Card Tricks Archives

Inexplicable By Steve Shufton – Most Annoying Card Tricks – Reviews

Inexplicable by Steve Shufton - UK Reviews - Ratings

Inexplicable by Steve Shufton is arriving to the UK on the 1st July and this is one of those ‘no sleight of hand’ card tricks that cause quite a stir prior to release. We wanted to give you our opinion of the trick.

Why card tricks like inexlpicable are so annoying to magicians:

Here’s why:

A spectator is given a SINGLE playing card inside an UNGIMMICKED envelope, to hold.
The spectator deals playing cards FACE UP from a regular normal deck of cards.
He or she can stop WHENEVER they want.
The prediction MATCHES!

Seriously, don’t even try to figure out how card tricks like this can be done. When Steve Shufton came to us about Inexplicable, the team had some ideas. This is what we DO know about the card tricks conditions:

There’s No Sleight of Hand
Only One Single Envelope in Play
Just One Prediction Playing Card is Used.
You Don’t Switch the Playing Cards.
You Just Use a Normal Deck of Playing Cards.
It is Instantly Reset for Walk-Around Magicians.

Let’s face it, part of the fun of magic is trying to work out how new card tricks could possibly be done. When you are confronted with card tricks that are DESIGNED to mess with that, it can cause a lot of stress 🙂

What The Merchant of Magic Team Think:
Many of the professional magicians at the magic shop got really excited when they learned all about Inexplicable by Steve Shufton. ‘Open prediction’ card tricks have been worked on for many years, but they all have an Achilles Heel in one form or another.

We all have experienced the horrors of ’21 cards’ card tricks, a long procedure, that uses a combination of extreme boredom, missed with confusion, to squeeze a drop of amazement from it’s victim spectator.

The real magic secret great card tricks for close up magicians, is simplicity. Cutting out all the dead wood, the odd process which fools nobody that it’s just a cover for something sneaky. Finding card tricks that strip that away, to produce the ‘effect’ as directly as possible is gold to a working magician.

Inexplicable by Steve Shufton messes with magicians minds. It’s premise is so simple, it almost screams at you:

‘Come on, you M%$£*& $%$&*. Call yourself a magician…? Admit it, you have no F%^&*$£ idea!

Seriously, the more you try to reverse engineer it, the more likely it is to give you a headache. Steve Shufton actually builds card tricks this way. If you perform for family and friends, you need magic that can withstand full on ‘interrogation’ by your friends. The best part of all is how easy and simple the card tricks secret really is.

Learn much more about Inexplicable by Steve Shufton HERE

(But remember.. We did warn you! )

Communicate Effort – Don’t Make Magic Tricks Look Easy

by Merchant of Magic 2 Comments

Should the effort to learn magic tricks be greater than the effort to perform them? If you find that you sometimes don’t get reactions to your magic tricks that you think they deserved, it could be that you are not communicating how much effort your magic takes to accomplish. Don’t make magic tricks look easy…

It’s normal to want to appear as skilled as possible to your audience. Often you may be claiming skills that you don’t really possess. This urge to demonstrate how effortlessly you can perform your magic tricks could work against you. Making your skills look trivial.

Magic is an unusual performance art because much of the most impressive detail, by its nature, needs to be hidden from the audience. Spectators don’t understand how easy or hard it is for you to perform a magic trick. How can they, as you hide the true method from them. Unless you give them some indication of a magic tricks difficulty, they can only judge it from how quickly or apparently easily you accomplished the trick.

The Speed of Your Magic Tricks is Not an Indication of Their Difficulty.

How fast you perform your magic tricks doesn’t always suggest how skilled you are. A quick series of cuts and shuffles looks impressive, and to other magicians, who understand just how hard the techniques are to master, it can amaze them. Spectators can often react quite differently. Fast can signal easy, to an audience. By slowing down sections of your card magic tricks or coin manipulation, you may find that you impress your spectators much more. Experience with the speed of your manipulation, you may be very surprised by the results.

Learn Magic Tricks That Draw Attention to the effort.

Even if, a flourish our move you perform is easy, try drawing more attention to is, by making it look much harder. Build this into the stories you present your magic tricks within.

Show that you need to concentrate. Pause as you prepare to do something impossible. Fake a false start, or even fail at your first attempt. Let the audience think they are seeing something special, something you have worked to perfect for many years. By communicating the effort, you will be adding value to the feats you are performing for their entertainment.

Learn Magic Tricks that Make the Audience Care.

Showing effort engages your spectators and makes them care about your magic tricks. They identify with the performer. Everyone has something they wish they could do. We all have unfulfilled dreams. People relate to other peoples challenges and their hard work to overcome them. That’s why reality TV shows are so successful. People want to see others overcome their challenges. We all want to see David fight Goliath.

What Would it be Like if you Could do Magic?

The effort you display doesn’t have to be over the mechanics of your sleight of hand. It’s doesn’t even have to be natural. Imagine you actually do perform magic. How would it be done? Maybe through countless hours of memorising spells? Perhaps rituals needed to take place first? Could you learn magic tricks that communicate this, that require you to reciting a spell silently under your breath? If you do a bill switch, could you be reciting something quietly to yourself at the moment the bill changes? Perhaps you need set some objects into a specific pattern around your performing area, for the magic to work? Anything that shows that the magic that is about to happen is special helps communicate effort.

What Price do You Have to Pay and How Can You Express that?

Maybe your powers come from amazing mental abilities? Do you need to build up concentration before doing something amazing? Maybe you have close close your eyes in thought, to prepare yourself for what needs to be done? You could have to pay a cost for the magic. It may drain you mentally to perform a trick. Think about ways to show spectators that you are paying for the powers you show them.

Pause and Fail.

Before performing the magic, take a moment to pause and gather your thoughts. Perhaps you could do a false start, and have to begin again. If it really is impossibly hard to do the magic you will show them, then you don’t need to succeed the first time you try.

Show Tension.

At a critical point, just as you make the magic happen, could you show tension in your body? As your hand hovers over coins, to make them move, does your hand shake a little through the effort? Tension can demonstrate effort, without you having to draw attention to it.

Learn Magic Tricks Using the Too Perfect Theory.

The too perfect theory suggests that it may be better to get a magic trick slightly wrong. The small flaw makes the magic look more believable.

For example: If you were to perform a full deck colour change, it may look better to have one card fail to change. If you draw a prediction, maybe you get it slightly wrong, but so close that it looks like you ‘almost had it’. You can see how strong this sort of ‘almost right’ result can be, by watching Derren Brown in action. Derren’s creative team are experts in the too perfect theory.

Don’t Overdo it – It’s a Fine Line.

Be careful not to overdo it. You want your show of effort to be subtle, otherwise it can look terribly fake. When you learn magic tricks be careful in rehearsal, to make your acting believable is very important. If in doubt, remember that less is more. Ham it up too much and your audience will see through it and the results will be terrible. Care to learn a little acting is just as important at your time to learn magic tricks.

Do This:

Choose your favourite magic trick and identify the moments when the magic or amazing skills happen.

Video yourself performing. Pay close attention to how much effort you seem to be applying.

Ask yourself it if you communicate great skill in those moments, or just that the method it easy if you know the secret.

Introduce a few ‘effort signals’ into the presentation, and audience test the results.
This kind of practice and act development will set your magic far above the level of most magicians. We are confident that you will be astonished by the results a little effort to do this can give you.

Related Posts:

The Top Opener Card Tricks For Magicians

by Merchant of Magic 6 Comments

Card tricks can be a great choice for the first magic trick you perform for your spectators. The first magic trick is often refereed to as an ‘opener’ by magicians.

“Your opening effect must achieve two very important goals. First, it has to win over the audience. Second, it should set the tone or the rest of the act.” – Strong Magic Darwin Ortiz

Card tricks that will be used as openers need to meet some requirements:

1. The card tricks need to be fast.

Trying to perform multi phase tricks with a long build up before the magic happens can easily switch off your spectators attention. You have the groups attention, so your tricks should create a magical event as quickly as possible.

2. Perform visual card tricks.

Card tricks that have a strong visual element work really well. This captures the audiences attention. Visual tricks require less thought from the spectators, who will not be as engaged in your performance at this point.

3. Make sure it’s amazing.

These first magic tricks need to hit them hard and show them something totally impossible. People will judge the quality of your whole act, by the first magic trick you show them. Make sure the magic tricks you choose as openers, establish your skills and demonstrate how entertaining you are.

4. Easy to perform card tricks.

When you approach a new group of spectators, you will be doing several things at once:

Introducing yourself
Setting the tone
Assessing the group dynamics
Defining your performing conditions
Setting pace
Capturing attention
Establishing control

Using card tricks that are easy to perform as your first tricks, gives you one less thing to worry about. If you are ‘breaking in’ new material, it may not be wise to use them as openers, until you are very comfortable performing them.

5. Set a good tone for the rest of the performance.

The card tricks you use as openers will set the tone for the rest of the ‘set’. What is your magicians persona? Which card tricks would help to communicate this to the spectators. Choosing tricks with a comedy presentation, before moving into a dark mentalism act, wouldn’t flow correctly and will confuse the spectators. Build each of the tricks into ‘set’s that have a common theme and select an opener that sets the tone and style of the whole act.

Here are some suggestions for good openers. You can learn them from most good magic shops:

The Invisible Deck
The Chicago Opener
Stand Up Monte
Identity
Ambitious card
Satisfaction Guaranteed

Using Sleight of hand.

An alternative to structured card tricks, would be to perform some card flourishes and manipulation as an opener. This would establish your skills and grab attention. With card tricks, magicians are fighting against the “Card tricks Uncle” cliche. Performing some flourishes, or a demonstration of sleight of hand can establish your credibility right away.

Performing a series of colour changes would also be a great way to capture attention and set a pace for the rest of the card magic.

NEXT: The 5 Best Sansmind Tricks Every Magician Loves