Dopamine by Nico Heinrich

DOPAMINE is Nico's latest release and so far, Nico has consistently delivered material that I can relate to, to a great extent. He sometimes touches upon areas that are not my cup of tea and I cannot bring an opinion on the effects relating to those, such as hypnosis, among others. But I love his style and he seems to share my philosophy in keeping it minimal. Fortunately for you though, he's not an extremist like me.

After his excellent PURE MENTALISM it's with great pleasure I dove into Dopamine. No doubt, this is Nico Heinrich. And that's good news. I will not comment on effects such as ENTRANCE, AWARENESS, and SINGLE DIGIT DIVINATION. These are simply not for me, and my judgment would be of no value here.

Imperceptible Coin Ruse: Very interesting concept. It does work. I do agree fully with Nico, this is to be incorporated in a greater routine. If you are into this kind of presentation, I think you will integrate it in your existing effect. I found out that it works best when the performer himself - and not the participant - executes the move.

Pure Numerology: The answering a question thought-of is a plot I love. On the other hand, I ALWAYS avoid numbers and calculations. They are usually a bit confusing, and **** WILL happen. But if they appeal to you, Nico's method is a no-brainer. SIMPLISTIC, and so practical. And everything is justified using the numerology thing. And the little reading is the cherry on top. Nice!

Instant Oracle: As you will see in my upcoming DVD making the most of a peek is a quest for me. And that's Nico's answer here. It will give you plenty of room to play, to improvise giving a reading based on a system to back it up (which is VERY important). Very good and well thought-off.

EZ Billet Opener: Very fun in the right context. You can find your own excuse to make this work if you want to adapt it to your style. Or you can use Nico's method, which is perfectly sound. That defines EASY.

Invisible Paradise: I loved this. And have performed it many times in casual situations. The beauty is that I'm living in a country where this game is extremely popular, making the plot natural to everyone. Easy, impossible to backtrack, yet hard-hitting. This Nico, is simply beautiful.

Minimalist DD: The method here is a novel use of a well-known technique I have never seen before and as soon as I read this it struck me as genius. Nothing less. I still have to road-test this further, but the couple of times I tried it it did work. This might be the gem of this piece of work. I am confident you will try this as soon as you read about it. I hope, I really hope it delivers consistently. I believe it does. I just need to keep performing to confirm this is as awesome as it appears to be.

HBT Subtlety: This touch is worth a lot. The Hoy book test is my all-time favorite, and from now on this subtlety will be a part of my every performance. Here you give your participant a real free choice and you would be a fool not to remind them that when re-capping. Very clever thinking. Pure gold.

If you know Nico and like his thinking, you will not be disappointed with Dopamine. I sure wasn't.

DOPAMINE, like Pure Mentalism before it, is a small booklet containing big ideas.

Before I start this review, full disclosure as I got a free pre-release copy and consider myself friend with Nico (regardless of whether he shares that view.. ).

That being said, if anything, I tend to go harsher on reviewing and giving feedback on friend's material than if it were written by a stranger. Whenever some offers to send me something asking for a public review, I give them fair warning that I will only write my honest opinion on the product for my own integrity's sake. Nico received this same heads-up before he sent me a free copy of DOPAMINE.

It's a great book. I'll cut right to the chase here and say that I truly enjoyed all of Nico's ideas in here. Most of them I even enjoyed a lot. Three of them I love.
The effects have all been described above for anyone interested, but the three standout items for me personally were the Imperceptible Coin Ruse, Pure Numerology and, surprisingly, the Single Digit Divination.

Imperceptible Coin Ruse is something small that allows you to add a physical dimension to a mentalism effect. I'm always a fan of performance pieces where the experience is not purely mental. Here, the participant will feel a coin become imperceptible while they are holding it. The method is very reliable and the experience probably works best tied in to a larger routine.

Pure Numerology is a wonderful technique for covertly gaining knowledge about the nature of the sitters query, woven into a natural feeling reading process. Probably best suited for intimate one on one performances or small groups (which I believe Nico enjoys performing for the most. Somehow, it felt reminiscent of 'Getting to Know you from Memory' from Harpacrown, which I really enjoyed - different method, yet just as easy and just as clever.

The Single Digit Divination is much in the same vein as Nico's 'Cocaine' from Pure Mentalism. While Cocaine wasn't necessarily for me, this really struck a chord. It's a very simple, informal little piece that allows you to correctly guess what digit between 1 - 9 someone is thinking of. It's very bold but has flown right by the people I tried this out on, much to their and my delight.

Nico writes in a relaxed tone and has an easy to understand teaching style. As I said before, most of these routines and ideas are best suited to more intimate or casual performances and will unfold with the most impact there. If you like the sound of the routines from reading about them here then you can't really go wrong with this book . In fact, I'd recommend both Dopamine and Pure Mentalism (which, by the way, I paid for and would happily pay for again if I lost my copy).

Well done, Nico!

Best from Amsterdam,

T.

Full disclosure: Nico gave me a copy for feedback, so I didn't pay for it. That said, I read through and gave some of the routines a genuine try, and I think there's some special stuff in here.

Highlights: Imperceptible Coin Ruse, Awareness, Entrance, are all perfect. That could have been the book right there, and I'd have been happy. In a lot of ways, I feel like having anything else in this book is burying the lead on some real magic. Coin Ruse is a full routine with a lot of different potential, while the other two are not routines as much as moments or tools that can take an interaction to the next level. Some people will say that these aren't useful because it doesn't map on to what they're used to a as a performer, and they're missing out.

Most of the rest are variations on standard premises and methods in mentalism. It's a really mixed bag, and over all there should be something of interest to pretty much anyone. Like Pure Mentalism, Nico doesn't have any extra fluff. You get 104 pages of material written very directly and to the point. Some assembly required in most cases, which is how it ought to be. Not too much, though within 2 days I had tried out a third of the effects fully and did some minor test runs with others to see how flow/staging would be. So far as I can tell they are all practical, and nothing struck me as pipe dreams or the kind of stuff that looks good on the page and in marketing material but doesn't handle the real world as well.

My main criticism is the minimalist presentation/format, which has some advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage is that there's some real gold in here, but Nico spends almost no energy convincing you that it's gold‚ you either see it or you don't. But that also means that there's no fluff, as I said above, and if you do try out the material it will stand on its own.

Is it worth the price? For me, if a book has a single thing I can use, it's worth at least a few hundred dollars, since I'll get more than that out of it in practice. I currently have both an invisible coin and numbing/analgesia effect in my act, and the Coin Ruse is a really nice and robust crossover that I will 100% be using on stage and in person. Awareness and Entrance speak to the richness of Nico's thinking, and a lot of performers will be able to set themselves apart using those effects and principles. The other effects are solid, so a wide range of performers should have value, but maybe not to justify the price tag, depending on what you want it for. And actually solid effects are vanishingly rare, so bang-for-buck, there is much more original value here than most releases. You'll just have to figure out how many bucks you're willing to lay down at once.

Important to note, then, is that the reviews and the ad copy are very accurate. No mystery here. If you read through and like what you see, you will almost certainly like the book. Kudos to both Nico and the reviewers for that. There's an incentive to pump excitement and be vague, and that has certainly not happened here.

Upon receiving Dopamine earlier this week, I read it within an evening, and I absolutely love it!

It's much more value than I expected! Nico's effects and subtleties are simple and effective cutting out all the excess that only convolutes the effect for no apparent reason. Nico loves focusing on more than just the side of the performer and tends to focus more on the spectators, their emotions, their feelings, and that's what I feel makes Nico's work so much different than others.

I genuinely feel Nico's material has the power to change peoples lives...

Entrance is a nice hypnosis induction which starts out of the blue and without any mention of hypnosis. I'm sure this could be used to actually induce a trance-like stats, but I think this would be equally useful for a pseudo induction. It would look quite impressive and feel very genuine. It's also very easy to do and guaranteed to work (because Nico provides you with how to make it a success every time.) It's very nice thinking and typical of Nico. Simple, but effective.

Imperceptible Coin Ruse literally allows you to make the feeling of a coin vanish from the spectator's hand. Nico covers the basic method and then provides several presentational ploys you can add to make it play larger. I want to work on this idea and expand it to use a bit of DR to make it seem as if the spectator hallucinates the coin vanishing from their hand as they are staring at the coin. I think it would be easily possible with this method (which, btw is virtually guaranteed to work as it is physiological as much as it is psychological.)

Pure Numerology is a system by which you can give accurate readings and ends with you knowing precisely what area of life they need more clarity about. It is math based, but I feel the only way to use math in mental magic is when paired with a numerology reading. I think it is a great way to hide the process.

Instant Oracle this is a great justification for a CT and it provides an additional effect of knowing how many pieces they hold in each hand before you give a reading based on those numbers. Simple to do, but a nice justification.

Awareness is an ability of awareness that you give to a participant in the course of hypnosis or pseudo hypnosis. It definitely is only for certain times and places and for certain people. But done for the right person, it will most definitely live an impact that will last with them.

EZ Billet Opener this allows you to peek a billet during a moment of comedy. It won't work for every environment, though. And while I do believe the comedic moment is great cover for the move, I also fear that in hindsight, spectators will know WHEN you peeked. They may not know the precise details, but I think they will think "I bet he looked when he ___"

Invisible Paradise this is a nice card routine that I could see Ben Earle doing. It's a nice combination of principles and it's simple and practically self working. Essentially it's a way to force a card.

Minimalist DD is a drawing dupe which is bold using one business card and something to write with. I wouldn't do it for a skeptic by any means, but if you've built rapport with someone and they believe in what you're doing, this is all you need. There are some nice convincers which hide the peek, but ultimately, I don't think it's the type of peek you'd want to do while being burned or in front of skeptics.

Single Digit Divination this is a combination of several ideas and principles to be able to determine what single digit someone is thinking of. It uses classic Kenton phrasing as part of the method which means sometimes you won't actually nail their number, but you'll nail the fact that you won't nail their number. It is meant to be used as part of a larger routine and not meant for stand alone. It's a nice combination of ideas and it would work nicely as part of a larger routine.

HBT Subtlety allows you to give the participant a genuinely free choice as part of the hoy force. This is a small change to the routine, so don't expect this to be a major change, but it is a great subtlety and one that I think everyone would implement after reading because it's too simple of a change to NOT take advantage of it.

Overall, this is a nice offering which is very typical Nico thinking. If you like his pay releases, you won't be disappointed. If you didn't like the style of his previous releases, this one probably isn't for you. It's a lot of simple techniques and using words to create effects. Don't expect revolutionary thinking, but you can certainly expect practical material which will work and not pipe-dreams or half baked ideas.