Preforming the cup and ball trick
The cup and ball is on of the most famous close up magic tricks and has been performed the world over by basically every magician that you can think of at some point in there career. This trick when done right can be very effective and needs a bit of misdirection, audience control and sleight of hand.
In essence this trick is pretty straight forward. However this depends on the routine that you want to do. A basic routine is as follows have all three cups stack on top of each other with the three balls laid out on the table in a line. Have a fourth ball that the audience never gets to see hidden between the bottom and middle cup.
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The cups are then separated with the hidden ball under the middle cup. One of the three balls that the audience is aware of is then put on top of the middle cup. The other two cups are then stacked on top and the cups are tapped. All three cups are then lifted together to reveal that the ball has passed through the cup bottom. This means that the new ball is now ready to go and the same steps can be done again with another ball. This leaves a final ball ready and waiting for the exact same steps one last time. The best thing about this routine is that you always have a ball ready to go if someone asks to see the trick again although this is not a good idea as the more that you do the trick the bigger the risk someone will figure it out.
As I said above there is a good bit of variation when it comes to the Cups and Balls trick. This is purely down to how long it has been around. In the video to the right you can see how easy this effect can be but you could for example you some slight of hand at the end of the trick by palming one of the balls and misdirecting the audience to look at the cups while you hide the fourth ball in a pocket. By doing this you make it so you can actually hand out the cups at the end to prove that there was only three balls all the time. Something as simple as this can make the trick more powerful. If you would like to learn some of the variations and purchase the Cups and Balls
for yourself you can buy get them on Amazon
and they even come with a book on some routines that you can preform.
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Cup and ball variations
Now that you know the basics of the Cups and Balls trick and one of the most basic variations it is time to look into what can be achieved with a lot of practice. Most magicians have there own variation on the Cups and Balls effect however even this can't really go to far from the original. Lets face it at the end of the day you only have three cups and three balls right? Wrong, when talking to a magician there is one simple fact and that is 90% of what they are telling you is a lie and if they are telling to truth its to make the next lie more convincing. For example "In front of me I only have three cups and three balls".
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In the video on the left you can see that yes the basic principles are the same as the balls do seem to jump from cup to cup and pass through solid bottoms on the cups. What is different about this version of the Cups and Balls is that the magician starts out by placing the three cups down and the balls on top. What the audience doesn't know is that when the cups are lifted to take the balls off the magician is placing a palmed ball under the first cup. When the ball taken from the top of the first cup is vanished the magician now has the ball palmed again. This is done repeatedly until there is a ball under each cup. After some talking to the audience and continuing with the trick he begins to start replacing the balls with oranges and in the end even pulls out a mellon.
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Overall this is a brilliant display of sleight of hand and misdirection especially to an audience of that size. What I really liked is that through the trick he even tells the audience some of the tricks that are normally used in the basic versions of the trick. Now that you have seen what can be done with some simple sleight of hand and misdirection take a look at the video below. In this trick the magician even uses clear cups something that you would never expect for this trick.
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Still not interested in the Cups and Balls trick? Honestly I done know how you wouldn't be after watching that video! However if you still need more convincing about the power of the Cups and Balls trick check out this last video which uses just one cup a lot of amazing sleight of hand and a water jug for some misdirection.
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Now that you have seen what can really be done with some practice and your interested in adding this simple but very effective trick to your arsenal why not head over to Amazon and get yourself your very own Cups and Balls set . Another plus about this trick is that it is very affordable for beginner sets.
Once you master the basics you may wants to go to more sturdy cups though. In the link above you even get a DVD that walks you through how to do the trick but the cups are plastic. If you want to see other options why not head over to the store and see what you can get there. Who knows you might see something you like.