Card Tricks Archives

Learning Card Magic Tricks – Problems Doing the Pass

The following conversation about learning card magic tricks, is a transcription from from the Merchant of Magic Podcast Episode 3. Dominic Reyes, Ben Williams and Paul Knight discuss a problem that one of the customers is having trouble solving.

The transcription is abridged and cleaned up (to some extent). If you prefer, you can listen to the full Merchant of Magic Podcast

Dominic Reyes: We’ve had a question from Conner:

‘I’m struggling with the Pass; everyone sees it, what can I do about this?’

Ben Williams: Learning card magic tricks like this is something every magician tries to do at some point.

Dominic Reyes: But how many magicians actually bother to perform the pass? Have you ever actually used it in a routine?

Ben Williams: This is the cold truth… It’s just hard core magic for other magician.

Paul Knight: I do perform the pass, but I don’t perform it like you see on Youtube videos and in an invisible manner. My technique is out in the open, but it’s covered with some body gestures.

Ben Williams: Conner, I don’t know if you’re a hardcore card magician, a Dan and Dave fan or one of those flourishing guys. If you are fine, you know, great, crack on, try and perfect card magic tricks like the pass. If you’re performing for spectators in the real world, essentially all focus should not be on your technical skill; it should be on your performing skills. That’s what their actually interested in. Your spectators don’t care at all what sleights or card magic tricks you use. The public just wants to see the magic happen and be entertained on their journey.

Sometimes I do use the pass. I’m not great at it at all. When I started learning it, I was so focused on what was happening with the cards in my hands, and watching videos of cards in people’s hands. I was getting so frustrated trying to perfect it.

Then it dawned on me; I realized that actually, the pass doesn’t matter. It’s just one of many choices. So I stopped practicing, and now I use the turnover pass in performance.

I prefer the turn over pass because I’m turning the deck over and could move my arm towards the table to place the deck down. That way I get plenty of cover for any flashes that may happen.

Dominic Reyes: A large action hides a smaller action.

Ben Williams: Connor, crack on, try and perfect the pass. If you’re performing for the public, there are better card magic tricks to spend your valuable practice time.

Paul Knight: Yes, that’s right. Also, it depends whom you want to learn the pass for. Is it for yourself? Is it for magicians, or is it for spectators? If it’s for spectators, I would suggest that you don’t beat yourself up over it. There are so many card controls out there and to be honest with you, whichever card control you use, the spectator should be unaware that you are controlling the cards.

Dominic Reyes: You’re doing it at an offbeat moment anyway. Whilst making eye contact.

Ben Williams: This was something I was going to mention. The pass, when it was first originally taught, was never meant to be looked at. Card magic tricks like this were never meant to be invisible. It was meant to be done under the cover of misdirection. I don’t know why people worry so much about palming cards. No one should be looking at your hands when you palm a card anyway.

The classic way to make somebody look away from the deck in your hands is to look at their eyes and ask them a question.

What you might be finding Connor, is that you’re putting too much focus on the cards at the time when you need to do the pass.

Dominic Reyes: That’s what people are looking at. They’re looking at where your attention is focused. Act like there’s nothing happen.

Ben Williams: I’ve stood there, before needing to do a move with cards, and everyone is looking at the cards. I couldn’t do the move without pointing it out. So I just sat there; relaxed, and said

“Well, I’m not gonna do anything if you look that close.”

That’s kind of a funny thing to say, but that gives you ample time to do the move under the laughs and the misdirection.

Paul Knight: The only people I’ve ever come across who say to me, “Hey how am I doing with my pass, how does this look, have I perfected it?” are non performing hobbyists.

Admittedly, a lot of the time, they’re brilliant at it. No professional magician has ever come up to me and said, “Look at me! I’ve perfected my pass.” Because they know, in reality, as I’ve just said, it doesn’t actually matter which techniques you use for your card magic tricks, if you’re performing for spectators.

Dominic Reyes: There’s a pleasure in perfection.

Paul Knight: There’s a great reward in trying to really master a move. Yes, definitely.

Dominic Reyes: But not if it’s causing you to feel worried about it because it doesn’t matter. You only need to perfect a pass for your own personal satisfaction. If it’s stressing you, just take a step away from it, for a while.

Ben Williams: Think about this as well Conner, if you’ve seen some videos on Youtube or on the internet, of people doing really invisible passes. Imagine if there was more than one camera set up on them. You are only seeing one angle. If you had 8 or 9 of those cameras chances are, you would see a massive flash of what’s going on.

Dominic Reyes: You usually only see one take. You don’t see all the rejected takes.

Paul Knight: One thing I will quickly say, is don’t try to be too textbook. Don’t follow every single nuance that is put in writing or on DVD. If a sleight is not working for you, stop looking at what your hands are doing. What can you do to cover up the moments that it flashes? Could you tilt the top part of the deck forward slightly to give you a better angle? Find out what YOU need to tweak, for your own style and pace. You don’t need to create a carbon copy of another magicians card trick technique.

NEXT: Learning the Turn Over Pass

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Card Magic Core Skills, Moves and Sleights For Magicians

by Merchant of Magic 3 Comments

Sleight of hand is something that can become a life long and rewarding journey. To get off on the right foot, and stand a chance of battling this monster, it’s best to be prepared!

There are some fundamental card magic core skills you should first learn with a pack of playing cards before focusing on tricks that are achievable with sleight of hand. These skills are transferable across many different card magic routines, so are really essential learning.

We will cover these in a chronological order. Move through them in turn, as each skill builds upon the previous one.

Dealer Grip

– This is the standard way to hold a deck of cards, EVERYTHING stems from here, so learn this grip well, it will become a great new friend!

Biddle Grip

– This is a grip that your non dominant hand will use, learn to successfully and smoothly transfer the deck from hand to hand using these two grips.

Card Magic Core Skills: Shuffle work

It is very important that you can competently shuffle a deck of cards without dropping cards. This displays skill and when done properly any lay man will be happy that the deck is legit. Here are some shuffles to look up and learn.

– Overhand Shuffle

The classic ‘running cards’ shuffle, this is the most common of all shuffles.

– Riffle Shuffle (and bridge)

This is the shuffle everyone wants to be able to do. Standard in casinos and all over the world this is the fastest way to randomise an order in a deck of cards.

– Hindu Shuffle

This is a variation of the over hand shuffle. This is a useful shuffle to know as it can be used as a shuffle, a control AND a force.

Pinkie Break

If you want to have cards legitimately selected and revealed the first step to conquer this is the Pinkie Break. It is a secret way of always knowing where the selected card is within the deck. One of the most valuable techniques used in most magic card tricks.

Card Magic Core Skills: Controls

The next step in finding a spectator’s legitimate selection is to learn some controls. These are card magic core skills used to ‘control’ the spectator’s card to wherever you want it.

– Double Undercut

For most magic card tricks, this is the most common of all controls, this is not only a simple technique but also a very deceptive one.

– Overhand Shuffle Control

One of the simplest controls to learn as far as technique is concerned, the overhand shuffle control is a very useful tool to have.

– Hindu Shuffle Control

A rarer control but even more deceiving than the double undercut. The card is controlled whilst shuffling the deck.

Card Magic Core Skills: Forces

The ability to coerce a spectator into selecting a card of your choice (not theirs) in a supposedly fair selection process is a core component of so many magic card tricks. So many magic tricks and routines are possible once you have mastered a good force, so use it!

– Riffle Force

The easiest of all forces to learn, this should be the first force you learn to perform well

– Backslip Force

Much like the riffle force this is a simple force to learn and very convincing when performed correctly, there are lots of traps you can fall into when learning this force so beware. Practice it when you perform magic card tricks that don’t depend on it, so you gain experience.

– Hindu Shuffle Force

This is a great force that is easy to do. If you have mastered the Hindu Shuffle successfully then this force will be a breeze!

– Classic Force

Although not necessary to lean, I have included the Classic Force here as the sooner you learn the classic force the better you will become at it. The classic force is not technically not hard to perform, however to perform it convincingly and with confidence takes a lot of practice. Use the technique as much as possible whenever you perfrom your magic card tricks so you get practice, when it’s not vital to the outcome of the trick.

Double Lift/Turnover

This sleight is a great utility tool for EVERY card magician, you can make cards change, vanish, transpose and so much more with this sleight.

Triple Lift/Turnover

The triple lift or turnover is an extension of the double lift/turnover. Technically similar to the double lift the triple variation on this sleight opens up some new doors in your card magic.

Top Change

Magic card tricks like the top change can be a hurdle for many magicians, as it is a sleight performed under their noses and under misdirection it will seem like you will never get away with it. If you do learn this sleight successfully you will have a great string to your bow.

Card Magic Core Skills: Miscellaneous Sleight

– Elmsley Count

The Elmsley Count is widely regarded as the most versatile false counts in card magic, a lot of mars tricks utilise this great sleight.

– Erdnase Colour Change

Performing a colour change well is one of the most magical card tricks you can do with a deck of cards. The Erdnase Colour Change is one of the easiest colour changes to learn

Palm

To palm a card from a deck is a very useful tool, it can be utilised within many card to impossible location routines as well as a way to secretly add or remove playing cards from the deck. Again many people palm cards badly, if you learn the nuances of the move and examine your technique, you will be fine.

– Top Palm

The standard palm, this is usually the first palm a sleight of hand artist will learn. Although not used in many magic card tricks, it’s the core move in palming and should be mastered.

– Gambler’s Cop

This palm is called the gambler’s cop for a reason, it is a very deceptive palm that was very common in the gambling scene. It jumped over from ‘cheating’ to be used for many magic card tricks. The gambler’s cop takes advantage of how you would stand naturally, allowing you to retain a card in palm whist your hands look entirely natural.

Card Magic Core Skills: Flourishes

– Springing the Cards

This is the action of literally ‘springing’ the deck of cards one by one from one hand to the other.

– Dribble

This is like springing the cards but instead of forcing the cards from one hand to the other you use gravity, letting them fall one by one from one hand to the other.

– Charlier Cut

The Charlier Cut is a one handed cut that is a nice display of skill, accomplishing nothing more than a cut of the cards this is a nice flourish to perform as a casual display of dexterity. Adding a Charlier Cut adds finesse to most magic card tricks.

There are lots of other card magic core skills and sleights you can learn. However, if you learn these core sleights and techniques well you will be able to easily study most magic card tricks you will come across. Of course, the journey of sleight of hand is never ending, but these fundamental techniques will set you off in the correct direction making it as easy and manageable as possible.

Why do people collect playing cards?

How to do the Indian shuffle – free card magic core skills

The Turn Over Pass – How To Do Card Magic Tricks

by Merchant of Magic 1 Comment

With the turn over pass you can have your spectator simply name any playing card they spot in a face-up spread of playing cards. You appear to simply, square the deck and turn it face down, but in reality… you have secretly controlled and moved their selected playing card to the top of the deck!

This is a core move in card magic using sleight of hand, 100% undetectable, and beyond useful!

The move is not self working. You will need to watch the tutorial and carefully learn the mechanics of the pass. Once you have that ‘down’, it’s time to drill the moves until is is both smooth and almost like second nature. The Turn Over Pass requires a smooth, steady and even pace. That’s why it’s a great starting move for beginners that want to dip their toes into sleight of hand with cards.

As you work on mastering the technique, the skills you develop will stay with you across your future work with the cards.

This free Video Tuition on the Turn Over Pass gives you detailed step-by-step tuition. It will give you the real secrets and subtleties so you can easily do one of the core sleights and deceptive passes ever created.