Close-up - Cards, coins, cups & balls, thimbles and any other, generally hand-sized tricks. Generally, people will specialize in either one or the other of these different subfields; card people rarely socialize with coins people.
Mentalism - "Magic of the mind." That is, precognition, telekinesis, ESP and pyrokinesis among other
Itīs one thing to pull four aces from a deck but itīs something all together to divine how much money a stranger has in his pocket or what the headlines for the New York Times will be the following day.
Stage Illusions - The difference between an illusion and a trick is that an illusion generally is large- scale and involves a human assistant and/or a large animal. David Copperfield was once asked what the difference was between a magician and an illusionist. He flatly replied, "about $40,000."
Platform/Parlor/Cabaret - As few of us are going to be hired to do large-scale shows most of our bread-and-butter will come from cabaret-style performances. Tricks included in this category include the Square Circle, Portable Sawing-in-Half.,
Escapology - Ropes and chains and trunks! Oh my! Escapologists manage to extricate themselves form unusual and seemingly impossible conditions including, but not limited to: jail cells, trunks at he bottom of a river, sea monsters (Harry Houdini actually escaped from one after being sown up into the creatureīs belly). My personal repertoire includes the Milk Can Escape, the Mail-bag escape and the Escape from 50 feet of Chains.
