Ye Olde Magick Blogge

Chapter 5: The Glimpse

“The Glimpse”

Caveat Emptor: I don’t use any of the glimpses in this chapter, so take my opinion with the requisite grains of salt. That said, the techniques talked about seem to read right, and if you’re in a situation where you’re basically getting the glimpse of a card before the trick has even begun (either to force or to use as a key card, more on both of those later) then even the method that they say is bold (Bottom Card Glimpse #2) should fly fine. There is a slight danger of having the card flash outwards towards the audience, so obviously make sure to watch your angles, especially if you’re going to force that same card onto them later on.

Very quickly… “Bottom Card Glimpse #1″ is interesting — I might give that a shot sometime. “Bottom Card Glimpse #2″ doesn’t feel as bold to me as the writers suggest. “Bottom Card Glimpse #3″ strikes me as somewhat unnecessarily flashy, but if you’re good at card fans it might give you a chance to display your flourishing prowess while getting the secret information you need. One I’m surprised that they don’t talk about is how to catch a glimpse of the bottom card in the midst of a riffle shuffle — just start the riffle shuffle technique and look down, and it’s fairly easy to catch a glimpse of a card on the face of one of the packets and then make sure it’s shuffled off first to end up on the bottom. The reason I’m surprised is that it’s both useful (I’ve been using it since I started card magic) and it also strikes me as a rather obvious idea. I’ll talk about another glimpse later on in the chapter on false shuffles that has a specific purpose. In any case, the glimpses should all be fine, and the shuffling techniques that you’ve learned thus far should be good for getting the card into position.

“Top Card Glimpse” is a good one — A long time ago, I had a chance to watch the Royal Road DVDs with R. Paul Wilson at a friend’s place, and he absolutely fried me with this basic glimpse in a trick later on in the book. If you can motivate the action of turning the wrist, it’s a good enough technique for you to actually use it after you’ve had a card selected and returned, something that none of the earlier three techniques are really suitable for.

“Fan Peek” strikes me as bold and a bit overhandled. Raising the fan, lowering the fan, only to raise it again afterwards? If I had to guess how regular people might think magicians can know what card they’ve taken, I’d guess that the glimpse would be one of those intuitive solutions. As such, any situation where it seems like you’ve got the opportunity to get a look at the cards immediately after the card is selected and returned strikes me as a dangerous time to glimpse, to the point that many teachers recommend always looking away when the card is selected and shown to everybody, even if you couldn’t actually see the face of the card if you were looking in its general direction. So, yeah, this technique doesn’t really appeal to me all that much, which of course means somebody’s probably going to fool the pants off me with it someday. If you do get good enough at card fanning, it’s worth noting that many card men hold Steve Draun’s fan peek in high regard, so you might want to look into that.

There will be more glimpses taught later in the book. They require some sleight-of-hand prowess that hasn’t been covered in the text to this point.

“Gray’s Spelling Trick”

For the life of me, I’ve never understood the appeal of spelling tricks, but some notable magicians hold the plot in high regard. Personally, I would only use it in a situation where the audience was absolutely convinced that the card was lost — meaning that they get to shuffle the cards themselves, and I don’t get to look through the faces in order to find it. There’s an interesting recommended nuance here that the spectator actually spell the trick silently to themselves before calling out “stop” when they finish spelling it, which strikes me as strong, but risky for two reasons — first, it gives too much control to a spectator who could try to louse you up, and second, you’ve got to be sure that the spectator knows exactly how they’re supposed to spell the card (ie: including the word “of” or whatever). Elsewhere in the card universe are card spelling strategies where you can basically control the card to a set location, and then it doesn’t matter what they say, you can spell to it — this allows for a neat twist where you can actually have the spectator lie to you about what their card was, and then you use that named card to spell to their selection (I’ve done this a couple of times to good effect, and the premise of letting the spectator try to ruin your trick strikes me as a good one). It’s also worth noting that Eugene Burger teaches a Double Speller in his Magical Voyages DVD series, which involves the magician spelling to two different cards, before giving the deck to the spectator to let them do it themselves. The construction of that trick is good, with everything motivated correctly, and a fun surprise early on in the routine.

Anyways, back to this specific trick. One thing that’s worth noting here is that the method basically involves the use of the Key Card principle, but in a really rudimentary and bald-faced way (the subsequent shuffle helps somewhat). If you like this trick and the method, keep your eyes open for superior Key Card placements talked about later in the book (there are a couple of brilliant ones) so that you can find some slightly more deceptive ways of applying the principle here. Definitely include the handling suggestion that allows you to spell off an indifferent card before they spell to their own card — Burger thought so much of that touch that he made sure to do it twice before letting them spell themselves, and if you’ve got the memory for it, the method for doing this should be self-evident (you should still check out Burger’s handling if you like this trick, though, as there are additional touches that aren’t mine to tip here).

“Round and Round”

Bleah. I couldn’t see myself doing this trick unless I was deliberately trying to take the piss out of all the convoluted steps needed to pull it off — the specific secret is clever enough, mathematically, but self-working tricks that feel like self-working tricks have never appealed to me, and things like the down-and-under deal (the technique at the end of the trick) and the secret transfer of a small number of cards both reek of self-workingness. If you like the trick, though, go nuts — it does have the nice touch of them never naming their card aloud, them dealing it to themselves, and you being able to name it before they turn it over. Also, because you know the position of the card, you can get into the fan glimpse much better than the way they recommend it earlier in the chapter. Still, it just strikes me that all the surrounding stuff undermines the things the trick has going for it.

General Thoughts on this Chapter

Secretly catching a glimpse of a card that you’re going to force or use as a Key Card is a solid technique, and while as I said none of the techniques listed are ones that I’ve used, the first four all seem workable enough, and when we get to the trick later on in the book that uses the Top Card Glimpse I’ll gush on about it some more. I absolutely recommend the glimpse I described earlier involving the riffle shuffle. One other thing you can do to help yourself out is to get in the habit of getting a glimpse early before you even have a card trick in mind. Darwin Ortiz talks about a concept known as the Critical Interval in a trick — this is the time period between the moment the spectator believes the trick starts, and the moment the spectator believes the trick finishes, and getting as much work done outside that interval is often a good idea. It’s a simple thing to pick up the cards and give them a cursory shuffle and catch a glimpse in the process, and if you get in the habit of doing this automatically you’ll be in a good position to get ahead on the audience before they even realize that a trick’s coming. If the only possible explanation for the trick is that you somehow knew which card was where, and yet you apparently never even looked at the faces of the cards, you’re golden. And Lord knows there are plenty of ways to get that secret information — go to this webpage, click on “Sleights” and then “Glimpses”, and you’ll see just how many options are in print out there.

I’m sure that there are a few people who’d recommend reading the book in order from start to finish without skipping any material. Well… you can probably guess from my earlier advice to jump forward and learn the Tipsy Trick that I’m not one of them. It seems to me that you should be able to jump ahead to the chapter on The Classic Force and take a look at some of the options available to you — at the very least you should be able to do the Cut Force and the Bottom Force. Forcing is great, but don’t fall so in love with it that you neglect the other card control techniques that you’ve learned so far. In my own personal repertoire, none of the strongest effects that I do involve forcing.

Coming up next… the venerable Key Card!