What do you consider a "mastered" trick? I hear people who just started penspinning say they can do a whole list of tricks, even my friends who watch me penspin in class say "I can do that." (Typical non-penspinner thinks it's not that hard) And I want to know, when can you 'do' a trick? The first time you do it, it's magically mastered? When you can do it once in a while? When you can do it half the time? When you can do it without looking at your hand? When you can do it consistently and never drop it?

it's more of where your hand is so used to the trick, you won't notice it when your doing that trick. Doing it with your eyes closed isn't mastered because pen spinning is mostly about finger dexturity. Everyone drops tricks. But it's more of, you just don't do very consistently.

Mastered - You can do the trick with very high consistancy, link in and out of it with relative ease, and it looks awesome when you do it.

If you ask me, a mastered trick is a trick that is always done consistently good. That it always starts the same and ends the same. Like when you perform a TA and it always ends in the exact same position, waiting for the reverse push(unless, ofc, you don't want it to, but that's a different thing)

I disagree Teatime. I think that knowing how to make the trick land differently, depending on what you are linking it to is more a necessity for mastery than catching it the same way every time. In that sense, being able to start a trick different ways is also more a necessity for mastery than starting from the same position every time.

Knowing how to link one trick to another means you know how to link, not how to do a trick well. Obviously in order to link two tricks together you need a certain level of control, but that's not the definition of a mastered trick.
For example, I can do sonic Rise super fast a million times with ease, but once I reach the top, I don't have anything to do with it, does it mean that I don't have Sonic Rise mastered?
Since not all tricks have different ending positions, you can't say that a mastered trick is a trick that you can end in which ever slot you want in order to link it to the next trick.
Even so, knowing how to land a trick differently still falls under what I said. If when you do a TA it always ends up in the slot you want but exactly in the same way, the spin is always fast, smooth and accurate, then the trick is mastered.
As for starting it in a different area, I don't think that counts for mastered. I can do shadow well, but just because I can't map it on to the 23 slot doesn't mean I don't have shadow mastered.

Well, it seems you have misinterpreted several things right off the bat.

1. No where did I say that linking had anything to do with mastering tricks. I merely said that being able to change where the pen lands for linking is a better show of mastery than being able to make it land in the same place every time. I do not disagree with your sonic rise example.

2. You seem to think that "Shadow" is a trick. This is incorrect. Shadow 12-23 is a trick. Shadow 23-23 is a trick, etc. Shadow, is merely the name for a GROUP of tricks that share similar characteristics. When I said being able to start/end a trick differently I did not mean changing slots. For example, IA. Always starts in 12 and always ends in 12. However, lets say I want to do Cont. IA x2. I cannot catch the pen the same for the first IA if I intend to do a second. I need to catch the pen closer to the top. It is these kinds of adjustments I was speaking off.

i just define mastering a trick when ive mapped it on all slots/fingers of my hand.
for example, traditionally, a sonic starts from 23-12. from there, i practice smoothness, linkage, and mapping. i learn it without the help of my thumb,
i practice it from 34-23. if you really want to master a trick, in my opinion, is linkage. practice linking the trick to another, and it'll be mastered in time.

When I say Shadow I usually mean Shadow Still, I probably should have said that.
I disagree with what you said about IA. I agree that it is a higher level of control, but I don't agree that if you can't catch the pen higher, then you haven't mastered IA, even though you can do it easily.(Disregard the obvious fact that if you can do IA in a way to count it mastered, that is doing it easily all day, then you can probably catch the pen at the top if you wanted to)
What I meant by my first post was that a mastered trick is a trick, that if asked to do, you can do it a couple of times, just the basic trick, and every time it will be consistently good. It's like if you ask Eriror to do a Bak fall X times, each time the Bak fall will be exactly the same, will be just as smooth, just as fast and so on.

I don't understand how you are deriving "If you can't catch the trick differently you haven't mastered it" from my posts. I even explained in my last post, I believe it shows a higher form of mastery, but isn't a requirement. I also said that I agree with your sonic rise example, and that in such a case, sonic rise would be mastered. Thank you for clearing up what you meant in your first post, I took it to mean something different, and that's why I disagreed. If I interpreted your most recent post correctly, you mean that if someone can do a trick multiple times on command without any radical deviation in appearance between tricks then they have mastered it. If this is the case, I agree.

Means you an do it very smoothly with your eyes closed 20 times without dropping it.

That definition is probably not going to work for air tricks.

I don't think ps tricks can be mastered.. you will drop eventually ;)

Yea, for me, mastery means you can do the trick every time, but that's not really possible, cause you're gonna drop it eventually. So you can say you have the trick mastered, but you never really do.

I'm guessing, mastered doesn't necessarily mean not dropping the pen.

Try tossing and catching the pen into the air with your eyes closed then.

Actually I think that could work. But it'd be very hard. Because you'd have to throw it the same and catch it the same every single friggin' time. I mean, you could throw a ball and catch it 20 times couldn't you? But with a pen? Is it the same?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T385_JgiOE4

4:36

Haha, nice one Joshua :lol: . Anyways, I think mastering the trick is when you can get it to where you can do it very consistently, or without even thinking about it. Another would be the ability to link it efficiently in a combo and make it look damn smooth ^_^.

So, the majority is when you can do it quick, smooth, consistent, and link it in and out of other tricks (and make it look damn good too).

I believe that there is no such thing to mastering a pen spinning trick [exeptions to Zbo]. Just because you can do the trick well doesnt mean you mastered it. I think there is no definition for Mastering a Trick.

IMO, "mastering" a trick is pretty much one step short of "perfecting" a trick, which means you can do it 100% of the time without dropping or making and mistakes.
For me, mastering a trick just means that you're able to do it flawlessly most of the time whenever you want, and however you want. Though there will be times when you screw up, it's just unlikely.

When im learning tricks i always gauge if ive mastered a trick by its feel. Im not really sure how to describe what i mean but like, when youve mastered a trick it feels different. It feels really fluid, and the muscle memory in your fingers makes it feel almost natural. That how i judge on if ive mastered a trick or not.

i believe that when u master something means you can 'show' it to someone when you need to..

like you tell someone "check out my neobakfall... oops i dropped it" then you try again and you do it.. smoothly..

this is hard for me as i try to put in aesthetic appeal into my combos, and if it doesn't look as good as it should it means i failed.