I've been seriously performing the cups and balls for about two years now. I work a restaurant three nights a week and I do it for every table at the restaurant, it's my most requested and most memorable effect. As I said I perform it three nights a week, for at least 15 tables a night. That would put it at 45 times a week, 2340 times a year and in two years of doing it, at least 4680 performances, which doesn't include other gigs. I feel so lost if I don't bring my cups to a particular gig. The thing has basically become a crutch. I've contemplated taking it out of my performances but I just can't, it gets too strong a reaction (something that baffles me as I used to get huge reactions with my sponge routines final original ending which I don't get anymore even before I do my cups). My gawd! Why can't I put the damned things down??? Someone... do something!

Once a cup junkie, always a cup junkie...

Do you use full size cups or mini cups? Do you bring your own table to the table or just use the table they are eating on?

2 cup routine with full size cups on their table.

Sweet! You should brag!
A lot of working guys state that cups and balls are not practical in a restaurant or bar environment. You are clearly proving that wrong. Is your two cup routine derivative of any other routine I would know? or purely original? I perform the Gary Ouellete Two Goblets routine, but it's only for sitting situations. I have not worked out the handling to migrate it to standing.
You do this standing?

Yeah, I can't perform anything sitting, it just doesn't feel right for me. My two cup routine is a very standard routine using some very standard moves. It's not based on anything specific, just things i found flowed together easily for this kind of setting. Also I have the advantage of working in a theme restaurant where every table is closed off from the other so that no other tables get to see what I'm doing at the other. I don't know how well the routine would work in a more conventional place.

Eddie,
I have never investigated a 2 Cup routine, what steered you in that direction? I will be researching such shortly. If I may ask, how do you do final load management. Like Don I pretty much work sitting.

Thanks,
Bruce

I load out of the pocket, three final fruit loads, either lemons, limes or clementines. I originally used to do kiss-off, a chop cup like routine but it didn't get the reactions I would have liked. Three cups were too many to carry around and put out on their table I felt, so I just experimented with two. It worked out really well for me and I haven't turned back since.

Eddie

I don't work sitting down, unless I'm presenting my cups and balls routine, which means it only gets performed at private parties, but it has a finale that is worth it. Even then, my routine starts with 3 cups but I eliminate a cup pretty quickly and finish with one cup - all 3 cups produce loads, but most of the magic happens between just one or two cups.
And Eddie, you are a lucky guy that you work in a restaurant that has seating designed so that the next table, or the last table, can't see what you are doing!

A lot of people agree that 3 cups are too many for table-hopping. I've tried to do 3 cup routines in bars and it's very tough, just carrying the cups with you is a hassle.
Don Alan always said that ONE cup was all you needed - but he also said you should sit with the guests at their table every chance you get...
3 cups are required for a game - like the 3 shell game, but is generally considered too many for a DIRECT presentation of magic in a real working environment. One of the goals of magic is NOT to confuse the audience. But the goal of the operator of a game IS to keep the audience guessing. Reducing the number of cups reduces confusion and increases the impact of the magic. It also removes the guessing game aspect of the trick. Look at Tommy Wonder's routine - no one would ever think his routine is a guessing game. He uses 2 cups.
Bill Palmer, the curator of the Cup and Balls Museum has openly stated that the more he learns about the origins of Cups and Balls, the more he believe it was a conceived as a con game (I'm paraphrasing). I don't think the cups evolved from the 3 shells though, but rather the other way around. The 3 shells evolved from the 3 cups, because the shells are more practical for roaming street swindles. Look at the old wood cuttings or illustrations of artists' interpretations of cups and balls presentations in the 18/19th century and you see they are associated with pick-pockets and cut-purses. By the 19/20th century, these same swindles are performed with 3 shells (using new sleights and techniques), and the cups are exclusively performed by magicians (who also developed new sleights and techniques for their purposes).
Sorry for going on so long... I love this subject!

I present my  cup routine as the original primitive version of the shell game and go into a shell game type routine only with two cups and two balls. Goes over quite well as a guessing game because the second they answer correctly I instanlt switch things up on them. So it can be kept as a guessing game with less than three cups, just not a very conventional one.

I know the feeling. I though the cups and balls was a stupid trick, but they were the only thing I had when I was in the hospital back in September and October. That hospital stay gave me a new look at the cups and balls. I fell in love with them. From then on out I experimented using 2 cups in a routine and even one cup routine!

Once your a cups and baller, you don't go back!

Amen brother. Alas, Cupscon was born!