Paul Gertner Magician Cups & Steel Balls.

A performance of a classic illusion of magic by Paul Gertner from his one-man show. Grey Box Theater/February 2013

[@TheLowLifeArtist]

It's one of those tricks where the more you know about the trick the more you can respect just how clean that was executed.

[@kunkushun1]

Guys been under rated for too long. He's a nice genuine person and crafty hard working sleight of hand man as u see here. Glad he fooled Penn and Teller

[@mwang217]

Idk, I liked the trick he used against P&T but I saw nearly all the sleight of hands in this. :/

[@VinZ9973]

of course it's because you have seen a lot of magic of this kind.. It's supposed to fool 1st timers.

[@paulgertnermagic]

Thanks for the nice comments Dustin.

[@kunkushun1]

+Paul Gertner No problem buddy! Appreciate you being considerate enough to write me back. Hope to see you at a magic lecture sometime :)

[@davidmurvai40]

Twice. He fooled them TWICE 🤯

[@dmjdmj]

I love that I know EXACTLY how this is done and I saw NOTHING. Baffles me.

[@9and7]

You really wanna baffle yourself? Watch in slow-motion and you'll still be baffled.

[@jasoding]

@Mike Lennon play the video in 0.5 speed and focus on his hands. You will see the best slide of hands in the world.

[@catmanh2o257]

How'd you figure it out?

[@mike-vg6hl]

@@9and7 im watching it at .25 speed, still cant figure it, surely im dumber than yours

[@Chinookman]

Untold hours alone in front of a mirror....ever try to teach yourself sleight of hand from a book back in the day, or a KZbin now? Uncountable hours of practice. Respect....

[@tombstoneharrystudios584]

The Cups & Balls is my favourite trick…I’ve learnt versions from the works of Dai Vernon, Michael Ammar & Aldo Colombini I’ve been fortunate enough to see the great Gazzo do his street cups I’ve laughed at Penn And Teller’s Clear Cups and Balls But Paul Gertner’s version is the one I always come back and watch

[@tomfurgas2844]

His loading of the balls under the cups is impeccable. Flawless.

[@infinitytv4420]

I saw your routine as a child, I’m 32 now.. just the best. Absolutely the best. Thanks Paul!

[@lesvance01]

I am probably not the best audience because I really do want to be amazed. Mr Gertner made my jaw drop.

[@paulgertnermagic]

Leslie. Audiences that want to be amazed are absolutely the best audiences.

[@lesvance01]

Just watched again. Glad there aren't any flies buzzing around. I have such a wide grin on my face that they would've flown right in.

[@ricardocastillo5485]

Cups and balls is an art form, I love it when someone comes up with a new spin on it.

[@misofac]

This one almost seems to be an instructional video. If you know how it's done, you can follow along easily. Still, the moves are very clear and seem natural, the performance is top notch, and the whole twist with adding the sound is a really nice one. This is definitely one of my favorite performances of cups and balls.

[@frnktsnfx]

Wow very nice cups and balls routine!!

[@alexhetherington8028]

This is one of my top 3 favourite cups and balls routines

[@cgstonewick4927]

I briefly met Paul Gertner at a magic competition in SC. After the competition, Mr. Gertner was working one on one with some of the competitors. freely giving his time and energy for love of the art. The man, and his Magic are both Truly Inspirational.

[@thegreatcahyo]

Hi Paul. I saw your act in Fism. Always best as always.

[@JeffWalshPhotography]

First time I saw this was on Worlds Greatest Magicians...it amazed me then and now. Easily one the best C&B routines, and extremely enjoyable to watch

[@KinnereyB]

Your handling is impeccable

[@musicandcoffee2853]

He's a solid magician, always has been in my opinion. Masterful work indeed!

[@gman5264]

This is incredibly impressive, I can't even read your moves!

[@magesentron]

Seeing Mr. Gertner perform this on television was a major reason I became interested in magic and especially the cups and balls. This still inspires me every time I watch it and I'm sure it will continue to inspire new generations of magicians far into the future.

[@paulgertnermagic]

I'll bet you saw me do this routine in Mister Rogers Neighborhood when you were just a kid. Or possibly on Worlds Greatest Magic. Glad you enjoyed the routine.

[@magesentron]

Paul Gertner World's greatest magic! It was astonishing! Your routine was a huge reason I still spend every day perfecting my own cups and balls routine. :) So honored you replied!

[@illomens2766]

By far the best performance of the cups and balls I've seen. And SO charming. You're a treasure Paul, thank you for posting this on KZbin for people to enjoy.

[@mattikaki]

As a maintenance engineer and magician I really enjoy this. Thanks.

[@SeeminglyOdd]

Adding the sound element into the trick breath a whole new life into it. I loved it.

[@ijbicycle]

Absolutely Amazing! Wow! Thank you! THAT! is entertainment!!!

[@fyourhandlegoogle]

I still have you doing this act on "World's Greatest Magic" VHS I recorded in the 90s, great then, great now!

[@DanTheStripe]

Brilliant execution of the Cups and Balls. The element of sound really adds to the trick!

[@ceyhunpasaoglu]

So calm and professional!

[@northernrider780]

Definitely my favourite version of the cups and balls, not just for the steel balls and metal cups but the extra balls too and the thing is I know how it's done, I see the moves, but I still really enjoy it and that's a rare thing.

[@seanharmon1]

Too good.

[@Pickle1762]

the performance is absolutely brilliant, i re-watch this trick which you performed at Penn&Teller sometimes. Just because it is so beautiful.

[@Dreadpirate404]

I looooooove this cups and balls!!!

[@Jovius2k]

Just as I remember, and I'm still enthralled by it. Thank you, sir.

[@paulgertnermagic]

Thanks Chris... glad you enjoyed the cups.

[@fyourhandlegoogle]

I still have you on VHS (yes VHS) doing this in The World's Greatest Magic, Must have been around 2005ish, fantastic!

[@PickACard-wm2wu]

Amazing as usual ya rock

[@JelloTricks]

It feels great learning magic, i know how he did all of what he did, great act, you got me at the end of the trick with the big ball

[@jemntertainment]

Excellent routine. Love the steel balls. Great misdirection

[@phishhead42032]

Love ya Paul!

[@ts552]

You know it is a great act when you can see & follow every single move & technique, you know exactly how he does every single bit of it... but it only makes you respect & like the act more... Very nicely done - huge respect from Turkey

[@harimadhav4578]

Magic never ceases to amaze 😍

[@Intelli-quest]

Awesome! He’s a fun magician to watch.

[@ShadowCreek893]

I would love to learn this from him. Best Iv seen!

[@le4ieme]

I know nothing about "routines" or "balls and cups" but it took me a while to understand how you managed to do each trick. Had to watch over and over again to understand. Very clever and quite simple when you think about it! It's all about timing. Amazing show !

[@AvidMovieMan]

Fantastic. I really enjoyed watching your performance.

[@paulgertnermagic]

Many Thanks.

[@OdegardOnline]

That was very nice. I like the addition of sound to the routine - it adds a whole new dimension of fun and foolery. This is definitely a routine I'm going to study!

[@paulgertnermagic]

Glad you enjoyed the routine Jeff.

[@jadigennaro]

This was pure fun, and made me smile. Just great, enjoyable magic. Thank you!

[@paulgertnermagic]

Glad that you enjoyed my magic.

[@jason420jv1]

Paul Gertner your C&b routine , ammar , Ricky Jay , Tommy wonder , and of course the professor are my favorite C&b routines . PS ( yours is my favorite 👌😉👍 👏😐👏😐👏😐 ) R.I.P DAI VERNON R.I.P Tommy wonder 👏😢👏😢👏😢 all of you made me fall in love with magic ( thank you ) 🙈🙉🙊☮☯⚛🎲♥♣♦♠🃏

[@masol9410]

Wow, amazing

[@ZootBurger]

Superb!!!

[@az7500]

Probably the Best Cups and Balls Routine of all time

[@efthymiosgkoritsas3267]

paul Your sleight of hand is incredible everything is really smooth great work man !!

[@paulgertnermagic]

After 40+ years a routine should look polished I guess. Glad you liked that.

[@jhsdfjhgjh]

My magic inspiration.. 👍

[@CapnCoCo1]

Fantastic version of this trick.

[@michelevitarelli]

Bravo. great video. thanks for sharing.

[@paulgertnermagic]

Thanks... glad you enjoyed it.

[@PhilRaso]

Awesome. I remember you did this on the Tonight Show. I have S&S book but I can't do a faro shuffle. I remember meeting you in Chicago. You were working the Plastics Show. You were very nice. And it was a good show. Glad you still are doing this trick.

[@antayac]

Sneaking that last ball in is genius.

[@tommyvaughanhaus]

So good.

[@thatstheway103]

AHH MY MIND! Fr though what a nice guy. I’d get into magic if I had such a teacher :)

[@xmarksthespot1372]

Training yourself to see through slight of hand is hard, sometimes your eyes are on autopilot and they follow hand movements and cues to trick you or devert the eyes.

[@MarkArandjus]

Amazing! :D

[@brandonhall6290]

Bravo. Perfect.

[@TheIlluminator]

First time I saw you was when I was a kid on Mister Rogers Neighborhood... You are the best...

[@xmarksthespot1372]

That's actually awesome!

[@shakespeare87]

Now I know how the steel noise was created... Darn Sneaky.. Never thought of that. You sir a genius.

[@JaviusSama]

This is one of the tricks where the performance is the key part. Yes, we all know the moves and can see when he makes them (not really, it's just that I know WHEN he's supposed to make them), but the performance is so amazing that I don't care. I LOVE THIS TRICK.

[@divyanshw4208]

Brilliant.

[@tbwpiper189]

I have to confess. That took a lots of balls to perform.

[@therealhaxwell]

[from way in the back] booo!

[@Saudimagician]

The best cups and balls i have ever seen Ur magician fan from Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia

[@paulgertnermagic]

I appreciate that... glad you liked it.

[@paulgertnermagic]

wow... thanks I appreciate the kind comment.

[@syrianrue]

supremely underrated, master of sleight of hand and card tricks. I can catch the moves as a practitioner, but damn Paul, you are a legend, thanks for the vids and congrats on the fool us unshuffled win...still can't get my F shuffle down, but I am terrible with cards :)

[@dondonestacio99]

your amazing

[@littlelegend5133]

Just Great

[@dantrixter]

I do love the cup and balls ! I’ve studied the routine a bit, and I’m still trying to come up with my own style of performance, I remember the first time I saw it, blew me away ! Also He sounds just like Daryl I think 🤔

[@amiewee]

The master!!

[@Achilles94627]

Genius.

[@puyalg]

Salute!

[@violinhunter2]

It's those "pockets" that always come into play. The balls are very real but the pockets are fake. Yes, the hand is much quicker than the eye, especially if the eye is being distracted. :-) Your effects with cards are even more brilliant.... Bravo!!!! This is how one gets to Carnegie Hall.

[@xmarksthespot1372]

Dude don't give it away!

[@Druthu6800]

Really great inspiring routine.

[@paulgertnermagic]

Thanks for that nice comment.

[@RovnoMagic]

Wow... ..almost better than when I saw you do this routine on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. This is wonderful Paul. I am teaching at Camp Pillsbury this summer and I am showing them basic moves and talking about you as one of the living legends with the cups and balls. I am so excited to show them this routine.......but not your secrets of course. Continued success Paul.

[@paulgertnermagic]

This is my favorite performance of the cups. Came from a live front camera shot from a theater show... footage that I normally throw away. I love the angle and the infinity look of the screen behind me. Glad you enjoyed it Michael.

[@HisRoyalJaznness]

smooth

[@BamboodjaOfficial]

0:35 trick: he has a fake thumb on his left hand and he puts the ball in it, when he grabs for his inner pocket he takes the spongy ball out of the thumb 1:15 he doesn't toss anything underneath the cup -> There must be a sound making device inside the cup, because as he wiggles the cup, you hear the same sound of when the ball is underneath it 1:37 He let the first 'metal' ball dissapear in his hands, this can be caused by compressing it, so i think there is a trick where u can lower the density of the ball, eventually he ticks on all 3 cups and 3 balls appear -> Can be caused by falling system if u hit the cup -> ball drops down/ out of some sort of layer 1:45 you can see he 'releases the ball' and it 'falls through', if u watch closely u can see that his pinky finger and ring finger are closed, he's holding the ball there, by giving the cups a good touch, another ball falls down. Now after this, he wants to add the last cup, and watch closely. The ball he held in his right hand ( ring & pinky finger), with a sleight of hand he releases the ball and lets it slip under the 2nd cup, so now in between the 1st and 2nd cup there's 3 balls. The upper ball disapears in his right hand again 2:00 he doesn't place the balls under the cups, only at the center cup he does place the ball there, he also ticks twice on the center cup -> 2 balls released Ok after this i don't feel clever anymore, i don't get it how he does 3:50 wtf xD

[@glennewell8108]

And by the way I loved it when you were on Penn and Teller because your routine is so damn cool

[@dwightbaldwin2221]

Just got my first "real" set of cups and balls....working on a routine incorporating some of your stuff since you are one of the best!. At my current rate of learning I'll be posting it in about five years

[@MikeFarnhamGalaxysEdgeGroup]

its been 3 years - how has it been progressing?

[@leomaida92]

Paul I'm really astonished. Not because I don't know how to do it, but because I've seen a so strong power of misdirection only in Fred kaps. You're really a master because you master this ability. I can't explain how much I admire you, I've loved your first video of much years ago, and I've seen it many many times. I hope one day I could meet young you came in Italy :) Thanks for these videos, you're a great teacher

[@paulgertnermagic]

Thanks so much for the very kind words. Fred Kaps was one of my heros... one magician I never did get a chance to meet but I was very familiar with his work. I am looking forward to doing a lecture tour of Italy... hopefully within the next two years. My wife and I love traveling there and we are looking forward to another visit soon.

[@mr_nice.]

ha ha ha.....it's all in the hand......well done!!!

[@borbetomagus]

Very smooth routine. The effortless explanation and quick pace (which I imagine was anything but while learning this) makes it very successful. I just wonder if the ending sequence could be improved by tipping the last cup that is completely filled with dry or wet sand (either which matching the volume of the cup), Jello, or maybe stacked soap bubbles filled with smoke. (Or has someone already done something similar?) Or doing the same routine as an inept magician (that elicits groans through much of their routine), but (to everyone's surprise) pulls (the equivalent of) 'an elephant' out of the last cup.

[@chrisbr1969]

Amazing performer! Great lecturer, as well! What cups are those? They're beauties!

[@glennewell8108]

Hey Paul got a good question for you have do you ever teach people to do your routine and if so I would really love to learn it the way you teach it. I do sleight-of-hand hand with sponge balls but I've always wanted to learn the cups and balls

[@TylerWhitlock]

Using Steal balls adds such an amazing element to this entire routine I'd never considered. That of sound. You have impeccable timing throughout. And the last ball was so well timed I was dumbfounded. I've done cups and balls for a while, but that last ball came out of nowhere. Great little trick there. What have been your inspirations for the cups and balls routine and in magic in general?

[@paulgertnermagic]

Glad you liked it Tyler. Inspiration was finding steel balls in my dad's toolbox... he was a steel worker from Pittsburgh. I was fortunate to have met and learned from some of the best. Al Goshman, Derek Dingle, Eddie Tullock, Eddie Fechter, Mike Skinner. But the ending to the cups with the big ball... that was given to me by Dai Vernon when I met him at the Magic Castle over 40 years ago. That video is from a show camera right in front of me and it was a perfect performance... everything just hit perfect on the timing... especially that last big ball, like you said it comes from nowhere. Thanks.

[@TylerWhitlock]

Thanks for your response. Learning from such greats would be wonderful, especially Dai Vernon.

[@mguerra79]

I didn't, and I don't, want to say anything from the performance, but, for me, considering that I don't know anything of this craft, I think I've seen where did the big ball came from... The others I understood where they where, when I was trying to look at that, but the last one, I rewinded once, and I think I can fairly guess where it comes from... Can I say it, sir?

[@user-td7ri6jk6y]

Шикарный!!

[@calvintrainer1212]

I got this figured out, very smooth sleight of hands but you can detect it if you look real close. One hand distracts you (and voice) while another brings out. For ex: left hand brought the biggest ball from under the table. I like though

[@WriterCount]

wow

[@obliviousotterI]

MY BEAN

[@AegisNova]

You're killin' me, Paul -- killin' me! 😉

[@paulgertnermagic]

Thanks Brian.

[@RoachKai]

Watching slow mo can't see the moves... very nice...

[@JoRoWi83]

I have figured out all the techniques and timing BUT I still can't get a handle on how he is creating the noise on the cups where he is palming the balls... for example when he produces three balls in the center cup but shakes all cups from (our left to right ) to show he is placing them inside.

[@howard494]

that's a big ol' box of ball bearings that dude had on his lap for awhile

[@padistedor]

The Buddy Rich of Magic.

[@shawnw7401]

can I inspect that table sir for magnetic slits

[@harrylane4]

Aw, jeez. My bean. It's been freaked.

[@youwillneverknowmyname4180]

i couldn't find out how he did most of it but i think he dropped the biggest one from out of his sleeve

[@TimothyOBrien1958]

Just practicing to do this trick would take so much to get the choreography right.

[@paulgertnermagic]

Timothy your are right. There is a lot of time spent just on making sure the right hand is in the right place at the exact moment... but that is what practice is all about.

[@1023Endurance]

I'm here because of penn and teller.

[@jimjim6159]

How does he do the penetration section?

[@dylanpollard5156]

I could follow his sleight of hand pretty well for a while, but his misdirection made me miss almost everything else!

[@Creuzillion]

Where can I get good quality cups and balls set online? The ones at my local magic shop are all made of cheap plastic.

[@SeeminglyOdd]

Amazon has some good sets in either aluminum or copper. That's where I picked mine from.