The first time someone asked me to do a trick again, I was flattered. The second time, I was uncertain. The third time, I realized I was standing at the edge of a cliff and needed to figure out, very quickly, whether to step back or jump.
It happened at a corporate Christmas party in Linz. I had performed a card effect for a small group — something visual and immediate, the kind of piece that gets a strong reaction in the first seconds. The reactions were everything I had hoped for. One woman actually stepped backward. A man in a blue suit said a German word that does not appear in polite dictionaries.
And then he said it: “Do that again.”
I did it again.
It was a mistake. Not because the effect failed — technically, it went fine. But the experience was fundamentally different the second time. The spectators were no longer experiencing magic. They were watching a puzzle. Their eyes were not where they had been the first time. Their attention was not where it had been the first time. The element of surprise that had powered the first performance was gone, and in its place was scrutiny.
The reaction the second time was polite. A nod. An “Hmm.” The magic had been replaced by analysis. And I had done it to myself.
Why “Do That Again” Is Both a Compliment and a Trap
When someone asks you to repeat an effect, they are paying you the highest possible compliment. They are saying: what I just experienced was so impossible, so far outside my understanding, that I need to see it again to believe it happened. This is the reaction we dream about. This is the reaction that means the magic worked.
It is also a trap, because the request to see it again is fundamentally a request to watch more carefully. The spectator does not want to experience the wonder again. They want to catch you. They want to see the moment they missed. They want to understand, because the human brain is wired to seek explanations and the absence of an explanation creates cognitive dissonance that demands resolution.
Darwin Ortiz addresses this directly in Strong Magic. The principle is simple: never repeat a trick for the same audience. The first performance has the advantage of surprise. The spectator does not know what is going to happen, so they do not know where to look. The second performance sacrifices that advantage entirely. The spectator knows exactly what is going to happen, and they will focus all of their attention on the moment where the impossible thing occurs.
This is one of the few absolute rules I have adopted in my close-up work. And learning to navigate it gracefully — declining the request without making the spectator feel rejected — has become one of the most important social skills in my performing toolkit.
The Graceful Decline
The challenge is that a flat “no” feels rude. You have just created a wonderful moment for someone, they are engaged and excited and want more, and you are going to refuse? That feels wrong, both socially and as a performer whose job is to create positive experiences.
But the alternative — repeating the effect and watching the wonder drain from the room as scrutiny replaces astonishment — is worse.
What I have learned to do is redirect. The request “do that again” is really a request for more magic. More wonder. More of the feeling they just had. They are not specifically asking for the same trick. They are asking for the experience to continue. And I can honor that request without repeating myself.
My standard response, delivered with genuine warmth and a smile, is something like: “I’ll do you one better — let me show you something else.” And then I move immediately into a different effect. The transition should be fast enough that the spectator does not have time to insist on the repetition, but not so fast that it feels like I am running away from the request.
This works because it satisfies the underlying desire. They wanted more magic. They are getting more magic. The fact that it is different magic rather than the same magic becomes irrelevant within seconds, because a new impossible thing is happening and their attention has shifted.
The Occasional Exception
I said never repeat a trick, and I mean it as a general principle. But I have found one narrow exception that I use sparingly and with great care.
If I have a second method for achieving the same effect — a completely different approach that produces the same visible result — I will sometimes “repeat” the trick. To the spectator, it looks like I am doing the same thing again. But because the method is entirely different, the scrutiny they are applying is directed at the wrong thing. They are watching for what they think they missed the first time, and what they think they missed is not what is happening the second time.
This is devastating when it works. The spectator watches even more carefully the second time, and the impossible thing still happens, and now they are even more lost than before. The cognitive dissonance intensifies rather than resolving. The magic becomes more powerful, not less.
But this only works if the second method is genuinely clean and genuinely different. If there is any overlap — if the spectator’s increased attention could catch any part of the second approach — the whole thing collapses. I use this technique rarely, with effects where I happen to have two completely independent approaches, and only when I am confident that the conditions are right.
The Persistent Requester
Some spectators will not take “let me show you something else” for an answer. They want the specific trick repeated, and they will ask again. And again.
This is where social intelligence becomes critical. The persistent requester is not trying to be difficult. They are genuinely fascinated and genuinely frustrated by the absence of an explanation. Their request is driven by curiosity, which is a beautiful human quality. I do not want to punish curiosity.
What I have learned to say in these moments is something along the lines of: “I would, but here’s the thing — it never works as well the second time. The surprise is part of what makes it land. But stick around, because the next one might be even better.”
This reframes the refusal as being for their benefit, not mine. I am not withholding something from them. I am protecting their experience. And the promise of something even better redirects their energy from retrospective analysis to forward-looking anticipation.
If they persist beyond this — and a few do — I have one more move. I lean in slightly, lower my voice, and say: “Between you and me, magicians have a rule about never doing the same trick twice. It’s the one rule I actually follow.” This usually gets a laugh, and it works because it acknowledges what we both know: there is a secret, I am not going to reveal it, and the request to see it again is really a request to catch me.
The honesty of this response almost always defuses the situation. People respect directness, especially when it is delivered with warmth and humor.
The Group Dynamic
The “do that again” request becomes more complex in group settings, which is where I do most of my close-up work at corporate events.
When one person in a group asks for a repetition, there are usually two or three others who are nodding in agreement. But there are also often one or two people who saw the effect and are perfectly satisfied with the mystery. They do not want an explanation. They want to hold onto the feeling. Repeating the trick for the benefit of the puzzle-solver diminishes the experience for the person who was content with the miracle.
I have started thinking about this in terms of the group’s experience rather than the individual’s request. My job is not to satisfy the most vocal person at the table. My job is to create the best possible experience for the entire group. And the best possible experience for the entire group is almost always to move forward to something new rather than backward to something they have already seen.
This is also where the “let me show you something else” redirect works particularly well in practice. The person who asked for the repetition is swept along by the group’s enthusiasm for the new effect. Social dynamics work in the performer’s favor here — it is hard to insist on a repetition when everyone else at the table is eagerly leaning in to see what happens next.
What the Request Really Teaches You
I have come to see “do that again” as one of the most valuable pieces of feedback I can receive. Not because I should act on it by repeating the effect. But because it tells me something important about what just happened.
If no one asks to see it again, the effect was probably good but not great. The spectators enjoyed it, filed it away, and are ready to move on. This is fine — not every effect needs to be a showstopper. But if the request comes, consistently, after a particular effect, that tells me the effect is hitting at the highest level. The impossibility is registering. The emotional impact is real. The magic is working.
I keep an informal mental note of which effects generate the “do that again” request and which do not. Over time, this has become one of my most reliable ways of evaluating my repertoire. The effects that consistently provoke the request are the ones I feature most prominently in my sets. The effects that never provoke it are the ones I examine for weakness — what is missing that prevents them from landing with the same force?
The Philosophical Layer
There is something deeper going on with the “do that again” request that connects to why magic matters in the first place.
We live in a world where everything is repeatable. Every song can be replayed. Every movie can be rewatched. Every moment can be captured on a phone and experienced again. We have lost the concept of the singular, unrepeatable experience.
Magic, at its best, is that unrepeatable experience. You were there, it happened, and it will never happen exactly that way again. The refusal to repeat a trick is not a limitation — it is part of what gives magic its power. It is the reason a live magic performance has an intensity that a YouTube video cannot replicate. You cannot pause it, rewind it, or slow it down. You either caught the moment or you did not.
When I decline to repeat an effect, I am, in a small way, asserting the value of the unrepeatable. I am saying that this moment mattered precisely because it cannot be reproduced. That the feeling you just had — the astonishment, the confusion, the joy — was real, and it was yours, and it happened exactly once.
That is not a limitation. That is the magic.
And then I show them something else, because the best way to protect the magic is to create more of it.