Rubenstein's Revenge

Other Tutorials:

TheOmnipotentJuggler (video)

     Rubenstein's Revenge is a three ball trick established by Rick Rubenstein. Though it may not look it, Rubenstein's Revenge is actually just a regular Mills Mess pattern with a revolving flourish performed after the third throw of each cycle. That last ball is thrown higher than the rest to accommodate the added arm movements, resulting in a 52233 siteswap.

    To learn Rubenstein's Revenge, it is best to begin by isolating the flourish. Start with two balls, one in each hand, with your non-dominant arm crossed over your dominant. Then, uncross your arms, tracing a circle with the two balls, and then begin to re-cross your arms, throwing the ball from your non-dominant hand (now on the bottom) back across your body as if in a Mills Mess. Keep circling around with your dominant arm, and throw the ball in that hand behind the first ball, again as if in a Mills Mess. Finally, claw catch the first ball with your dominant hand, and catch the second ball with your non-dominant. You should end up with your arms crossed in the opposite configuration as when you started.
    For the next step we are going to add in the third ball. This ball, unlike in a Mills Mess, is thrown rather vertically to keep it out of the way of the flourishes. Start with two balls in your dominant hand crossed underneath your non-dominant hand, which is holding one ball. Throw a ball from your dominant hand vertically, and then execute the flourish. After making the first throw of the flourish, you are going to catch the ball you threw vertically using that hand. You are then going to cross that hand underneath your dominant arm (now on top) and make another vertical throw, catching the second throw of the flourish using that now empty hand.
    Practice this step on both sides until you are very comfortable with it, and don't forget to claw catch the first ball of the flourish. In order to run the full pattern, just do another flourish after the last vertical throw in the step above, and continue the pattern on each side. Remember, as in Mills Mess, each ball has its own unique path through the pattern, so if you find that a given ball is traveling along a different path each cycle, something is wrong.