Card Tricks for Beginners – Which Are Best?

One of the most frequent questions we get from people starting to learn card tricks, is how to begin. They want a first step, and ask us what card tricks for beginners we recommend. This is where the problem comes in:

Do we recommend a book or DVD on card tricks, that are self working and easy to perform, or do we suggest a beginners book that teaches the basic sleights used in card tricks?

Self working card tricks –  There are some awesome books and DVD’s that will get the beginner doing card tricks right away. Our current favorite choices currently are these:

Ultimate Self Working Card Tricks 
All the team are very impressed with a magic training DVD for total beginners, and also working pro’s. The whole team were instantly impressed with the guiding principles that started the project. To put together a set of very strong professional tricks, that are self working, and strip away all the complicated plots and abstract nonesense found in most collections of this nature. The project fits perfectly with the teaching principles MoM uses with magicians that come for personal tuition to the shop, and we now recommend this DVD to all our students doing training with us.

Born to Perform Card Magic
An idea stepping stone into card magic and the DVD Ben Williams always recommends to new students. It covers the basics’s but does so, by introducing actual tricks that use those principles.A good mix of card tricks, which progress the student though each stage of development, without simply jumping from new sleight to new sleight

Magic is all about performing. The study of magic is a means to an end, not the end itself. Starting with some very easy card tricks that you can go out and perform right away, builds confidence, and helps you to understand timing and presentation. The goal of magic practice isn’t to spend countless hours in solitary practice, although over time that will also be necessary. The sooner a beginner can start learning through real world performance the better.
We see far too many eager beginners get disheartened after spending hour after hour learning more and more new sleights and moves, with no purpose to them other than the thrill of mastery. After years of practice, it often dawn on them, that they don’t know a full set of interesting card tricks, to create a show, and at this point they often give up.

If you choose to learn card tricks rather than just card moves, you build your skill set over time, only as you need each move. In the end, you will slowly progress your sleight of hand anyway, but will have a group of tricks you can do, right from the start as a base to develop from.

Amazing Book of Cards
One of the clearest, and easy to follow books on card tricks we have found. As well as teaching how to do 52 tricks with a deck of cards, it combines friendly, concise text with full-color photos. It won our backing bu including an excellent full-length DVD that teaches the lessons and most importantly, shows the subtleties of performance. This is often lacking in beginners books.

Encyclopedia Of Card Sleights By Daryl
Stuffed full of juts about every core move a beginner needs, this is an ideal source of material for magicians wanting to perfect a move.
Daryl is a brilliant teacher, and his love for magic shows thoughout the series. Each volume has been carefully chaptered with clear menus to let you jump directly to any sleight or explanation you’re looking for. Unlike many other DVD’s on sleights, Daryl goes well beyond the mechanical process.Focusing your time on perfecting your sleights will really pay off in the long run. As long as you find a useful purpose for the technique, there is a beauty in making something perfect, that can be very addictive. Developing your techniques can also encourage creativity in magic. The move techniques you master, the easier it will be to adapt your existing card tricks and develop new ones. The key to progressing quickly, is to concentrate on just a few moves at a time, and work on them over a long period of time. Remember, that just because they are not routines, you will still need to perfect the timing and flow in exactly the same way you would with a full card trick routine.What do you recommend? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments section below: