I was hoping for fish from Charming Choi followig his FISM act, but alas no.

However his act was superb, excellent card effects, laying out a bicycle in cards before producing a miniture toy bike.

Blank faced cards to printed cards, an excellent coin matrix with coins drawn onto a paper pad, before creating real coins for a closing coin set.

A great response from the crowd, and a well polished and high standard competition act that will join our favourites for a place

Woody Aragon did some very nice card work to music.

Te over head camera view really helping here, showing some lovely card assemblies.

Mixed decks rearranging gave him again some of the strongest audience reactions so far.

Finishing with cards that spelt out 38th rons day got him a huge round of applause

Another favorite for placement

Unfortuantly I didnt enjoy Petes act, it seemed a bit haphazard and loose. Although entertaining I dont think it was entertaining for the right reasons.

Also when the performers says that they think they just forgot to do the best part of the trick, something I wrong. Add Magician jokes that magicians didnt seem to get, it wasnt a strong set

Pete was also over time and hence cannot be placed.

I was worried when Vladislav came ok and announce he would be doing some classic tricks but as the act went on there were many extremely strong effects.

Tipping out increasingly smaller card boxes from larger card boxes, the final tiny case was folded out and reassembled into a jumbo card box, from which he tipped a jumbo deck.

More nice effects that were classics with a twist made it an enjoyable set

The second half opened up with another UK contestant, Paul Brown.

Starting with a chop cup routine, and talking about the elements of fire and air it was a entertaining introduction into a longer narrated routine of copper to silver and gold coins based around alchemy.

The routine was good and well scripted but Paul was obviously nerveous and had a few issues towards the end of his routine.

Some extremely good and technical flouishes and shuffles to find a spectators chosen card over and over.

Alexander did some lovely shuffles and moves to repeatedly pop out or reveal the chosen card, with humorous whistles and pops to empherise the moment!

A few nerveous moments with some f the flourishes slipping up, but he got one of the strongest reactions from the audience since Rob James and could possibly have a placement on entertainment value