig I did, I realized that I needed to commit to routining my show rather than just doing effect after effect. I was wondering if the six effects that I routined would be enough to fill the time at all; most of them were pretty short tricks, maybe a few minutes each. But as I did the show, I was having so much good play with the audience that I ended up having to cut it short and rush the end a bit. What I thought was 15 minutes of tricks turned out to be a 30 to 40-minute show, which was plenty for everyone.

It was after this experience that I truly realized how much I loved performing magic. It seemed almost wrong that I was having that much fun and couldn't believe that a person could actually get paid for it too!

Jesse

5 or 6 I think is suffice. of cos that depends on your performing style. if you are those that goes in and bang shows all 6 tricks with not much of a presentation, then it would not be suffice

if you are one who tells stories, gets the audience into the mood, get them to havd a bond with the trick, then I think its more then suffice. I find this metd does pack a bigger punch

Jamy Ian does only 3 tricks in his dvd and man I think the whole act lasted for abt 45 mins. hence, it all boils down to your style of performing

cheerios