I still have the first magic book I ever owned, Fun with Magic by Joseph Leeming. I occasionally leaf through the old volume, mostly because I love Jessie Robinson's adorable illustrations. They obviously put a great deal of time into preparing it.

Things have obviously changed. Yesterday, I spent $30 on a trick called "Think" by Shin Lim. It is certainly the worst magical item in my collection.

On the DVD, Mr. Lim counts eleven cards but mistakenly calls it ten. He says “START with” when he means “END with” When he demos the trick, he comes up with the wrong card. He doesn't even seem to notice. Mr. Lim goofs key instructions several times, but never thought to re-shoot it.

Lim's explanation of a relatively simple stack is confused and convoluted. I finally had to re-write his instructions with standard magic language so I could follow it. It's worth it to decode his instructions, because it will become obvious there is a simpler way to prepare the stack. It would have been nice if he had realized it himself.

Worst of all, when he summarized the stack, he has inadvertently flipped the deck! He calls out the number and position of cards, but they aren't there. It's a confusing mess to watch.

Don't get me wrong. The effect is impressive. The spectator merely thinks of a number. The performer writes a prediction. The spec counts down that many cards, and the card matches the prediction. It will knock you out. Sadly, it will take several baffling hours to untangle the DVD so you can understand the secret which you purchased for $30 bucks.

At first, you don't realized there are so many mistakes, so you play the explanation over and over, hoping it will sink in. Why is playing the setup instructions such a hassle? It didn't occur to him to make it an individual chapter. You will just have to memorize the position of those key places (02:55 and 05:20) until you discover all the mistakes and get it all straight.

His “cheat sheet” is shoddy, and it's as confused and error-filled as the disk. It's hard to explain with out revealing, but let's just say he confuses “11 and 12” with “1 and 2”. Inexplicably, he uses dollar signs to mean “joker”, instead of just typing “joker.” Similarly, to Mr. Lin, “AD” doesn't mean Ace of Diamonds, he means the playing card with the advertising on it. It's not a language thing; his English is perfect. He just didn't care enough to look over his material before mass producing it.

Lim should have enclosed a printed cheat sheet with the disk. Instead, he tells you it's on the disk about half-way into the explanation. On the disk you are watching. (Jeez. Stop video. Find PDF. Print it. Start DVD again. Search for where you left off.) The PDF has similar but different errors than the video.

The disk includes a couple of ordinary playing cards, but not *all* of the necessary extra cards. You'll have to ruin another deck to get the other needed cards, so why include only 2 of them? Mine came bent and unusable, anyway, rattling around inside the DVD case. Why not include the printed instructions Lim says are required and skip including the cards we already own?

For comparison, look at the well thought-out materials produced by Richard Osterlind. Richard includes sensible illustrations, and careful wording. His BCS is elegant and reasonably priced. It can be performed in many ways. You can perform it differently all night. I will never regret my investment in his materials. “Think” has none of these, but costs more.

Shin Lim should be ashamed for throwing “Think” together with no forethought, rehearsal, or proofreading.

I felt the same way about Postage Matrix.

That's the problem with a lot magic being put out.

I bought Think too and once learned the system made up my own cheat sheet. Now that I have the system memorized it is a darn good trick.

But with digital recording there is no excuse for not correcting mistakes made on instructional dvds.

It is a shame that some don't put half of the energy they used in promoting a trick into producing the instructional DVD.

... this is what happens when everyone has the ability to self-publish.

It's sad - there is too much junk out there!

You should see the DVD withUltracinese!

Amen, brother. For the cost of this one trick, he should have produced an error free description.