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Young illusionist scores gold medal with ball-and-cup magic act

SURREY - Twenty-year-old Billy Hsueh may be one of the youngest magicians to score an award from the International Magicians Society.

 

The illusionist, who attends Douglas College for hospitality management, was honoured with a gold medal on Aug. 3 for his sleight-of-hand tricks at the Pacific Coast Association of Magicians (PCAM) awards banquet in Coquitlam.

 

The annual competition takes place in a different Pacific Northwest city each year, and Hsueh has traveled as far as Burbank, California and Seattle, Washington to get there in past years.

 

"I did a routine - essentially it's called cups and balls," Hsueh told the Now over the phone. "It's actually Starbucks-oriented, so I make the ball vanish, it appears under the cup, everyone checks it out and it's all good and then I do it again and then I put the ball away.

 

Essentially, the ball keeps returning under the cup. At the end, I produce a cup of coffee from the same cup I've been using, and from the ball that I've been using, I make a second one appear and then inside the ball, which

 

I've been handling the entire time, I produce two sugar cubes."

 

The magic prodigy started practicing magic at the age of 12.

 

Last year, he snatched the silver medal at the PCAM awards for his platform magic and in 2012 he took home the Stan Kramien Showmanship Award of Excellence. Hsueh also won the 2011 Vancouver Magic Circle's Dick Gardner Award for his close-up magic.

 

Hsueh is the second vice-president of the Vancouver Magic Circle, one of the largest magic clubs in all of Canada.