Conclusion

And there you have it. Lord, I’m tired.

Digging deeper into this book in order to write up the Annotations has forced me to come to terms with some serious flaws in this book. Still, the relatively low cost of the book, combined with the fact that there are some classics of magic in there, makes it a worthwhile purchase. It could use a revision, but since that sort of thing isn’t going to happen anytime soon, at the very least a companion study guide would be helpful.

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Recommended Study Guide

First, establish general card handling ability.

* Learn every technique in the Overhand Shuffle section, including the full deck overhand shuffle. Go research the Si Stebbins or Eight Kings stack. Never leave home without your cards in this stack.

* Learn every technique in the Riffle Shuffle section, and then jump to the Flourishes Chapter in order to learn the Waterfall Finish.

Figure out if you want to be a close-up card magician, a stage card magician, a mentalist, or a gambling demonstrator.

“Close-up Card Magician’s Guide”

* Glide. Use the improved technique from Vernon and/or work with a Biddle Grip. Learn “Design For Laughter”.

* Reverses. Study the technique if you like, but learn “A Tipsy Trick” immediately. When you can interact with your spectator and reliably get their eyes off the deck whenever you want, learn “Double Reverse”.

* Key Card. Learn something better than the Cut Replacement. Try to figure out if you can get the Sliding Key Card to work. If so, great. If not, learn the Hofzinser Cull. Actually, start learning the cull anyway.

* Force. Learn the Cut Force (Crosscut Force), the Sliding Key Force, and the Riffle Break Force. If you’re feeling adventurous, learn the Classic Force. Figure out funny ways of revealing their selection. If you can’t think of any, go google “Magician’s Insurance Policy” for ideas.

* Take a break from studying new techniques, and refine presentations on everything so far. You should be able to control a selection, switch cards, and force a selection. You should also be able to have them take any card in the deck and you’ll know it immediately. If you can cull, then you can also force a card, let them shuffle, and upon taking it back, spread through the deck to show what a mess they made of it (and also getting control of the forced card and bringing it into position). Consider learning: “Pinkie Does It”, “Leapfrog”, “Gray’s Speller”, and “Poker Puzzle” as described in the “Gambling Demonstrator’s Guide”. Go out and perform some of this stuff. At least one of those tricks should fit you. Consider that there are professional magicians (and yes, some of them are good) who have worked paid gigs doing some of the above.

* Start practicing the Palm, the Pass, and the Double Lift. Don’t take any of these moves live yet, just start working on them until you can get them down reliably. Consider the old adage that the amateur practices a move until he successfully pulls it off, and a professional practices a move until he never fails to pull it off. As you’re getting better at that…

* Top Change. Learn the normal technique, and then learn “The Changing Card”. This is a good trick, and it’s worth your while to get a presentation for it.

* Palm. Learn all the techniques. Get Carney’s “On Palming” DVD and learn the method for small packet work. When you can never fail to pull it off, develop a simple Card To Pocket presentation as described in the annotations chapter, and then start looking into various Card-To-Impossible-Locations. (Ignore the “Card In Pocket” trick). Also consider trying to learn a colour change (if you bought Carney’s DVD, there are a couple on there you might like). Finally, take a look at “Three Cards Across”.

* Double Lift. Learn the technique. When you can never fail to pull it off, learn “Rapid Transit” first so that you can make sure you can do it live (you might be more nervous than you realize), and then after that, start learning a proper “Ambitious Card” Routine. Now, revisit any old trick (such as “Pinkie Does It”) and consider how you can shuffle the card into place, but then also show that it’s not on top or on the bottom, implying it is somewhere in the middle. If your palm is down, learn “I’ve Got A Surprise For You”. Also, get your hands on “Easy to Master Card Miracles 1″, which will teach you another great trick using this move, and a bunch of other stuff. If you’ve done everything else thus far in the book, you should be ready for “Fours of a Kind”, or perhaps a better version of that general plot, such as Dai Vernon’s “Matching the Cards”.

* Pass. After you’ve been working with this for a year, start looking into what it can do for you. If nothing else, it should fit nicely into an Ambitious Card routine.

* Once you can pass, double-lift, top-change and palm, practice Tyler Erickson’s Wheel of Pain. Have a card selected and returned. Pass. Double-lift to show it’s not on top. Snap your fingers, show the change. Look confused as you top-change. Say that you could have sworn that they took a different card (flash it, and then return it into the deck, palming off the top card (aka Marlo’s Misdirection Palm) because the card they selected was in your pocket the entire time, and produce their card from the pocket. That’s three hits of magic in 15 seconds. Rinse and Repeat.

* Consider research into methods of controlling multiple cards. I’m partial to the cull, but if you’re able to make the Lift Shuffles look good, or if you discover some of the techniques I talk about in the annotations of that chapter, you’ve got other options. Start looking into impressive ways to reveal a bunch of cards in succession.

* Finally, consider that there are some techniques in card magic that aren’t covered at all here. The Side Steal, the Crimp, the Tilt, the Cull, and the Elmsley Count are five good ones to start with — the Elmsley Count alone will open you up to a whole new world of small packet magic (that might be somewhat difficult to escape from).

* Take another break. If you can do the above, then you have a solid repertoire of card magic, and if you can execute and present even three of the above tricks well, you’ll be at the level of a professional. Go learn a coin trick.

* To go further, study the DVDs of guys like Bill Malone, Michael Ammar, Daryl, etc. Also, simply due to sheer volume and quality, look up Dai Vernon and Ed Marlo.

“Stage Card Magician’s Guide”

* Follow the path of the close-up card magician, but you should focus on tricks that play big in lieu of those that play small. Figure out if flourishes fit your performing persona. Look into the chapter on Stage Tricks (as well as some of the tricks named in the Annotations) and see which of them would work for you.

* Study the work of guys like Ricky Jay, Michael Vincent, etc.

“Mentalist’s Card Guide”

* Buy Tony Corinda’s 13 Steps to Mentalism. Do it now.

* Pull out your deck in Si Stebbins. Have them select any card that they wish. Here’s the pretense — you’re trying to build a mental connection with the person you’re with. Get them to concentrate on their card, and then name the colour and then figure out if it’s a picture card or a number card. Stop there, because you’re having trouble. Get the card back, cut a few times, and repeat. This time, you’re really close to the card, but you can’t tell the exact suit, or you’re off by one number. Do it a third time, and then get it perfectly. Do it once more, and then get it just a bit faster. Excellent. Put the cards away and move into a completely different routine, such as something from Corinda.

* Key Card. “Do As I Do”. The other tricks in this chapter are slightly thick on the challenge, but you should be able to present something like “Non-Poker Voice” capably (you might want to change up the presentation somewhat so that it’s less card-game related, unless you can make that motif fit your character).

* Force. You can now predict the future. If you can execute the Sliding Key Force, then now you can have them touch any card that they want, including letting them change their mind, and it’ll still be the same as the one you had printed in a newspaper classified ad that morning.

* Study the blindfold technique in “Justice Card Trick”. Have a card selected and shuffle it to the sixth spot. Get a knife and then blindfold yourself. Spread the cards out over the table in a haphazard way, keeping track of the sixth card from the top. Stab that card. Get them to name it, display. (Advanced homework: totally free selection, or more than one selection, or they can shuffle afterwards, or all three…?)

* Look into advanced stack work from Aronson, Tamariz, and Osterlind. Learn a superior full deck false shuffle, such as Lennart Green’s Joker Shuffle.

* Throughout all the above, continue to define and refine your character. What are you capable of? What are you not capable of? Can you do the same thing multiple ways? Can you do the same thing in increasingly fair ways? Can you duplicate the basic feats above using something other than cards?

* Study the work of mentalists who make use of cards. Osterlind, Maven, Cassidy, etc.

“Gambling Demonstrator’s Guide”

* You might want to consider learning everything in the Close-up Card Magician’s guide.

* Now consider that a lot of that stuff is going to have zero relation to what happens in gambling situations. Top Changes, Double Lifts, Glides, etc. won’t be of any help to you. At this point, you’re going to want to look into false dealing (top and bottom, perhaps Greek, probably not Center), and false shuffling (particularly riffle shuffling, refer to the relevant annotations). You’ll also want to pay particular attention to the situation that gamblers find themselves in — sitting at a table, dealing with a regular deck of cards, trying to get the best hand.

* Get your Ed Marlo and study a decent “Spectator Cuts to the Aces” handling. Also, learn a quick and flashy production of the Four Aces (or whatever four-of-a-kind you wish).

* Learn a decent gambling demonstration. In the Annotations on the Overhand Shuffle (part 2), I described a workable trick wherein, after you do some quick demonstrations of false shuffling, the spectator then shuffles the deck (you obviously can’t be trusted), and after demonstrating how you can second deal and bottom deal, you then hand them the deck and they deal themselves a royal flush. It’s not easy, but it’s a solid piece.

* Consider trying to round out your repertoire with things that are gambling-related but don’t involve card games, such as the shell game, three card monte, and dice throwing. Also (and I think this is an underused concept) look into presentations where you’re trying to read tells off your assistants — something like “Non-Poker Voice” is a good idea.

* Study the work of guys like Darwin Ortiz, Martin Nash, Steve Forte, etc. R. Paul Wilson and Steve Draun have some robust gambling-related material that you might consider, and Ricky Jay’s gambling demonstration in his 52 Assistants act is well worth checking out.

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Assuming that you picked up Royal Road because it was inexpensive and a classic, then you might want to consider similar books. Expert Card Technique, by the same authors, contains many refinements, variations and improvements upon techniques taught in Royal Road, as well as a whole host more methods and tricks. S.W. Erdnase’s Expert at the Card Table, J.G. Thompson’s My Best, T. Nelson Downs’s Art of Magic, Arthur Buckley’s Card Control, and the various books of Self-Working tricks by Karl Fulves will offer more card material than you’ll know what to do with. The more modern (and inevitably the more expensive) resources will require some research on your part. I could start dropping names of books and DVDs that are worth looking into, but it’d be massive, extremely biased, and not cheap.

Royal Road was highly focused on teaching you tricks that you should be able to do with a regular, even a borrowed, deck of cards. There are a few exceptions to this, but for the most part, if you learn the tricks in the book, you’ll be ready to do magic on a moment’s notice. If you get so good with it that you’re sure you’ll never need to work with a gimmicked deck… then consider looking at gimmicked decks. The Invisible Deck, or a Svengali, or a forcing deck, or even a deck with a single card pencil-dotted, can be incredible weapons, and if they’re convinced you don’t need such gimmicks (because you’ve proven as much already), then you’re one more step ahead of the audience. A stacked deck is essentially an unfair prop to be using on the audience, and we know how powerful that can be… right?

And while it might have sounded like I was joking before about learning a coin trick, I wasn’t. Coin magic, and in fact any form of small object manipulation including (especially) the cups and balls, will teach you tons of great lessons that you can bring back into card magic. Routine construction, timing, misdirection, etc. are concepts that are worth a great deal of study.

I know I’ve ragged on a lot of individual tricks in Royal Road, but one thing that even those tricks I’m not fond of have going for them is thematic unity with other tricks in the book. Consider the trick where you’re pulling named cards from your pocket… If this sort of thing is interesting to you, then keep in mind that Royal Road offers a ton of different methods for this (including selected cards, thought-of cards, even pulling out cards that add up to the selected card) and one of them could be useful as a lead-in to “Egyptian Pocket”, which would be a real corker of a finale. Also, if you decide to go the Multiple Selection Revelation route, there are a ton of small revelations that could, when put together, create a really strong routine overall. For instance, while I don’t think much of having a card simply reverse itself in the deck, nor do I like some of the card forces in the relevant chapter, they could be effective enough revelations early on in a Multiple Selection routine and help you get an escalating dynamic.

And speaking of escalation, once you’ve tapped into those tricks that you’ve gotten good at, try to figure out how to arrange them into a set. Perhaps even design different sets for different venues or performing situations, or else try to figure out how to tailor specific tricks so that they can play either big or small.

When it comes to further study, there are a lot of people who say that books are better than DVDs for learning, since with a book you’re forced to imagine your own presentation for the trick. While there’s merit to the idea, deliberately refraining from watching other magicians perform is ludicrous — it’s like saying that writers shouldn’t read other novels in order to learn how to write, or painters shouldn’t study other paintings. I advocate the opposite — watch as many magic shows as you can, not to learn individual tricks for yourself or anything, but just to see how they design their set, how they handle specific situations, whether their decisions are effective or have flaws, etc. Books, especially the classics, will always have the advantage of more material to choose from, but it’s easy to get lost in all that and forget about crafting a character. Watch other magicians perform — not to pilfer, but to see how they use magic to express themselves, and then figure out what it is that you want to express.

Chapters 3 and 13: Flourishes

As I’ve said previously, I know next to nothing about flourishing, so my commentary here is going to be pretty brief. Prepare to be underwhelmed…

Chapter 3, Flourishes
Introduction

There’s the usual caution against overuse, etc. One thing that isn’t talked about is how they could be potentially useful in immediately establishing some prestige and/or credibility. Jay Sankey talks about using springing the deck as his opener, since it basically separates him immediately from Uncle Jim who knows a few card tricks, and that can be helpful if you’re in a situation where you’re having to approach an audience cold. Personally, I like the idea of being able to do something magical instead — even the usual cliched production of an item off a spectator is a cliche for a reason. Still, that’s an academic discussion best left for elsewhere. There are some other considerations that I’ll talk about later on.

Displaying the top card

(A) seems alright. (B) seems alright. (C) doesn’t even seem like a flourish, but whatever. One thing that’s worth considering is that if you’re going to display cards, it might help to do it in a manner that will match how you might need to do it whilst in the middle of sleight-of-hand, for conditioning purposes. (A) and (B) in particular might be tricky to do if you’re handling a double, for instance. If you don’t have to worry about that sort of subterfuge, though, disregard that advice.

Ruffle

I like this sort of thing more than other flourishes (such as endless Z cuts) in that they can be used to signal a magic moment of some kind. Ruffling (or riffling, as we’d say these days) the deck onto a single indifferent card to change it into the spectator’s selection, for instance, has a nice feel to it, perhaps even better than snapping the fingers, which to me is such a massive claim to power that it instantly renders itself false and trivial without having the magic to back it up. Anyways… (A) seems alright. (B) seems alright. (C) seems like it could be nice, if you can get the sound they talk about.

Click

It seems weird to me that one would want to make this particular noise with a deck of cards, but whatever.

Spread and Turnover

(A) can be pretty, and there’s a technique to divide the turnover so that two cards (one in each hand) seem to be guiding two different waves. If there’s a nice side-effect of this sort of thing, it’s that it can look as though the magician were trying to do something flourishy, wherein extra information could be conveyed at the same time (such as implying that the deck of cards has been well-mixed, when you’re really working with a mem-deck). (B) will require some practice to make it look really good and even. (C) should be fine so long as you’re not working on a splintery table.

Springing the Cards

I learned this through the method described in Expert Card Technique, and frankly, I’ve found that it gives me better control over the cards. Basically, in ECT, they talk about having the pressure being created by the thumb at the inner left corner (assumes you’re doing this right-handed), and the pinky at the outer right corner, and using the rest of the fingers to just guide the cards rather than put pressure on them. Again, though, I’m no aficionado.

A Flourish Count

As before with the card displays, since I think that it’s best to make sure that such actions match what you’d need to do if you were trying to do something secret (such as a false count), I’m not drawn to this sort of technique. However, if that’s not an issue, this would probably look pretty for people if done well.

Throwing a Card

Actually, if you can get the boomeranging action down, this is not a bad flourish. I never do this sort of thing so I can’t tell you if the way it’s taught is good or not. I’ll assume it is since it strikes me as an old move.

Waterfall Shuffle

This is worth learning if you’re ever going to be doing in-the-hands shuffles. Frankly, I think that doing this smartly can be just as good at conveying that you know what you’re doing with a deck of cards without using something potentially obnoxious like springing the cards or gratuitously making card fans. Speaking of which…

Card Fans

Practice makes perfect on these sorts of things. “The Fan” is a rudimentary method. “One Hand Fan” is something I could never get down to my satisfaction, and my lack of interest in being a flourishy card guy probably didn’t help foster the discipline needed to perfect it. Some people divide the deck into two and do this with each hand, and I think (besides making the flourish that much grander) it helps to make the fans appear more spread out (with an entire deck in one hand I think they have a tendency to bunch up in an unsightly way — unless you’re a master at the move). “Thumb Fan” is probably a prettier method than “The Fan”, especially if done quickly, but it requires having the cards in decent condition. “Pressure Fan” is a nice alternative if the cards aren’t in great condition — again, I learned using the way they describe in Expert Card Technique, where the grip they suggest is similar to the one for Springing the Cards.

Chapter 13, Miscellaneous Flourishes
Color Change

I don’t really like this technique for a couple of reasons. First, the hand that’s going to be depositing the card almost looks like it could be concealing a card — the fact that you need feints in order to sell a cramped hand-posture as fair is a bad sign, as is the fact that the hand is going to look that way immediately after apparently covering the deck, even if only for a moment. Second, a lot of colour changes benefit from making it look like the hand covering the deck couldn’t have just deposited a card there. Smooth execution and a natural-looking hand will often be enough to get beyond my second objection, but if the hand doesn’t seem empty, then you’ve got a problem. The last thing you want it to seem like you did is just deposit one card over another one.

There are tons of colour-changes out there, and finding the right one can be a long search. I eventually settled on something out of Marlo’s Revolutionary Card Technique, but that sort of thing suits me. You might want to consider looking into the Erdnase (Houdini?) Two-handed transformation in Expert At The Card Table, which pretty much everybody calls the Erdnase Colour Change, and which many magicians have since come up with some pretty finesses for. After that, well, here’s the requisite Denis Behr list you can start plowing though (go back a page in the directory to get to the tabled and free-handed ones, which can also look nice).

One thing to consider… if you want to magically change one card into another card, you don’t HAVE to do a colour change. It can look pretty, but like many visual moves, in order for people to appreciate the magic, they have to be looking at your hands at the moment it happens, and that frequently means that they could spot tells on your moves at a bad time. Frankly, I think that despite their visual nature, the level of mystery is low if you’re doing it on the deck, and while I’m happy to have one in my multiple selection routine, I usually get it out of the way before going to stronger stuff (like having the card magically travel somewhere).

I do like the byplay talked about at the end of this section, though. I think if it’s delivered in a really dry manner, that’s funny stuff.

Double Color Change

This one I’m torn on. While it’s nice to have two cards visually change at once, colour changes are really meant to be visual, and I don’t like the idea of one of the cards being concealed in the manner they talk about. I think, for maximum impact, you’d want to have two spots change into two face cards (or vice versa), and ideally those cards would be related in some way, and that’s not an easy thing to just get into (both in terms of mechanics as well as laying out a clear effect). In Daryl’s Revelations DVDs (volume 2), he does a trick called “Two Cards in the Eyeglasses” which basically involves the same thing (two cards change into the two selections), but the magic is so much better overall — another case of visual magic not necessarily being better.

The Changing Card

Again, not a big fan of it, since it’s supposed to be a visual change, and yet the card is very palpably obscured from view at the start. The immediate nature of the change is nice, and nobody’s really doing this these days, so you might want to consider it on that basis alone. I know Steve Draun had something really similar to this as part of a four-ace revelation, and it was a nice touch, in that (if I remember correctly) three of the aces were discovered in a way that suggested skill, but the last one was an indifferent card that was magically changed into the fourth ace.

Self-Cutting Deck

Some have used this as a revelation in a Multiple Selection routine. If you’ve got a dozen cards selected and you’re trying to find novel ways of producing them, this might be of interest.

A Pretty Cut

It’s… well… pretty?

Pop-Up Card

Again, like the self-cutting deck, possibly of interest for those who are looking for extra revelations in either a four-ace discovery routine or a Multiple Selection routine. It strikes me as angle-sensitive, though.

A Bit of Byplay

I think, if you’re doing a routine where the same card keeps showing up again and again, this sort of thing could fit in. I can’t imagine doing it on its own as anything other than a throw-away.

Charlier Cut

The famous one-handed cut you’ve probably already seen somebody do. This should be fine if you like that sort of thing.

“Acrobatic Aces”

Not exactly my idea of a major mystery. It could be a decent part of a larger routine where a pair of cards aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing, but there’s a bit too much action on the part of the magician for me to think that people buy that the cards magically jump back to where they were. For it to work, it needs to look like you’re just splitting the deck open (rather than cutting it). Perhaps it could be done in conjunction with something like Daley’s Cavorting Aces, maybe as a lead-in. If you’ll remember, the authors recommend doing it in the middle of the Razzle Dazzle Routine in Chapter 19, where the cards are apparently misbehaving throughout.

General Thoughts on this Chapter

And now you know why I put the flourishes off until last — due to my background and biases about magic, I don’t exactly have a lot to say on the subject. I get the feeling that somebody looking to really blow people away with the cards undergoing visual acrobatic antics will probably not get much out of these chapters other than a basic foundation. These are some pretty standard flourishes that I guess would have to be added to any book of card magic, but if you’re looking to take it to the next level and get all fancy-dancy, I wouldn’t know where to suggest you go at this point. Jeff McBride has a DVD series on playing card flourishes, but I’ve got no idea as to its quality (or the quality of any other resource on card flourishes, for that matter) because, frankly, I don’t like to treat a deck of cards like Tony Hawk does his skateboard.

If you’re just starting out, it’s probably best to just learn as much as possible so that you can get your skillset as broad as possible, but later on, when you’re going to be choosing a performing character, then trying to figure out the role of flourishes isn’t exactly a small thing. Flourishes imply skill. Do you want to be seen as skilled? There are artistic arguments to be made both ways. If you’re going to specialize in mental magic, I’d argue against them vehemently. If you’re going to specialize in gambling effects, I’d say go for them, even if only to say “Just make sure you’re not going to sit down and gamble with a guy who does this.” There’s comedy potential in flourishes (“Here, just shuffle them like this.” whilst doing some crazy Sybill Z-Cut sequence) just as there can be in their absence (“Now, to do this trick, you have to shuffle them in a really fancy matter like th-” and the cards accidentally explode and spill all over the place). If you want your magic to look graceful or pretty or spectacular, they can have a place, whereas if you want to make it seem like you have no sleight-of-hand ability (which can be nice psychological misdirection for actual sleight-of-hand ability), you might want to avoid them altogether. It’s not a small decision, and it’s something that you’ll have to figure out on your own.

It’s a shame that card dribbling (which I don’t think is a modern innovation) was left out, as was spinning a card at the fingertips. Some people have gotten some nice mileage out of spinning a single card out of the deck — Audley Walsh and Martin Lewis both have long-distance spinners talked about on Daryl’s Encyclopedia, and Daryl’s own hot-shot cut is also a nice spin-out production of a card. Also, look into Piet Forton’s work.

On the whole, though, I’m sorry I’m not better able to offer advice. Up next, concluding thoughts on the entire book.

Chapter 20, Platform Tricks

In this final chapter, we get to one of the reasons why I think Royal Road, if studied thoroughly, is much more than just a beginner’s text. Frankly, if you could master some of the stuff in here, you’d be in the upper echelon of modern card magicians. Some of these plots are up there with the things Ricky Jay and Michael Vincent are doing, and we could always use more stage card magic to choose from just so everybody isn’t doing the Invisible Deck. Again, I don’t do these tricks, so I’m critiquing them from the point of view of how I imagine they’d play out.

“Conus Ace Trick”

This is pretty good. I like the fact that the magician establishes a certain amount of ability with the four aces before upping the ante to having them travel to the inner pocket of the assistant’s jacket when it’s been buttoned up. Such jackets are not as commonplace in casualwear as they might have been a long time ago, so it might be somewhat problematic to perform in that regard. That said, I like the opportunity for byplay and the three-act structure of the thing, prior to the apparent climax. Three things here that I think are drawbacks — first, the authors could have been clearer about the outs necessary for getting the other aces into position just in case the spectator doesn’t say “Two on the top and two on the bottom”; second, if you’ve put a crimp into a packet of cards so that the crimp is visible from a distance, taking those crimps out without getting detected isn’t exactly a trivial task (this specific feature of the cards is what makes the famous pop-up card climax in the Ambitious Card routine possible); third, the amount of misdirection needed to get rid of the indifferent card (after the aces are shown to have vanished from under the spectator’s hands) would need to be massive — I could see it working, but even dumping the aces on the face of the deck would allow you to accomplish pretty much exactly the same thing without having to worry about getting caught on an unnecessary acquitment of the indifferent card. Also, I’d probably try to find a way to ditch the aces in the pocket whilst fetching the card box, or something like that. Still, the feints in the middle are fun, and that climax ought to be a good one. If one could get past the problems mentioned earlier (and which I might be over-paranoid about) then this would be a really strong card routine.

One thought on taking the crimp out of the aces… one could turn the deck over and do a strong pressure fan (bunching the aces up at the top so that they’re not visible) and show it to the assistant, saying “…and please verify that there aren’t any other Aces here.” (or something like that, perhaps less bold?). This would fit the way the trick is going presentationally while getting the bend out of the aces.

“Ladies’ Looking Glass”

I’m genuinely torn on this one. I do multiple-selection routines all the time when I work, and I’m pretty much biased towards a plot wherein the cards are revealed in increasingly impressive ways, rather than doing the same thing over and over. For this sort of trick to work, I believe that the movelessness of it has to be played up incredibly high — handling would have to get reduced to just about nothing, since I feel that the spectators could disregard the possibility of duplicates and instead just think you just somehow controlled their actual selections to the top and bottom, which is a fair suspicion given what we’re capable of doing. As such, when you’re there and palming off and setting the duplicates, it seems really risky to me. Also, I think it’s unreasonable and unnecessary to ask spectators to remember more than one card.

Now, that said, the visual of the magician having the deck sit on an open palm, and just sort of shaking the cards lightly, and then making a card that the spectator is convinced is in the middle rise to the top, seems quite magical to me. I’d almost want to have the hand rotate so that the cards are going back and forth and not up and down, as if you were holding a bowl of water and swirling it about. Also, plucking two cards out of the air in the manner described is a nice climax — I think it’s cleaner from a proper palm, so I’d go that route, but the climax is still a nice one.

So… yeah, dunno what to think. I believe if one were to do this sort of trick after having done some really impressive stuff with sleight of hand already, and they were able to get the handling down so that it looked really, really clean, it could be a nice trick.

“Everywhere and Nowhere”

Now THIS is an interesting trick. Created long ago by the venerable Mr. Hofzinser, many modern card magicians try to show this trick as a classic of card magic. Below are Michael Vincent and Tommy Wonder doing it, and if you go hunting you might be able to find Ricky Jay’s take on it.

On the surface, this seems like it should be a very strong trick, but to be honest, there’s something almost unsatisfying about it to me. If you’ve got the power to make several indifferent cards or an entire deck of cards change into a selection, that sort of renders the whole pick-a-card thing as a mundane exercise, doesn’t it? What’s more, Roberto Giobbi mentioned that the only really satisfying way of doing this trick is to use duplicates… and yet, if you let them catch onto the fact that you’re using duplicates, there’s not a whole lot of magic going on, is there? For a while I was obsessed with trying to find a fulfilling way of doing this trick, but I ended up dropping it for other plots. I think there’s something telling about the fact that just about every trick from Ricky Jay’s 52 Assistants show is easily found except for this one. And, on a Magic Cafe thread, Michael Vincent had the following to say about it: “It has taken me 100s of performances to come to the realisation that the high point of this effect is the first revelation. After that, the effect goes down hill and nothing you do will rescue the effect from that point on.”

Now, I do think that this particular approach in Royal Road has a lot going for it, since it almost takes the trickster’s way out. I think that lowering their expectations, so that they believe that you’re using many duplicate cards, only to show that you’ve been fair all along, can actually create a strangely compelling paradox in the minds of a spectator — assuming you’re offering compelling proof that the cards are gone, it’s as though you’re capable of real magic powers, but you’re downplaying the hell out of them, rather than putting them on display. The idea is essentially this — you want the audience to feel like it’s catching you in the midst of trickery, only to then turn the tables on them. This means that it’s not enough to just do the trick… you’ve got to be the sort of performer who’s happy to get into a cat-and-mouse game with the spectators, to let the atmosphere reek of trickery, only to then have that fog clear to reveal the magic.

You also, in my opinion, need to make proper use of the duplicates. The spectators have to come to the suspicion that you have duplicates, but I don’t think they’re allowed to actually see two cards at once. So, for instance, you’ve got the magician holding a card in one hand, and there’s another card on the table. The magician flashes the eight of spades, and then gestures towards the next card. The eight of spades is tabled face-down. The other card is turned over and it is shown to be the eight of spades. Once all attention goes towards the original card, it has to be turned over to show it’s now some indifferent card. It has to be that clean and that open (with no extra contact with the cards to suggest a switch was possible) so that the only possible explanation is that you’ve got duplicates, at which point you show that there aren’t any other eight of spades anywhere. Many modern magicians have tried to make the “Everywhere” part of “Everywhere and Nowhere” obvious, and I think that’s a mistake. The magic shouldn’t be that you’ve made several cards (or the entire deck) become the eight of spades, but rather that the eight of spades can appear where it needs to be. In my opinion, that’s a subtle, but important, difference.

As such, while the plot and the moves aren’t all that complicated, I think this is an extremely advanced trick from the point of view of showmanship. It’s almost like it’s Hofzinser’s version of Fermat’s Last Theorem, a puzzle put forth to plague and confound future upper-echelon card magicians who really want to make their marks as artists.

So, yeah, do this one at your own risk. Otherwise, though, I think Royal Road’s approach is fine construction-wise, although I’d want to tweak the script at the end. To what, exactly, I have no idea…

“Egyptian Pocket”

A Vancouver magician by the name of Travis Bernhardt named this trick as the one from the book he’d really like to see someone do, and I (having overlooked it the first time) went back to re-read it and immediately was forced to agree. The basic description of it is really compelling… Four cards are chosen by spectators, returned to the deck, which is shuffled and then placed into the spectator’s pocket. The spectator is told to reach in and just grab a card. He does so, and succeeds in finding three of them, but cannot find the fourth. The deck is removed, and the spectator blows on his pocket, finding the fourth card there. The magician then points out that the spectator blew too hard, and all of a sudden he starts pulling out fistfulls of cards — from the text, “an avalanche of cards” — out of the various pockets.

This will require some fairly bold work on the part of the performer to pull off, but the trick just reads great. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you’re an intrepid soul), nobody’s doing this trick, so we don’t have any footage of it, but I imagine that if somebody did it and performed it well, he’d become an instant sensation in the magic community.

“Cards to the Pocket”

This is a classic plot, and I’m going to have to defer to Hugard and Braue that this is a workable construction for it. I do know that the approach for the last card — the usual Achilles’ Heel for this trick — actually looks great if it’s done well (the aforementioned Mr. Bernhardt does this quite capably). It’s an interesting approach to try to get the audience to remember the identity of the cards — this can sort of lead them somewhat astray so that they’ll be unprepared for the first move, which gets you very far ahead, but the count later on to show five cards as seven risks somebody noticing that the same card has been shown multiple times. I wonder if it’s necessary to do the count faces-out, but the suggested body-turning strategy seems like it should both work and be very disarming. The handling for the fifth card’s voyage is bold, although considering the whole damn trick is bold, it should have strong climax potential (as the authors suggest). The rest of the trick reads well, and that final card steal does look great if it’s well executed (certainly much better than I originally thought it would from reading it, and frankly, I think it’s at least as good as — if not superior to — other ideas you’ll find).

Now, I’m a coward, so I’d probably want to use fewer cards, and probably do something more akin to Paul Potassy’s approach, where you’re using a bit more subterfuge to make the cards jump to various pockets, but I think this trick has a lot going for it. You get way ahead early, you’ve got a nice mid-routine moment, and the final card’s vanish can look great.

“Enlarging and Diminishing Cards”

I think the authors are on the right track about using this sort of trick as part of a larger routine of the “Cards Up The Sleeve” variety. A performer would need to really leverage his presentational ability in order to make sure that it’s not obvious that the card fans have anything to do with the method. The authors suggest that Robert-Houdin used it as a follow-up to “Cards Up The Sleeve” — I think that would require careful routining in order to get the most out of that moment where an entire fan of cards is pulled out. Having watched John Carney do the trick, with large messes of cards coming out, and cards sometimes getting stuck, all in the hope of trying to find the one card the spectator selected (which ends up being the only card that doesn’t travel up the sleeve), I’m partial to that presentation of the trick, and I’m not quite sure how this would fit in. I’ll have to defer to the opinions of others on this one.

“Three Cards Across”

For the life of me, I’ve never understood why people like this trick, but many magicians swear by it — again, Bill Malone called it one of the three strongest things he does with cards, and his version isn’t all that different from this one. Malone’s version has some advantages in that the deck seems to be out of play, and the packet travels from one group of ten to another group of ten, both of which are being sat on by spectators, but even this more basic form of it has been endorsed.

The one thing that I think is wrong with this trick’s construction is that the Three of Clubs (or whatever) is selected before the magician last touches the packet that the spectator counts out. Ideally, you don’t want them to remember that you touched it at all, but I think an added level of mystery is to have that Three chosen (rather than just named) after the spectator covers their pile of counted cards. It’s worth mentioning that Bill Malone also believes that the card needs to be selected after the packets are all counted and tucked away.

Otherwise, I do like the way that the trick is constructed. If you like it as well, I’d recommend looking into Bill Malone’s version, as well as Paul Harris’s Las Vegas Leaper, which is highly-regarded in the card magic community. Others also swear by “Zen’s Ultimate Cards Across”, which is in JG Thompson’s My Best, and which has some interesting features to it which I’ll let you discover on your own.

“Everybody’s Card” I & II

A single card apparently changes into four (version I) or three (version II) selections. The authors suggest that the major difference between I and II is that I is meant for larger audiences, and II for more intimate audiences, but one feature that I think is strikingly different between the two is the idea of the selected cards being tabled in I, but returned to the deck in II. After all, if the first selection is replaced in the deck, it only makes sense that the second spectator could have taken the same card as the first spectator, in which case pretending that magic was responsible for changing one into the other is weak. In version I, though, the spectators see the selections being placed on the table, making it seem impossible for each person to have selected the others’ card.

In any case, it’s hard to know what to think is exactly going on with these tricks. On the one hand, it would seem that actually having a single card selected change into four other selections would be the way to go, but in order for the magic to be legitimate, I think the dual-reality ploy that the authors have described doesn’t work — everybody there would need to be a witness to the change. Perhaps the playfulness in the selection procedure that the authors describe could be leveraged somehow, so that there’s something inherently interesting in a tricky character producing such an apparently compelling mystery, but it would seem to me that in order to truly get the most out watching this trick, the audience at large can’t be left out of it. That said, actually having a single card change into four selections (in a manner that everybody could verify) would be a hard sell if you were holding a deck in the hand, because even if the switches were extremely clean and/or visual, the deck itself is present as a logical source for the switched-in cards to arrive from, and as a destination for the switched-out cards to go to. Perhaps if there were a way to change a single card into three or four selections barehanded and with the deck absent, and with the final card being verified as a non-gimmicked card, we could have something a lot more magical. Or, perhaps I just don’t understand the psychology of this trick.

One thing that’s worth pointing out is that the use of the classic force makes the whole selection procedure quick and efficient — that’s one of the positive side-effects of that technique. I couldn’t imagine getting into position using a different force without a lot of histrionics.

General Thoughts on this Chapter

Good stage card tricks aren’t easy to come by, and once one shows up and is proven good, it becomes pretty much ubiquitous. Go to a bunch of stage shows that have card magic in them, and you’ll find a lot of similarities — things like Six Card Repeat, the Invisible Deck, Cardiographic, Homing Card Plus, and Tossed Out Deck are everywhere. As such, any time you can find something with a deck of cards that plays big, you’ve got to cherish it… and probably keep your mouth shut about it as well.

As such, in addition to the ones in this chapter (some of which strike me as very good), some other old-school stage tricks that you might want to look into are Cards Up The Sleeve (Erdnase has a decent-enough version, although I think John Carney’s work on it is great), a Multiple-Selection-Revelation trick (which will require you to determine a way to keep control of several cards, as well as determine a set order of revealing them which increases in impact), the Rising Cards (one of those great old plots that are difficult to present, I suspect, because people don’t know how to prove that you’re not working with gimmicked apparatus), and perhaps something like Malini’s Card Stab (where several cards are found via stabbing them with a knife whilst the magician is blindfolded). Card to Ceiling is also worth checking out if you’ve got control over the venue. If you don’t mind performing something a little less epic than what’s described here, I’d also definitely recommend looking into “The Changing Card” from the Top Change chapter. If you want to go the Mentalism route, you probably should look into Par-Optic Vision (described in Annemann’s Practical Mental Magic), Richard Osterlind’s Radar Deck, and perhaps some of the various “Card Calling” routines out there (I personally like Bob Cassidy’s). Of course, this is just from my own research — I have no doubt that there are dozens (if not hundreds) of great ones that I’ve missed.

Ok… Next are the two chapters on flourishes.

Chapter 19, Routines

This is a fascinating topic for me, since this is one of those things that many magicians have found their own approaches to. That said, while there are a lot of potential models, they’re not exactly easy to hunt down. Later on I’m going to be listing the ones I’ve gleaned from various places in our literature, but for now, let’s see what Royal Road has to say about it. Some of what’s in here is going to be interesting for several reasons. First, when routining, it’s not usually about choosing all the strongest tricks in there and packing them into your show — rather, you usually aim for escalation, and that can mean that you’ll want to actually open somewhat noticeably weaker than how you close. Second (and this follows from the first), the key component is often not so much about the tricks but how they relate to each other, so even though “A Tipsy Trick” and “Do As I Do” might both be good tricks, it might also be awkward to have them in the same set. Third, this is one of the few resources on routining that focuses specifically on cards.

In any case, keep in mind that my opinions here are strictly those of a critic not having seen somebody competent perform these routines as described.

“Routining Card Tricks”

Decent enough advice to start with. I dislike “Topsy Turvy Cards” as a rule — it’s probably safe to say that if you open with it, you’ll get that escalation dynamic which is great in a show, but that’s only because the trick is pretty weak to begin with that it’s almost impossible to follow with something worse. “Now You See It”, because of the apparent magician-failure, does have a nice middle-routine element to it, but I think you’ve got to open stronger. Darwin Ortiz talks about prestige as a concept in Strong Magic, and one of the really important things you’ve got to do as a magician is establish prestige immediately, particularly if you’re new to performing for people. Starting with a weak trick and then moving into a magician-in-trouble trick is going to be a hard sell. I’ve complained about “Obliging Aces” before — I don’t think it establishes exactly what the authors suggest, which is that you’re supremely skilled with cards. That said, the use of “Now You See It” to arrange the setup is a smart idea. “Do As I Do” isn’t a bad trick, but at this point we’re now mixing card tricks of various genres together — we’ve got a couple of magic effects, apparently one skill-based effect, and then now we’re moving into mentalism. This sort of thing is usually indicative of sloppy routining, and it will take a great deal of effort for the performer to find some other way to add consistency throughout the routines, perhaps through character. “Card To Pocket” was another routine I wasn’t very fond of, and now has us jumping back towards another magic effect. “Three Cards Across” is considered by many who perform it to be a very strong magic trick — Bill Malone named his version (not too different effect-wise from this one) as one of the three strongest tricks he does. If you buy that, then closing with it seems like a good idea.

Good advice generally to close the section. Frankly, though, I think this set of routines is weak. The only thing it seems to have going for it is escalation. Otherwise, the types of card tricks are all over the place and the individual effects themselves aren’t all that great.

“A Table Routine”

As I stated earlier, I didn’t really think much of “A Poker Player’s Picnic” — I’d look into a different “Spectator Cuts To The Aces” plot. However, going from that into “A Poker Puzzle” isn’t bad — the two tricks are related in theme, and it’s not difficult to flow from one into the other. I’d go with some of the improvements that have been made on “A Poker Puzzle” so that you end with a Royal Flush, which should be too difficult to set up for since “A Poker Player’s Picnic” (as well as a variety of other tricks of the same type) generally don’t alter the deck all that much, enough that you should be able to have easy access to the Royal Flush cards after the opener. Ending with “Good Luck Card” is a nice choice, since again we’re talking about a gambling-related theme that ends with a nice punch.

Overall, a much better example of good routining than what was in the first section. The tricks have thematic consistency, but there’s also variety and escalation. The routine is also nice because it’s brief and efficient. In the long run, if you’re looking to try to do tricks of the skill-based or gambling-related type, this is a good model — I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to tinker with this a bit to introduce slightly stronger versions of each of the tricks, but it’s still a good set.

“A Rollicking Routine”

“Rapid Transit” is a nice way to open a card set. It’s a quick and strong effect that doesn’t involve anybody picking a card (if you don’t want). “The Piano Trick” is an interesting choice for the next effect — I wouldn’t do it because I think it’s silly, but it does continue to establish the idea of cards mysteriously moving about. Ending on a multiple-selection trick is a good idea, it combines all the requisite pick-a-card tricks into one, and having “Leapfrog” followed by “A Vested Interest” allows for escalation on two levels, both within the two-card discovery phase and for the set as a whole. Now, there are better multiple card controls than the sequence suggested by the authors here, but controlling multiple cards is a slightly advanced topic.

This is another good set. I wouldn’t want to do “The Piano Trick”, myself, and I might be tempted to up the ante from having two selections to having three (or more?). If you’ve got your card control skills down, you could throw “Pinkie Does It” as the first revelation, “Leapfrog” as the second, and end with “A Vested Interest” (or some other card-to-pocket type of trick). Still, there’s escalation and a lot of traditional card magic in here.

“Card Discovery Routine”

Opening with flourishes might make sense for those who need to establish their skill — that’s an artistic choice best left up to the individual magician. I’d say it fits here, though. “A Tipsy Trick” is a very strong trick — perhaps even too strong, since it’s hard to find tricks that will top it. The control method for the next three selections using the lift shuffle is interesting to me — I’d probably want to make sure that the spectator got to say “stop” wherever they wanted to replace the card, but that should be feasible either with this method, or a modified version of it. Again, we’ve got another multiple-selection and revelation sequence. “Double Speller” seems like a good trick to me, but it’s also a bit long, and following it up with the short-and-sweet “Pinkie Does It” creates a weird sort of issue with pacing — I’d personally want to open the sequence a bit faster, perhaps with a simpler version of the card speller variety. The suggested revelation for “A Smart Finish” seems interesting, and having that big mess of cards on the floor with the named selection being left behind does seem to have “closer” written all over it.

In any case, another decent set of routines. They do offer some ideas for what to do in case you run into some trouble with the multiple selection trick — that sort of thing can be a lifetime of study, so while the advice here might be useful, it’s by no means the last word on the subject.

“Razzle-Dazzle Routine”

“The Sevens” isn’t a bad trick, although as an opener for this particular set, it seems like an awkward transition to go from that into some of the other suggested tricks. “Righting a Wrong” is also a pretty good trick, and based on the way the rest of the section unfolds, the idea is that the cards are getting out of hand. “The Acrobatic Aces” is a trick from the second Flourishes chapter, and I’m not entirely sure I like it as compared to, say, Dr. Daley’s “Cavorting Aces”, in which the Red Aces (placed on the top and bottom) change places with the Black Aces (placed together in the center), followed by several repeats. “Top Change Byplay” is another interesting choice here — I like the fact that it’s being used to transition between different effects, but I’m not so sure I like having something like this in the same set as “Righting a Wrong”, since both are “pick a card” tricks with the same sort of theatrical dynamic to them, even if the magic isn’t identical. The arbitrary use of a colour-change immediately preceding it is also interesting — it’s a sort of random magical occurrence, and while such effects can be effective in making it seem like magic is happening all the time, it’s not something like Cards To Mouth (Bill Malone’s signature flourish) where there’s no risk that spectators might miss it. Ending with the Ambitious Card does seem like a good move, although as I stated in that chapter, there are far better constructions out there.

All-in-all, some interesting (yeah, I know I’ve used that word a bit too much) ideas. If you look into Tommy Wonder’s writing on “Failureffects” (basically, magician-in-trouble plots), then you’ll find that he cautions against their overuse. That said, the idea of being a magician who’s having some trouble controlling the cards could be compelling if played right. I’d alter the tricks somewhat — open with “Fours of a Kind” (or perhaps a superior “Matching the Cards” handling), then move into “Cavorting Aces” (with whatever four of a kind was produced in the previous trick), then move into “Righting a Wrong”, and then keep control of the “wrong” card, ask them not to select that card again, before doing “Top Change Byplay” where you’re consistently forcing the “wrong” card on them over and over. Finally, I’d end with the Ambitious Card (again, probably with that same “wrong” card).

General Thoughts on this Chapter

While obviously only real-world testing of these sets of routines will dictate just how effective they work together, I do think there’s some good ideas here. The first one did nothing for me, but the next four had some good ideas. I think a student could do a lot worse than study these examples.

Here are some other models that you might find interesting. Taken from the old Ye Olde…

Ich Bin Ein Auflister: Ordering a Set or Act

Assuming you’ve progressed from magic effect to magic trick to magic routine successfully, the final step in figuring out the dynamics of your act is to start figuring out how those routines fit together. There’s a lot of different thought in how to go about this, and it’s one of the more fascinating areas of magic theory that’s still in development. There are going to be some similarities between these patterns (they pretty much all recommend closing with your strongest routines) but they’ve got some different ideas about the route to get there.

Nelms’s Upward Slope: As described in Nelms’s Magic and Showmanship, this idea is fairly straightforward. Take all your routines, figure out the order from weakest to strongest, and that’s your set. The idea is to create a constant building pattern, leading up to the peak moment, which is your climax. The graph isn’t really a straight line, it does allow for slight dips that naturally occur after key moments, but otherwise the overall trend is of gradual build. On the surface it’s self-evidently logical… do you want to start with your strongest effect and gradually get weaker and weaker? That said, are there any other patterns one could adopt?

Tarbell/Osterlind Shifting Dynamics: Osterlind credits Tarbell with this idea for structuring an act. The idea isn’t to rank routines in terms of strength, but instead to sort out routines according to their internal dynamics. Specifically, you open strong, then move into an intimate routine, then do something with a lot of razzle dazzle, then move into something thought-provoking, before ending with the effect you want them to remember you by.

Billy McComb Structure: Billy McComb made the intriguing suggestion that an audience can only handle one really strong piece of magic in a show. If this is true, then it opens up new possibilities — if you’ve been responsible and read your Darwin Ortiz and taken it to heart, you start thinking about how to turn every magic trick into strong, baffling magic, but is it possible that you can really only do it for just one routine? What do you do with everything else in your act leading up to that routine? Very interesting artistic opportunities in this one, since you’re not restricted to a specific quality of magic.

Pyramid: This is like Nelms’s Upward Slope, but is slightly more nuanced. Nelms’s Upward Slope doesn’t make any distinction about the sort of routines you use, or the powers you’re claiming as a supposed magician. The Pyramid Structure, on the other hand, is all about building conviction in your ability. You start with the plausible, and grow to the more and more implausible until you reach your desired endpoint, either the extremely implausible to the outright impossible. (I got this from Tyler Erickson, he credits Jamey Ian Swiss and Chuck Hickok)

Jazzing: Might as well include this one. Basically, you do tricks one after another. This would be a casual thing for a casual performer. Probably not feasible in most professional situations, but if you’ve got a wide enough repertoire and you can infuse people with the joy of watching you fly by the seat of your pants… Dai Vernon did talk about how a good enough understand of card principles can allow you to make card tricks up on the spot — an obvious statement, perhaps, but there’s an interesting idea at the core, there, that one of magic’s great figures is saying it’s okay to do a bunch of card tricks that you’re making up on the spot. Read up on Texture below to look into one of the great potential risks of this sort of thing. One of the great advantages to this is that it can create a sort of organic show that might not be available in a more structured environment. If you’ve got a vision in mind, then interruptions or challenges of any kind might be your enemy — in Magic Ranch, Tommy Wonder used a double-faced revelation of the small card within the plastic egg, for no reason other than he didn’t want there to be anything distracting from the appearance of the selected card, including having the card land face-down on the spectator’s hand. No reason to do with “magic” handling at all. If, on the other hand, you want to tap into the energy that can come from impromptu performances, then jazzing can allow you to create a feeling of life that everyone is convinced is tied directly to this specific moment. If there were real magicians walking amongst us, wouldn’t we want to see if they could do what we wanted them to do, right on the spot? Wouldn’t it be exciting if they could meet our demands as we made them? Darwin Ortiz makes an interesting point that you can create the feel of an impromptu moment without actually being impromptu. Read up on your Strong Magic to get more about that.

Inverted Pyramid: Also described as “Every trick’s a closer.” If you’re working tables at a restaurant, you don’t always have the luxury of being able to put together a set of pre-determined length that has the dynamics of one of the aforementioned sets, which aim to have a proper climactic moment at the closer. Since dinner can come at any time, it might make sense to treat every routine as if it’s the closer. Shouldn’t every routine be as strong as possible? Not necessarily, if you’re a fan of one of the other dynamics that has more of a build to it.

Wonder’s Table-to-Table Progressive Story: Another great idea for people working tables. It stands to reason that people sitting at adjacent tables might notice if you do similar tricks at nearby tables and at theirs. A little thought will show that this situation presents trouble, particularly for those who don’t want to get busted by people who pay too much attention. Wonder had a great idea for his Wild Card presentation. Basically, you go to one table and change the chosen Five of Clubs into the Jack of Diamonds. Then, you go to the next table and change all the Jack of Diamonds cards into the Nine of Spades. Then you go to the next table and change all the Nine of Spades into the Queen of Hearts. Basically, anybody who’s paying too much attention actually gets a richer experience from following you around — there’s the story inherent in the routine itself, but also a progressive story of watching the same routine being performed from one audience to the next, since the set of cards that just got changed seems to change into a completely new set. Eugene Burger uses this same idea in a different way. He has a magical appearance of messages from the spirit world, and the magical appearance is one effect. The second effect is when the message is opened up and people get to read what their message is. By having all the messages different, all of a sudden the experience for somebody watching the routines being performed successively for different audiences is enriched because of the new organic situations caused by audiences reacting to contrasting magical messages from the spirit world. It’s quite ingenious.

These next two are less about ordering the set and more about the selections made to fit the set.

Texture: Another important idea put forward by Eugene Burger. This is the sort of thing that creates problems by its absence. Watch Daryl in his Card Revelations series… card trick after card trick after card trick. You can sense the growing ennui in the audience as he keeps finding that card, and it’s only when he starts giving them some presentational variety that they come back to life. When he grabs the deck, keeps it to himself, and does a simple Four Ace Discovery, the feeling of everybody suddenly coming back to attention is palpable. Is the problem with Daryl himself? Not really. He’s just being his regular entertaining self in this series, but the lack of routine variety — one that surely doesn’t exist in his regular shows — makes for a less entertaining set.

Functionality: This one is another overall guiding principle that I’m going to credit to Tyler Erickson via Laurent Van Trigt. It’s similar to texture in that you want to choose routines that complement each other, rather than create redundancy, but this one takes things from a sort of more pragmatic standpoint. What this means, simply enough, is identifying the function of a routine. This one can help you evaluate the place a routine might have in your set. Let’s say that you have an effect in which you produce a ball magically, and then pull out a silk, and then proceed to do a penetration, followed by a vanish, a reproduction, and then another vanish, all in about a minute and a half. Such a routine would be very good for attracting attention quickly, and to allow people to come into the routine at any point and still see magic before the climax. This sort of routine however, might not adequately convey character or allow for much audience interaction. That’s fine. Other routines can serve that function. Other possible functions? Convey character, create drama, give credit to an audience member, get applause, build prestige, support a key claim to power, etc. Obviously a routine can serve different functions, but it’d be difficult for a routine to serve every function.

Obviously not all of these ideas are possible for every venue. Some lend themselves better to strolling venues, while others are better for rigid sets.

———–

Some other ideas you might find interesting…

R. Paul Wilson’s Connection-Building: In a discussion on three-fly in a thread on the Magic Pebble, Wilson identified that a set can take on the dynamic of gradually building a connection with the audience. According to Wilson, the opener should involve little-to-no audience participation, so that the magician basically starts with a routine that basically proves to the audience that he’s worthy of attention, and then proceeds to build a connection with the audience and draws them into the performer more. Three-fly was an interesting case study in that regard, since it’s basically a shut-up-and-watch trick, which Wilson thinks is a suitable way to open, before progressing into effects that are more interactive. However, if you’ve managed to build the connection, moving into three-fly (or something similar) would be a mistake since it’d be breaking the connection.

Dan Harlan’s Triple Trilogy: In his Packs Small/Plays Big DVD series, Dan Harlan outlined his idea for an act structure, which involves three groups of three routines. The opening section is a warm up, where the magician and audience learn about each other, and the three routines have respective functions: set a first impression, get acquainted, and then get to the point and wrap up. The second section involves the performer displaying his versatility and skill (as a performer, not necessarily doing skill-based effects), and those three routines involve doing something different or unique, then visual and quick, then displaying dexterity, skill and/or something classic. The third section is for creating positive memories, and those routines start with doing something relaxed (possibly a lead-in to the next effects), then moving into a Showstopper/Blockbuster type of routine, and then ending with something that will create a lasting impression upon the audience. You’ll want to look into his DVD series to see the sorts of routines he slots into each one, which is a worthwhile study on its own.

That ought to give you enough to digest for a while. Next up, the platform tricks.

Chapter 18: Arrangements
“Arrangements”

I’ve already complained at length about the lack of work in Royal Road on the full deck stack, so I’ll keep it brief: This chapter should have work on something like the Si Stebbins or Eight Kings stack in it, and it’s annoying to me that it doesn’t. Instead, most of the tricks in here are based around the idea of medium-sized arrangements of cards. The introduction to the chapter offers some ideas for getting into position with the arrangements, and some are better than others.

“1″ makes the most sense to me if you’re going to be working with a large stack. It’s worth mentioning that with the rise of full-deck stacks, a lot of work has been put into coming up with routines that are slight variations on traditional card plots but that don’t alter the stack. Juan Tamariz and Simon Aronson are both worth reading for this sort of thing. That way, you don’t have to worry about opening up with the routine that takes advantage of the stack exactly, and put that off for later. Starting with a version of Triumph that maintains the stack, for instance, might get them looking for sleight-of-hand prowess in subsequent routines, which can be a nice way to get one-ahead of them in a different way.

“2″ strikes me as somewhat problematic. When I’m working, I tend to end up with a diminishing deck due to signed cards being handed out during the course of the evening. A lot of the time, people don’t notice, but when they do, I’ve got a fair answer for it, and the magic itself doesn’t suffer (meaning, working with 40 cards doesn’t explain how their signed card ends up in my hat). If you’re going to have to make a move to the pocket to retrieve cards and then boldly add them, I think you’re taking a bit of a risk. Now, some deck switch approaches might work here. Juan Tamariz had a neat idea for ringing in a deck — force the 3 of clubs (or whatever) and turn around while they show the card to everybody (justified by standard operating procedure of making sure the magician can’t see the card) and then ring in the stacked deck that’s missing the 3 of clubs on top. Reveal the 3 of clubs, and then move into the stack work. Something like this could conceivably work with grabbing a small arrangement. I’d probably want to force several cards to make a bigger deal out of the moment (turning your back on the audience is a fairly memorable moment that requires, in my opinion, a suitably impressive trick to match it), make sure that ringing it in was totally expedient, and probably motivate a trip to the pocket by putting the card box away or something. I also wouldn’t do this (I don’t think) with an arrangement larger than a half-dozen cards. The real benefit to this sort of strategy is that the spectator can shuffle to their heart’s content, but that means making sure that a spectator doesn’t notice that the deck is missing a few cards. Good spectator selection might help, but I don’t necessarily know if it’s worth taking that risk. And, if you’re not going to let them shuffle, you might as well just go with “1″ above.

“3″ strikes me as lame. I can’t imagine doing any sort of open arrangement of cards and then doing an effect which relies on them. Now, I’ve gone through the deck and culled, but to me there’s a huge difference between being seen to be picking out and reordering specific cards, and being seen going through the deck to make sure there aren’t any jokers, and apparently doing nothing else. A cull will have the potential disadvantage of not ending up with the culled cards in a correct order, though. In any case, yeah, I’m sure it probably flies by most people, but it strikes me as terribly inartistic. If you’re trying to do something like an on-the-spot arrangement of the four aces or whatnot, a cull is definitely the way to go.

“4″, on the other hand, reads much better to me. I think this would definitely fly, assuming that you’re doing a trick where you’re apparently uncertain of what’s going on, and then moving into the next trick gracefully — or perhaps even having another trick in between them that doesn’t alter your arrangement. If I ever relied upon rearrangements, I’d probably do this. One potential application for this could be forcing a card, letting them shuffle, and then acting as though you forgot that they weren’t suppose to shuffle, before moving into the Biddle Trick, doing the arrangement while picking through several cards which are necessary to set up the Biddle Vanish anyway.

One additional thing that isn’t mentioned in the book but that I alluded to previously, was the idea of doing a deck switch. It’s a much bolder strategy than just ringing in a few cards, but the rewards are such that a great many magicians have put the effort into finding ways to do it. The deck switch is a whole topic unto itself, though, and I’m not conversant in all the techniques available out there, so you’ll unfortunate have to research that one on your own.

Finally, that last point in the chapter is worth stressing, that of doing a thorough-looking false shuffle once the arrangement’s in place. If I were going to go the “1″ routine, I think that’d be one of the first things I’d do immediately after pulling the cards out.

“The Selective Touch”

This reads lame to me, and seeing Daryl perform it on his Revelations DVD series didn’t help. This is one of those tricks that would be at the bottom of the list of things I’d want to do if I had real magic powers. The only way I could see this playing well is if it were a follow-up to a trick where you found their selection by touch from your pocket, only to offer to do it again, but apparently screwing up and forgetting to have that card replaced into the deck, at which point it would make sense that you could come up with such a ludicrous way of finding their card. Also, there’s no way I’d want to know what the card is before going fishing for the other cards necessary to identify it. Instead, if I was going to say that my sense of touch is so sensitive that I know which card is where, I’d start that bit by saying, “Well, it’s easy! All I have to do is go through all fifty-one cards and figure out which one is missing. Now, I’m thinking that I got the suit right, because I only counted twelve. If I’m right, the suit of this card matches your card. For the first time, what was your suit?” “Diamonds.” Turn over the card you fished out to show it’s a diamond. Proceed similarly to get the index value.

“A Future in Cards”

Not really too keen on the scope of effect here. On his Easy to Master Miracles series, Richard Osterlind talks about being able to give the impression of showing a large fan of cards when really only five or six are visible — something like that I think would be far better here. I also don’t like the idea of you actually seeing the cards ahead of time that you’re going to ask them to think of. If I was going to do this trick, I’d open with a known prearrangement, shuffle or cut it into the middle, force that spot, and then let them think of any card they wanted from a fan. Of course, if I was aiming high, I’d dump this trick altogether and instead start looking into something with a memorized deck.

“Jacks Wild”

While I’m sure the discrepancy flies for many, it strikes me as unnecessarily risky. I don’t know how highly this rates when compared to a proper gambling demonstration since those routines are not really my thing, but my impression is that if you’re going to go this route, there are better routines than this. A Poker Puzzle, earlier in the book, strikes me as stronger. That said, presentationally there might be some potential in the idea of dealing the three Jacks a couple of times (only to yourself, rather than to them), so that you win a couple of heads-up games, explaining that you’ve been working on dealing yourself a three Jacks whenever you wanted, and then, after the reversal, dealing them an incredibly strong hand that should beat Three Jacks, only to reveal that you’ve dealt yourself the Four Aces (or whatever). Now, as with any magician-wins-spectator-loses presentation, you’re taking a risk that they won’t hate you afterwards, but plenty of performers have found ways to pull that off.

“Think Stop”

Yeah, I don’t buy the magic behind this effect at all. Either the magician is really counting down from 21 and saying the number he’d counted to when the spectator said “Stop”, or else that’s a bunch of nonsense to justify the magician naming whatever number he’d planned on anyway. I’m thinking that since the spectators can never verify the legitimacy of the claim, it’s too easy to assume the latter. If you’re going to work with this arrangement, I’d jump straight ahead to…

“Deal Away”

Denis Behr’s archive lists this as a variation of the Lazy Man’s Card Trick, which is itself a well-regarded trick. This one doesn’t strike me as that bad — it’s certainly less transparent than “Think Stop”, and I believe Ed Marlo had something extremely similar to this in his own work. To me, the real key is trying to get to a position where the spectator doesn’t have to do a whole massive load of dealing, as well as trying to justify why the selected card shows up after one card rather than the first three (or whatever) that they dealt to. I’d probably want to design the presentation so that it seems like they’re dealing down for no apparent reason, and then (upon finding a club, and then dealing down that amount) saying “Are you getting bored of this yet?” hoping to elicit a “Kinda.” response, and then just asking what their card is, and getting them to turn over the next one.

“The Educated Cards”

I’m going to guess that you’re sick and tired of me spouting the old adage that one of the weakest ways to reveal a card is within the deck. Well, I’m going to spout it again. There’s a slight difference with the previous trick in that with “Deal Away” you can really play up the amount of card handling that the spectator is doing, but with this particular trick you’re doing all the work. At the very least, after shuffling, talk them through a false cut (such as the Jay Ose cut), and then let them deal by themselves. Or else, learn a better trick. I do like the placement procedure, but the payoff doesn’t do anything for me. As for the initial setup procedure, which places the cards at the necessary points in the deck, I’m baffled by it. Presumably it’s there to that you can just arrange the four cards you need on top of the deck and then openly get them into place, but if you’re going to have to move those cards around, you might as well have just slotted them in at the necessary spots. Alternately, the actual shuffle they reference (the Faro) could help you do this, and at the very least it can look like you’ve shuffled the cards properly ahead of it. There just doesn’t seem to be a need to do it — better to just have the arrangement already and head into the effect. The range forcing procedure is nice, but magicians have put it to better use (Eugene Burger, in “Exploring Magical Presentations”, has a very good trick that uses the idea).

“Reds and Blacks”

The divided deck principle is worth knowing, and this application of it might be good enough, but there are more deceptive ways to go about it than just having half the deck red and the other half black. Now, if there is one advantage to having a separation like that, it’s that it’s a decent lead in to other, stronger tricks (such as some handlings for Out of this World), but if the aim is just to be able to pull off this specific trick, then you could learn a better system for dividing the deck into two halves so that you can spread the cards out face-up ahead of time to show what looks to be a properly mixed deck. After all, if the magician asks you to take a card from one half of the deck and put it into the other half, it seems to suggest that there’s some fundamental difference between the two halves, and there’s little more obvious than a separation of blacks and reds. Daryl, in his Encyclopedia of Card Sleights, offers some good ideas for a divided deck, and there are several resources that teach the Ireland Shuffle, which is a great shuffle for this setup. You might also want to consider just having them freely take any card they want from the spread (making sure to only spread over the top half) and replacing it anywhere they want into the spread (making sure that you’re now offering them only the lower half) — something like this could work well for the various “pulse reading” tricks in the book. After that, they can cut as much as they want and there’s no problem. It’s a nice memory that they can shuffle their packet as much as they like, but the trade-off (that of treating the two halves as being conspicuously separate entities) isn’t worth it to me.

You might also want to consider learning Juan Tamariz’s “Neither Blind Nor Stupid”, which is a trick of this same general class of effect, but with two selections instead of one, justification for every step of the effect, and a presentation that really stresses the fairness and makes the reveal seem that much more impossible. The end state is also worth considering.

General Thoughts on this Chapter

Bleah. Go learn Si Stebbins and Eight Kings, or else memorize a deck that looks like it’s been shuffled, and then master a false shuffle and cut, and you’ll have access to material which is a hell of a lot better than what’s here. This definitely ranks up there with the False Shuffles and Cuts chapter as being one of the most disappointing in the book — I made some recommendations in that other chapter’s annotations that you might want to look into. Consider what arrangements allow you to do: you can deal any poker hand you want; you can let them take a free choice of any card, shuffle it back into the deck, and you’ll still know what it is; you can ask them to name any card, and instantly it’ll be on top of the deck, at any number down in the deck, at your fingertips, at their fingertips, inside your pocket or hat, etc.; you can have multiple cards change into a four-of-a-kind instantly; you can tell an entire story based on the cards that keep turning up; and so on… These are feats far more mysterious (and less trivial) than what’s in this chapter, and they’re not all that hard, either. Well, the one where the named card instantaneously jumps where you want it to will take some work, but there are still great effects attainable while you build up your skills to that level.

Grrr…. Anyhow, next up, Routining.

There’s some good ideas in here, but while I think there’s merit in looking at the various choreographies out there to set up the top-change, I think it’s also worthwhile to consider the possibility that the move can be adequately covered by natural gestures, if somebody has a good concept of timing and misdirection. This is one of the reasons why it really helps to have a background in something other than cards if you want to be a well-rounded magician — the lessons that one can learn in a simple coin vanish can apply here. If you consider Dai Vernon’s choreography for practicing the top-change (the famous little bit of business where he accidentally knocks over a balanced card box whereupon he plans to set the card), there are some striking parallels to the vanishing of a coin with a wand.

Just some general thoughts…

* You don’t want them to suspect the top-change. Here is where timing is important. When I open my Ambitious Card Routine, I always do the first phase with a pass, followed by a top-change to set up the next phase. The thinking here is simple — when you’re doing a multiple-phase routine, you don’t always need them to know that it’s going to be a multiple-phase routine. That moment, after you’ve done the first phase, if you’ve got the body-language of somebody who’s relaxing after having completed his trick, you can coax them into relaxing as well. This is a good time. This is where it’s hard to say whether or not the suggested choreographies in this part of the chapter in Royal Road are any good, but that’s alright, because in an upcoming section there’s a very good instance that we’ll talk about then. One thing that’s worth noting is that body language can help establish a good time for you — you want to look relaxed, as though you’re done, rather than tense, as though something’s coming up. Having the posture of somebody who’s relaxed also gives you a good reason to have your arms in a rest position about a fist-width in front of your belly-button, a spot that Tyler Erickson calls the “sweet spot”, which is a great place to do a lot of secret moves, if you’ve got the right timing.

* Preferably, they’re not looking at the top-change. Here’s where misdirection comes in handy. I’m going to talk about two kinds of misdirection — the first is where they’re looking away from a spot of danger, and the second is where they’re looking towards a spot of interest (whilst simultaneously looking away from a spot of danger). I’ll elaborate on those two points in a moment, but first, one can’t really talk about misdirection without considering Tommy Wonder’s work on the subject. Wonder did a really good job in outlining the concept of the Mind Movie, where you basically present the trick (choreography and gestures and conditions and all) without any thought as to method, and then, after you figure out how you want it to look, you figure out ways to plug in a method that fits it. Presumably, if you’re going to wield real magic, you’ll gesture towards the appropriate points of interest throughout, and if design the effects in this manner, sometimes you’ll find that in your choreography there will emerge shadow areas where there will be no audience attention, and these are places where you can conceal sleights. It’s a complicated concept, and you’ll have to look into Tommy Wonder’s work to see specific examples of this (his Cups and Balls routine, Magic Farm, and Elizabeth IV contain some great examples of his ideas of focusing and controlling their attention so that things are lost in the shadow areas, and his Everywhere and Nowhere construction is worth looking at to see how this sort of thing applies specifically to the top change).

If you’ve got something in your routine that allows you to control attention towards a point of interest, then you might find that it’ll be easier to misdirect away from the top change. That said, it’s still possible to misdirect away from the top-change effectively when there’s no real magic-related point of interest, and still get away with it. John Carney, in his Carney on Ramsey DVD and in Carneycopia, talks about the mechanics of the simple wand-based vanish of a coin, and the idea is that you basically ask them something or remark upon something, get them to look you in the eyes, and then execute the move at that moment (there’s a lot more to it than just that, the resources previously mentioned give you a better idea of how the timing and choreography work together, but the underlying concept is what’s important). This can be somewhat risky, in that regular people are conscious of the idea of being misdirected away from things. As such, you need to massage those moments so that they don’t feel like they were misdirected away from something important, and that might mean making sure that the state of affairs after the moment of misdirection appears to be identical to the moment just before it. One reason that the shuttle pass of similar objects is such a devious strategy, arguably much better than a mere false transfer, is that you can use bold misdirection at the point of the exchange, but the openness of the object before and after the transfer can make it difficult to suspect a switch took place. With the top-change, you’ve got something a bit similar going on, in that before they look away they’ll see a card away from the deck, and after they look back they’ll see a card at about the same spot, and if their attention was sufficiently harnessed they’ll not notice that the two came close, and this can make the switch difficult to detect.

* If they are looking at the top-change, preferably there’s cover. Now, you’re in real danger if they’re looking at your hands at the point of the top-change. Some magicians have tried executing a top-change while flicking the card against the deck, but to me that’s giving up on trying to make the technique as invisible and indetectable as possible, similar to doing a riffle during a pass. Other ideas include trying to turn the body all the way to the right so that everybody is getting the back of your hand. This can look a bit too much like you’re shielding people from the action — my personal preference is to try to turn to the right-most spectator (having a theatrical reason to do so helps), so that I’m getting cover for the sleight with everybody else in the audience, and then work like the Dickens to make sure he’s misdirected away from my hands. Still others have worked on trying to camouflage it within other actions, such as gesturing one way with one hand as you address somebody on one side, bringing the hands together as you turn towards the other way, top-changing, and then gesturing the other way with the other hand as you address somebody on that side. If you’ve got really good attention control, you might be able to get away with this. Me, personally, I like the covered route, which isn’t quite the way that Hugard and Braue recommend. You’ll want to experiment.

* Ideally, they shouldn’t know how a top-change could have helped you in the first place. This means making sure that the top-change itself isn’t the only key to the mystery. Let’s say you’re doing a straight-forward trick where you’re exchanging a wrong card for a right one — show the wrong card, top-change, and then show it’s changed. If you get away with the top-change itself this won’t be bad, but you can make the mystery deeper by making it seem impossible that you could have known what the right card was (again, letting them remember that they shuffled the deck after the card was returned can help with this). It’s worth pointing out that a top-change is an intuitive method — after all, what more straight-forward way is there to turn one card into another card? — and as such you’ll be doing yourself a favour if you make it seem like there’s more to the mystery than just a top-change.

* Using good technique. If you do all the above correctly, you might find that you don’t need the best technique to get away with the move. I’m pretty sure I don’t have the best technique (I use something pretty close to what’s in Royal Road), but in judicious use of the above ancillary techniques I get away with it. If you’re going to aim higher than that, though, you might want to look into David Williamson’s Top Change. It’s more difficult, but it looks great, and is just that much harder to know that a move just occurred, as his method really helps eliminate the perception of excessive finger-action. That said, I do think that if you’ve got a good choreography built into a good routine, the method taught in Royal Road should do you fine, if you take into account all the good minor tips in there. Some have looked into using the Biddle Grip for the top-change, which could work, but I think that because the Biddle Grip isn’t quite as natural-looking as the grip in Royal Road (or something similar), you might want to have a good reason for why you’re holding the card that way (once more, consider Tommy Wonder’s approach, where the grip is motivated somewhat by the display he gives the card right beforehand).

* Having an out. Thankfully, there’s an easy one. If you even smell a bit of suspicion that somebody caught your top-change, replace the card on top of the deck and double-lift. This might not work in every instance, in which case you’ll need a different strategy.

For additional thoughts on all this, you might want to look into Gary Kurtz’s Leading With Your Head, which is a treatise on misdirection in general.

“The Changing Card”

The real key to appreciating this trick is to understand the timing that’s built into it. It’s quite good. The idea is that you want to top-change immediately after they’ve seen the wrong card, but before you’re made aware that it’s the wrong card. What you want to have is that moment where the technique is already over and done with before you’re made to answer for the fact that it’s the wrong card. Get that, and you’ve got a good moment on your hands. The idea is that, if they are convinced that you’re only just discovering your screw up, that means that Darwin Ortiz’s Critical Interval (definition: the time period bounded by the moments where the spectator believes the trick starts and ends) starts now, and as talked about previously, it really helps if you don’t have to do a move during the Critical Interval.

As for the rest of the trick, I don’t know if you’ll get five good seconds of laughter the way the authors describe, but you will get a good trick out of it. I’ve been using this basic construction to good effect, with some minor changes, for a routine that’s pretty much 4 minutes of byplay coupled with maybe 10 seconds of method (the top-change itself, needless to say, only takes a fraction of that). I absolutely encourage you to try to find a way to present this type of trick. Not only will it help you get this move down, but it’s a good exercise in showmanship. Two things… First, I think this sort of trick is strengthened immeasurably if the card is lost. Regardless of how clean it is, most people are going to come to the intuitive solution that you somehow invisibly switched the cards. As such, all things being equal, the switch will be more powerful if they’re convinced you couldn’t have known which card to switch in for the wrong one. Second, I think there’s merit in trying to use subtleties to convince somebody that the card you’re holding after the switch is the same card you showed them beforehand — something like miscalling the card can help. Even basic acting, showing that you’re surprised you got the wrong card, won’t hurt.

“Top-Change Byplay”

I could see this working out as fun, but really, the trick in its current form lacks a climax. Personally, I’d want to do something like having the card that you discard prove to be of importance. Two ideas… First, a card is selected, returned and lost, and then you tell them that if they snap their fingers before taking a card, they’ll find it themselves, and then start forcing the Joker on them repeatedly. Finally, you toss the Joker[?] on their lap (making sure that they hold onto it so as to stop the shenanigans) and then force the Joker again, and when they check their lap, they find that it’s their original selection. Second, two spectators each select cards. The first spectator finds their own card, and then the second spectator keeps finding the first spectator’s card over and over. Toss out the first spectator’s card, and then repeat, only to have the first spectator’s card show up again, and the second card on their lap has changed into their card. (That second one could conceivably be altered to be something similar to Tommy Wonder’s Deja Reverse, one of my personal favourite card tricks of all time.)

Bottom Change

On this one, I’m pretty much ignorant. The authors claim that it’s both easier and in its perfect form indetectable, and yet still maintain that the top change is preferable. I don’t quite follow the logic there, but whatever. It seems to me that there’s a bit more finger-action going on with this one than the original top-change, but if you follow the angled blocking approach I talk about earlier, it might not be noticed.

Top and Bottom Changes

Good general advice here. The mirror comment reads funny to me, but maybe they’re right. Dunno. Everything else is worth reading.

General Thoughts on this Chapter

I like this chapter alot. Despite the fact that only one trick is really taught, and a brief one at that, the stuff in here is good and useful. Again, I absolutely recommend trying to come up with a single trick where all you’re doing is taking an indifferent card and changing it into the correct card. If you’ve been plowing through this book, you’re probably up to your neck in card-manipulating techniques, so you’ll want to switch gears and instead start thinking theatrically. If a card is selected, and you produce the wrong card, you’ve got conflict. Conflict is a really effective way to engage your audience, so much so that it’s easy to overuse the whole magician-in-trouble motif (Tommy Wonder’s got some great thoughts on that as well). How are you going to produce the wrong card? Does it come out of the deck in an interesting manner? How are you going to change the card into the right card? Do you have a magic ritual for that? Maybe you’ve got an assistant helping you out. Have they ever done magic before? Comedy potential. Do you need to teach them the magic ritual for finding the card? Again, comedy potential. Do you need to teach them the magic ritual for changing that card into the right card? Still more comedy potential. And, of course, at the end of the trick you can lead the applause for them.

This sort of stuff might read flat, but it’s this sort of routine that really allows you to express who you are as a character, while still giving them a decent trick.

Otherwise, I think I’ve already explained everything I was taught and/or studied on the subject. Definitely take into account the various contexts for doing the top-change described earlier, and don’t be afraid of this move. Learn to do it smoothly, and know that the out will save you if you need it to.

Up next, Arrangements.

Chapter 16: The Classic Force
The Classic Force

Hi. My name is Andrew Musgrave. I’m a magician… and I don’t Classic Force.

It’s a great technique, if you’re able to use it. Frankly, when I’m working, I’m doing one of two routines, neither of which requires any kind of forcing. If I decide I’m going to force something, I usually end up using something that’s more fullproof, such as the Hofzinser Spread Force, which hits all the time, and also allows you to offer them the chance to change their mind on the card they’ve chosen. It’s not quite as open as a Classic Force, but then again, a Classic Force isn’t quite as fair as a non-forcing card selection procedure (which is the sort I end up using in the effects I do).

In any case, I told you that to tell you this. I have no idea whether or not Royal Road teaches this technique better or worse than other resources. For the most part the advice offered here sounds standard to me (considering what other sources recommend, such as Daryl’s Encyclopedia). I do know that Dai Vernon had some great ideas, including a touch that makes it seem as though the force card is actually not the most obvious card offered to the spectator.

Sorry that I can’t be of much help here.

One-Hand Force

This seems like a reasonable alternative to the classic force, but it’ll take some practice to get into it without being detected. I think a force such as this one would look pretty good from stage, where it could read as nice and open, and any discrepancies in the fan would be impossible to see by anybody except your assistant.

Bottom Force

This is a bit of an affected selection procedure. If they’re close enough to get in contact with the cards, I’d want to work from a spread. Various people have been playing with the idea of doing this force from a Biddle-style of grip, so that you’ve got the slant along the wide edges rather than the short edges. I honestly don’t know which I like better. Personally, I think this sort of thing is best-suited to something like a card-stab, as a revelation, rather than a card selection.

Slide-Out Force

I wouldn’t have thought this could look good, but I saw someone do this once, and it wasn’t bad. That said, it’s another affected means of having a card selected — again, I’d reserve it for a card-stab type of revelation.

Two Card Force

Again, I didn’t think this could look good, but it wasn’t bad. Bill Simon’s Prophecy Move seems to be the most popular current force of this type, and it has the advantage of being doable from a spread. It’s also got a more open feel to it.

Riffle Break Force

This has become a popular modern force. Tyler Erickson has some great touches on this force — it’s worth getting lessons from him on card forcing in general if that’s a strategy you plan on employing — and he also makes the great point that it’s best reserved for those situations when you’re forcing a card on somebody who’s not close enough to touch the cards themselves. You could also possibly motivate it by saying that you use it to deal with people who are suspicious about marked cards, and for those who find themselves using something like a spectator-peak, this is a suitable counter-strategy for that situation. It also has a nice feature to it in that you can riffle to a spot that they fairly select, and you can even riffle off a few more cards one-by-one if they’re not happy with where they’ve stopped.

Sliding Key Force

This is gold. Now, it does hinge on getting the card off the bottom deceptively — I’d prefer to get the card into position using a Hofzinser cull strategy — but it’s a bullet-proof force from a spread. I would absolutely recommend trying to get this down, and if you’re having any trouble getting the card into position, then look into the Hofzinser cull. The advice about not giving the cards out immediately for a shuffle is good as well, since that’s the sort of thing that can signal to the spectator that you already know what the card is. Tyler recommends trying to goad them into wanting to shuffle of their own accord, as if this would mess up the trick.

Double-lift Force

The description of this force seems to have an error in it, since there’s no way the card could get into position based on what they describe. If you shuffle it to second from the top, it should work properly. Now, this force doesn’t really do anything for me, since there’s counting involved and the magician needs to handle the cards themselves to get everything set up. For the most part, I don’t like the idea of a card selection being such a big event without good reason. If you’re hoping to sell the fairness of it, I think there are better ways.

Cut Force

Known now as the Cross Cut Force, this is one of those techniques that is easy to hate if you know the mechanics of it… the discrepancy is just so blatant. Tyler Erickson, though, made the point that if you sell the force properly, this is a technique that actually allows you to have a card selected without you ever touching the cards. That’s a fairly big deal, especially if you’ve established that you’ve got some really good card skills. Again, as somebody who almost never forces, it’s hard for me to comment on this, except generally, which I’ll get into later. Again, Tyler’s worth contacting about this, as he’s got some great ideas on selling the fairness of the force, including even eliminating the need for the “time misdirection” aspect of it.

“Justice Card Trick”

I suppose this could be a good trick for somebody who wants to try to sell the idea of Extra Sensory Perception or whatnot. The blindfold advice is good — it’s not something I do regularly, but the times I have done it, it was easy to forget that you need to have your eyes closed except the times you need them open. Definitely pay attention to that part of the trick if you want to work blindfolded. Some more great advice on this can be found in Corinda’s 13 Steps to Mentalism.

Which brings me to why I’m not totally sold on this trick. Mentalists have been doing wonderful things with blindfolds for a long time, and I don’t think this is the strongest ESP-type of effect that can be done with a deck of cards. Something like Annemann’s Par Optic Vision or Malini’s Card Stab, for instance, let you reveal multiple cards in an impressive (and less lengthy) fashion, and there’s no forcing involved. Similarly, you can do more impressive things ESP-wise if you’re able to force a card. I’ll get into this more later on.

If I were to do this sort of trick, I’d probably try to find some way to work with half the deck, just to cut down on all the dealing involved.

“Fours of a Kind”

A good trick, although blech to the backslip force. Essentially, what we’re talking about is the “Matching the Cards” plot, a highly-regarded trick, and one of the most popular handlings for it is Dai Vernon’s — a version that’s well worth looking up. Plus, some magicians have taken this to the next level, so that you follow up the magical appearance of the “right” four-of-a-kind by having the original “wrong” four-of-a-kind jump to the magician’s pockets (or wherever else he wants). Many card guys swear by this trick, and considering the power of a simple “Isn’t/Is” trick (which only involves a single incorrect card changing into the correct card), it’s easy to see why. If this sort of thing appeals to you, I’d recommend looking up Dai Vernon’s “Matching the Cards”, and then Dr. Jacob Daley’s “Gambler versus Magician” — however, while those tricks will be considered superior to “Fours of a Kind”, in much the same way that “Dunbury Delusion” or “That’s It!” will be considered better than “Design for Laughter”, you should try it out in this form anyway just to see if it fits you as a plot.

“Pulse Trick”

This isn’t bad — I like the idea of being able to turn the tables on the spectator so that you’re doing for them almost exactly what they did for you. This approach is being very true to the effect. Since there’s potential to flash the modus operandi to a larger audience, you might want to try to use a pulse-taking grip for when the magician reads the spectator’s pulse that covers the spectator’s fist adequately, so that you can motivate a similar grip for when it’s time for them to read your pulse. I’d say this is one of the better “mental magic” type of effects in the book.

General Thoughts on This Chapter

Perhaps I’ve been ruined by Tyler’s teachings — specifically his thoughts on forcing, and trying to make sure that the techniques fit the same general aesthetic of non-forced card selections. If you design your strategies in this manner, then it basically makes it difficult to want to do some of the forces in this chapter. Now, it’s hard to blame Royal Road for this, when you see plenty of modern sources doing exactly the same thing. That aside, this chapter does have some good techniques in here that fit the three major card-selection contexts that Tyler identified. The first, having a card selected from a nearby spectator, can be satisfied by either the Classic Force or the Sliding Key Force (if you study your Marlo you’ll find another one that’s brilliant, but that one’s too good to name publicly here). The second, having a card selected from a distant spectator, can be satisfied by the riffle force or the Hindu Shuffle force (the flash version described in the last chapter) and if you want another strategy to look into, consider the Dribble Force (Carney teaches this pretty well in various sources). The third, having a card chosen without the magician even touching the deck, can be satisfied by the Cross Cut Force (although one more that’s worth looking into is the Balducci Cut Deeper Force, using Marlo’s subtlety).

It’s probably worth spending some time analyzing the role of the force as a strategy. Both “Justice Card Trick” and “Pulse Trick” can actually be done using alternate strategies, and you might even find that working with a full-deck stack or even using a Key Card might offer some advantages over forcing, since both of them can allow you to give a truly free choice. Considering that, you might instead consider researching those sorts of effects that actually must have a card forced, in order to really see the power of the technique. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to describe specific effects that use forcing, since that’d be tantamount to exposing the modus operandi of the effect, which I’d be hesitant to do for things that are currently on the market. Now, if you are going to be using a force for the situations described in “Justice Card Trick” and “Pulse Trick”, you might want to figure out how to leverage the strong points of your choice — if you can get a secret glimpse of the card you’re going to force, then they can leave with the memory of having shuffled both before and after the trick.

I will single out predictions as an obvious application for forces. Essentially, you force a card and then show it’s in a newspaper classified ad, on a tattoo, on your T-Shirt, etc. The real challenge with this sort of thing is that, while it will have an impact if the technique fooled them, it also pretty much exposes the fact that you forced them to take a specific card. Again, you’ll want to try to figure out the strong aspects of your chosen force technique, and leverage them so as to challenge the idea that you could have possibly made them take a specific card. A Sliding Key Force, for instance, lets them remember that they could have touched any card they wanted to, whereas a Cross Cut Force lets them remember that you didn’t even handle the cards. Being able to psychologically sell a force is a valuable strategy at any point, but with a prediction it’s particularly vital, since there’s basically no additional layer of deception for the mystery — unlike, say, using the paddle move to make the card’s name appear on a pen or something.

One fun tactic is doing one of those effects where you consistently force the same card over and over. Do this once to somebody who doesn’t know about card forces, and you’ll likely be hooked by their reaction. It creates two-fold problem, though. First, it pretty much exposes the fact that you can make people take a specific card (which can undermine a lot of tricks), and second, it requires you to up the ante drastically in order to complete the effect in a satisfactory way. For what it’s worth, though, because I don’t classic force, when it’s been done well to me, I’m always fooled by it, and it’s a great feeling.

One more thing that’s worth looking into is forcing strategies that require gimmicked decks of some sort. For me, the Cross Cut Force or the Cut Deeper Force might be acceptable for those situations where you’re working FASDIU or with a borrowed deck or something, and when you’re performing for a single person (or maybe a small group) where you know you can sell the convincers on those forces, but if I was going to go onstage and do something that needed a hands-off force, I’d probably establish a regular deck in some preliminary routine doing card-to-pocket or whatever, and then try to find a way to ring in a gimmicked deck so that I could do a fairer hands-off force that doesn’t have a perceivable discrepant procedure to it. This idea — basically using one routine to offer proofs that make a latter routine stronger — is particularly devious, and often overlooked, given that in magic we tend to only think one routine at a time. There are gimmicked decks that can make for very clean close-up and hands-off forces.

I might come back to this chapter later on, but now I think that’s it. Up next, the frightening top change!

Chapter 15: The Hindu Shuffle and Other Controls

The Hindu Shuffle

Not really anything to say about the description here. It’s fine. I guess one thing that might be of interest is to know that in Korea, where this shuffle is quite predominant, the handling of the cards is actually frequently quite violent, with a slapping of the two packets together just prior to the cards being dragged off (there’s also a slight difference in grip, but that’s not as noteworthy). Some of the card games there actually use cards that are the same size as those in our miniature decks, and the general Hindu Shuffle style of mechanic seems to suit them, and as such all decks of cards are shuffled in this manner. It’s quite a contrast to the delicate and graceful way that magicians usually employ the Hindu Shuffle. I don’t know if this holds true for all of Asia, but I wouldn’t be surprised, with there being so much cultural influence between China, Korea and Japan.

Hindu Shuffle Control, Single Card

This is essentially the lift shuffle mechanics applied to the Hindu Shuffle grip. Despite the fact that I like the Overhand Lift Shuffle so much, I’m not terribly fond of this one. The reason is this — the illusion you wish to create with a lift shuffle is that they replace the card at a point, and then you shuffle off on top of it. If you can do this well, the impression is simply that a shuffle is interrupted and then continued, with the card somewhere in the middle. This illusion is, in my opinion, killed if the two packets are made to align perfectly just after the card is replaced. With the Overhand Lift Shuffle, you’re able to jam the packet into position, which leads to the appearance of a rough, sloppy handling of the cards, which isn’t a bad thing to have when Overhand Shuffling anyway. If you’ve got the cover and angles down, you don’t need perfect alignment to do the Lift Shuffle well. The problem is that in order to execute the packet steal for the Hindu Lift Shuffle, it’s more difficult to do deceptively without having that pause at the moment of alignment, and to me, that kills the illusion. The fact that the Hindu Shuffle is a bit more open doesn’t help much in concealing that alignment. So, perhaps my main reason for not liking this isn’t that there’s something wrong with the mechanic itself, but rather that it’s difficult to make it look good — it’s also difficult to make the pass look good, but it’s possible.

Hindu Shuffle Control, Several Cards

Again, not easy to do without looking like you’re handling the cards in a precious manner, and if you’ve got several cards being returned, it’s easy to run out of cards and have to start the shuffle again in order to get the last of the cards returned to the deck — not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but if you’re having multiple cards selected and returned, it helps if the process is brisk (obviously without cost to its deceptiveness). So, if you’re trying to make sure that you’re not forced to start a new shuffle, that means you’ve got to be really careful in drawing off small packets, and that makes the shuffle look a little too neat and tidy for my taste. In order to make sure that you don’t run out of cards, you’ve essentially got to dictate where the card is going to be returned in the deck, and I hate that. Of course, when you give them the power to do that, you run the risk of them waiting quite a while if they’re trouble-makers. Overall, I would prefer to use something like a cull in order to get multiple cards to gather — it’s fast, straightforward, easy to get into, and innocent-seeming.

There are a couple of multiple card controls using the Hindu Shuffle that are worth looking at. Dai Vernon in particular had two, a Multiple Shift which is well-known and highly regarded, and another one which involved milking the bottom cards that I think is a bit more difficult to do well, since it looks like you’re changing up the tempo mid-shuffle which isn’t really a great thing. The Multiple Shift has been published in many places, and both of these are on Daryl’s Encyclopedia of Card Sleights.

Hindu Shuffle Force

Strangely enough, whereas I liked the Overhand Lift Shuffle as a control but not as a force, I dislike the Hindu Lift Shuffle as a control, but I don’t mind it as a force. I don’t know that it’s repeatable, but if you’re able to get that gesture down (saying “Here, just take the top card” as you gesture with the packet that’s going to drop off the packet) it’s fairly disarming, I guess because of the openness of the shuffle and the fact it’s a natural-seeming aesthetic to point at the top card with the other packet, something which looks a bit more closed with the Overhand version. Michael Ammar has a slightly different way of getting into this type of force that you might want to look into. I’ve used this, and when it’s well-executed, it’s quite nice. If there is a problem with using this style of force, it’s that because you’re asking them to take the card they stopped at, that means they need to be nearby, and if they’re nearby, why aren’t you just offering from a spread? Not an insignificant thing, but I’ve actually found I could get away with it just by saying I learned the trick in Korea, and by showing that this is how they shuffle there. It’s not quite as natural, but it is theatrically motivated, and if the evidence leads them to buy that it’s fair (convincers aid in this), that’s often good enough.

Most of the time, people don’t even bother going through the mechanics described in Royal Road and just end up flashing the bottom card in the right hand (assumes you’re shuffling from the right hand into the left). It’s a strange thing — if people are paying close attention to the proceedings, the discrepancy of this should jump out, but because people don’t really know the mechanics of shuffling, it flies all the time. There are plenty of ways to add touches to this, such as stripping out a middle block (reserving the force card at the bottom), and saying, “If you said stop here, then this would be your card –” flashing the indifferent, and even applying a bit of pressure from the index finger and riffling off that card onto the left hand’s packet, and continuing, “–or if you said stop here, then this would be your card.” Afterwards, when you begin the next shuffle, you draw out the packet from the bottom as per usual. One interesting thing about this is that in order to do this explanation-section deceptively, you’ve got to get those packets to align again, but I’ve learned through experience that this is a moment of low heat, and if you can get agreement on the fairness of proceedings (despite the discrepancy), that means you can be really clean about the moment you show them the selected card. What’s more, this is probably a superior application of the Hindu Shuffle to force a card, since it’s suitable for when the spectator selecting the card isn’t close to you, whereas the previous handling needs them to be close up.

Tyler Erickson has a bunch of touches that act as convincers for this force, and if you get the chance to study under him, you ought to ask him about his handling. It’s a good sequence.

Hindu Shuffle Glimpse

Bold, and done at a time that I believe would be a moment of high heat. I wouldn’t do it this way, if only because it’s not difficult to get the necessary glimpse ahead of time for a Key Card, and it’s way too close to being an intuitive solution for a regular pick-a-card trick, with an obvious opportunity for applying that intuitive solution due to the openness of the shuffle.

The Step

The step is a decent technique, but I’d recommend a dribbling action rather than a springing action, if only because the dribble is easier to do slowly. Quickly, the dribble flourish involves holding the cards in a pseudo-Biddle grip, with the thumb at the rear short end, and the fingertips at the front short end (you can do this with just your middle and ring finger), and with the index finger curled over the top and pressing down slightly to apply the necessary pressure. I’m using the Dribble here in this video, only without the stepping action.

I don’t do it that much so don’t use me as a model. Done well, it can be a very innocent and carefree way of handling the cards.

Natural Jog

This can look good if done well, and it adds a nice side benefit of allowing you to table the deck immediately afterwards with a carefree attitude. You’ll want the final result to be a bit messy for two reasons — first, if you’re going to table it, you’ll need the cover, and second, it motivates you squaring up a bit in the hand, which covers getting the break. One tip from Tyler Erickson (I don’t know if it’s original with him) — when the right thumb is coming in to do its dirty work, rather than having a lifting action on the top packet when you’re getting the break, alter it so that you’re making the lower packet drop. This is less conspicuous.

Twelve-down Riffle

This isn’t bad. It’s basically like a Le Paul Bluff Pass but with a little less bluff to it, and if you’re good at dribbling cards you can do that with the small packet remaining at the end, to help sell the illusion that the card is being returned to the middle of the deck (when doing the Le Paul Bluff Pass, people often have to align the deck momentarily in order to grab a bunch of cards to do the same convincer — here there’s no such issue if you can dribble those cards well). Earlier on in the book there was talk about using the overhand shuffle to run cards onto a selection to put it in the Nth spot, and this is a nice replacement for that. One thing Dai Vernon recommends for a slightly different instance but which I think could apply here, is making sure that rather than counting the twelve cards individually whilst spreading, to try to count them in chunks — this will make the initial spread look a bit more natural, although it will run the risk that you accidentally get more than twelve cards pushed over.

Again, it’s not the most natural procedure for having a card selected, but it does make for a pretty clean replacement. I’ve usually felt the need to motivate this sort of “stabbing” process by saying that you want it to be truly random, and the fact that they get a truly free choice of where they insert their finger (along with the parallel implied condition that it’s impossible to force from this) helps somewhat.

“All Change Here”

Hard to say how I feel about this trick. I do like the fact that, in the opening, it uses two different ways of getting the card into position, and they seem to cancel each other out. Still, I’ve found that revelations of the card in this manner are generally pretty weak unless there’s conviction that the card is lost, and it’d also be nice to have them deal off the cards themselves. The segue into showing that all the cards are the selections is somewhat bold — incidentally, if you were confused about my explanation of the “flash” version of the Hindu Shuffle Force, this is essentially what they’re doing (and exposing to the audience) here. Since it’s possible to get five minutes of show out of a single card force, I think there’s more merit to using it furtively in that manner, rather than as a throw-away magical gag. Still, many people have used this sort of strategy, including Tommy Wonder, who has some nice touches on it that are worth looking into in his version of “Everywhere and Nowhere”.

Speaking of which, one thing that I think is important to consider is that if you’re really going to embrace the claim that all the cards are the same, you’ve got to offer some pretty high proof. Roberto Giobbi made the point that it’s very difficult to do a satisfying Everywhere and Nowhere effect without using duplicates — and that’s just proving that several cards are the same, not the whole deck. So, if you’re going to show a bunch of cards are all different (such as in the first phase of this effect), you’re going to have a bit of an obstacle in showing that they’re all now the same card, since you’re only showing them one card at a time, really quickly. Now, people have used the Hindu Shuffle flash sequence in the Ambitious Card (showing that the card can apparently jump anywhere) and I think it fits there better because you’ve already established some pretty good magic, and you’re now expanding the nature of the effect, but still keeping short of a single, defined claim that would be difficult to prove.

I’ve actually spent a great deal of time trying to come up with a suitable trick of this type that uses a regular deck. It’s not been easy, but I’ll get into that later in Chapter 20.

“Ewephindit”

I’m guessing that they were running out of titles for tricks at this point. I dislike the idea of going from one shuffle into another for no reason. Yeah, it can give the impression that the cards are really being mixed up in a bunch of different ways (I switch shuffles in the middle of my Multiple Selection routine) but for a single selection it strikes me as being more expedient to just do the whole thing using a single shuffle. Again (sorry for sounding like a broken record here) I’m not so fond of revelations that occur within the deck unless the spectator can shuffle. The sliding key card is great, but there are better ways to use it, including one described in the next chapter.

General Thoughts on This Chapter

Some decent controls here, but the tricks don’t rock my world. I’m a bit surprised that they passed over one obvious function — that of using the Hindu Shuffle to place a key card. Very quickly, you know the bottom card, begin the Hindu Shuffle and say “Say ‘Stop’ at any time.” When they say stop, have them put the card back, and immediately dump the rest of the cards on top of it, setting the Key Card. If you take this into account, the Hindu Shuffle is one of those great versatile techniques that can be used to control (assuming you can make that lift shuffle look good), to force, or to set a key card.

There are some sneaky things one can do through this shuffle. Aside from the previously mentioned techniques from Dai Vernon, Lennart Green managed to come up with “The Circulation Shuffle” which is a full-deck false shuffle from the Hindu Shuffle grip (not my favourite thing of his, but perhaps others might like it), and it’s also possible to take packets off the bottom of the deck (rather than the top) and still make it look good — one could apply this strategy to the setting of the key card, so that it looks like you’re shuffling fairly both before and after the replacement, or else even use it as a false shuffle to preserve a stack or possibly a full-deck (probably unnecessarily bold, given other methods out there). It’s also my preferred cover for a top card palm — palm off the card in the action of taking the deck and rotating it into position to begin a Hindu Shuffle.

Don’t really have much else to say on the topic… Next up, Forcing!

Chapter 14: The Reverses

Since the real meat of this chapter is in the tricks, I’ll plow through the techniques quickly. It’s worth noting that, as with the glimpses chapter, I don’t use any of these techniques when I work, so you should take my opinions with the requisite grains of salt. “First Method” would require a good deal of misdirection and/or cover, or a strong off-beat, but it’s doable. Some people have been known to do this in the Ambitious Card immediately following having the card signed, so that you replace the selected card on top of the deck face-up, turn the two cards face-down, and then immediately head into the effect. This can make for a pretty clean switch-out, and the card signing ends up being suitable misdirection to set up the moment. “Second Method” seems like it could work, but I’m not big into it. One thing that Steve Draun warns against is “squaring a square deck” — if you’re squaring something that doesn’t need squaring, it’s got the potential to look fishy. This sort of thing strikes me as having that feeling — the right hand has to cover the deck a fair bit in order to palm off, but then the deck gets rotated, so the left hand has to come all the way in to do its part. That’s a pretty tight framing of the deck. Maybe if it’s not in the middle of a trick, it might work… Now, if you spread out the cards immediately after the palm, and then have the right hand rotate around underneath the spread, and then feed it into place on the square up, I think you’ve got something a little bit better — angle-sensitive, but better. “Third Method” strikes me as being extremely fiddly. How do you motivate pulling out the bottom card and putting it on top of the deck only to take it off again and place it on the bottom only to turn the deck over and pull it out again? The authors suggest that you should appear to be toying with the deck, but that’s a pretty meandering sequence to have to find innocent-seeming patter for. “Fourth Method” has been recommended in other sources, but I’m not a fan. The sequence motivates the actions somewhat, but if the only purpose is to set up a single card reversal, that strikes me as lame. As for doing it just to set up a reversed card in the deck prior to the trick, I think there are less conspicuous ways, but if people don’t suspect a card trick is coming up, and the conclusion of the effect doesn’t suggest that a single reversed card was the modus operandi, it’d probably be fine.

As for “Reversed Location”… Ugh. If you’ve been studying and practicing all the methods up until this point, then you’ve got all the tools up until this point to control a selected card without having to resort to this sort of silliness. Yes, the point about being sloppy versus being slick is well-taken, but it’s not worth lowering yourself to this level. Now, if you’re willing to turn it into a fun moment, you could do something like, “And now, all I have to do is just riffle the deck like this, and one card magically turns face up.” Spread, look at the indifferent, and sheepishly say, “Well, I didn’t say it would be your card, I said one card magically turns face up…” Credit goes to John Carney for using this patter dodge in different ways throughout his magic. It gets laughs often enough for me. One other thing to consider is that you don’t need to use the key undercut in order to pull this off — any key card placement technique from a shuffle works.

So yeah, not so impressed with the techniques offered to reverse a card. If you’ve already studied the pass (particularly the Herrmann/Hofzinser mechanics) then you’re probably ready to look into the half-pass, which is basically just a secret reversal of the bottom half of the deck (or even of a single card). It’s taught in a variety of locations — Richard Kaufman does it capably on his On The Pass DVD, and apparently Aaron Fisher’s Gravity Half Pass is well-liked by those who use it. I’d probably use something like that before I used any of these if it was to reverse a card prior to the effect, and to reverse it during under high scrutiny, I’d probably prefer to use something from Chapter 11.

“Spellbound”

It seems like it should be a decent surprise, but it strikes me as a bit overhandled to get there, and it uses that god-awful Reversed Location. If I was going to do this trick, I’d probably want to try something a bit more straightforward. For instance, have a card selected from a spread, control to top, palm, glimpse, spread the cards out again (“I didn’t make you take any of these cards, right?”), and spread over the number of cards necessary to set up the spell, feed the palmed card so that it’s reversed at the right point, square, proceed with the trick (including showing the top and bottom cards, if it helps the trick). On the whole, though, I think there are better spelling effects in the book, and from the looks of it, “Double Speller” from Chapter 12 could be adapted for it.

“A Tipsy Trick”

One of the gems in this book, and if you’re working through the book in order, it’s a shame you had to wait this long to get to it, when all the necessary techniques were covered in the earliest chapters. This is the Triumph plot, and while I offered as a premise earlier that one of the weakest places to reveal a card is within the deck, this trick is a definite exception to that rule, because really, we’re not talking about a trick where you find a single card, we’re talking about a class of effect where you show an impossible mastery of the entire deck.

In any case, if you like the Triumph plot, then you should definitely check out the work put out by Dai Vernon on the subject, starting with his riffle shuffle based method in Stars of Magic. For what it’s worth, there are so many variations on this trick that it’s not funny — on the table, in the hands, with the aces or multiple selections, without any selections at all, hard versions, easy versions, self-working versions, gaffed versions, versions where the specs shuffle themselves, etc. I’m not going to tell you which to go with, but I will say this — there are some respected card workers who consider this the best version of Triumph out there.

Some extra things to think about… if you can control multiple cards, it’s possible to finish this trick off with all the selections reversed and gathered in the center (think about it), which gives a nice side-benefit of there not being a single card-cover at the conclusion of the shuffle; there’ve been arguments about whether or not the cards should be revealed all face-down with the selection face-up (which adds clarity) versus all face-up with the selection face-down (which adds an extra beat to the magic) — I prefer the latter, but many respected card men prefer the former; by making a real mess of the cards during the shuffle, and then applying through the left-hand’s fingers upwards pressure on a bunch of the face-down cards at the bottom, and with the thumb applying downwards pressure on a bunch of the face-up cards at the top, you can help reduce the feeling of depth between them; the sequence used at the end to fix the deck isn’t the greatest — look into Dai Vernon’s handling of Triumph to see his approach, and then make friends with Tyler Erickson somehow to learn an improvement upon that; I’ve got a ton of things to say against using something like “Abracadabra” to signal the magic moment, but I’ll get into my nitpicking a little later on.

In any case, a good trick. Absolutely worth learning.

“Double Reverse”

Also a good trick, with a great routine construction. On more than one occasion someone’s offered to show me something, and they’ve gone through the first few steps of the trick, and I only recognized when it was too late what was going on (at which point I usually curse). The routine design has great misdirection built into it. Eugene Burger has some interesting work on this trick that you might want to research, if you want to add a slightly bizarre flavour to it. If nothing else, I’d try to get a bit more mileage out of the magic moment, perhaps by riffling the deck, and then asking the spectator to riffle it as well.

“Mentalivity”

This is sort of a weird trick for me. Lately in card magic there’s been a resurgence in interest in the “Card At Any Number” plot, and while this trick isn’t exactly a CAAN, it strikes me that this trick could easily be altered to accommodate the plot. Now, if you’re like me and your soul isn’t exactly stirred by the Card At Any Number plot, then you might not think much of this idea, but it’s (in my opinion, anyway) a decent strategy for the effect, and at least one well-known magician (can’t say who without exposing it) published an impromptu CAAN which was pretty similar to this one. Briefly, in CAAN, a card is selected and returned, and the deck is shuffled. That spectator (or another) then names a random number, and their selection is cleanly found at that number. The strength of this trick is, in my opinion and the opinions of others, based on the conditions surrounding the effect — and so a lot of people have gone to great lengths to improve the fairness of the effect, such letting the spectator deal, or else having a card actually named rather than selected and returned, etc. If that’s the important thing for you, then perhaps the strategy in Mentalivity might not fit you (since the magician has to set up the deck, and then does all the dealing), but if you can sell the basic premise (perhaps as a bet of some kind), I think this strategy on the whole is fine.

Now, there are some things I’d want to change for myself. I’d probably change it to a pick-a-card trick (probably by having the card selected via a spectator peek), control it to sixth from the bottom, do a half-pass on the bottom seven, and then ask the number, and immediately start dealing, doing the deck reversal at the number named minus six. Now, you’ve got to motivate the reversal, so I’d probably set it up by stopping the deal a couple of times at an arbitrary number, in order to point out that they could have said this number, but they didn’t, and turning up that card to show it as indifferent. Do this fairly a few times, and then do it at the named number (minus six) amidst the dirty business, and then deal off the last cards to cleanly reveal their selected card. The fact that the card is only thought-of in this version is a nice touch, though, so my idea loses that aspect.

John Born recently put out a book called “Meant To Be” which is a treatise on the plot. If you like the idea, you might want to check it out.

“Mountebank Miracle”

You’ve probably gathered by now that I don’t like tricks that feel like they involve math. Asking a spectator to cut off a bunch of cards, remember that number of cards, and then think of another card at that number reeks of some self-working mathematical principle to me. Also, I’m not entirely sure that the spectator would buy the fact that the magician didn’t just flip over the card that he needed to, as opposed to it having magically reversed. To me, if you want to show the card’s reversed, you spread the damn deck and show it’s reversed. So, a thumb’s down for me on this trick.

There’s a trick by Ackerman, Harris and Emberg called “Overkill” which uses a similar principle to the above, and while it’s a highly-regarded trick, I think that the only reason the trick’s worth doing is because of the way the climax can be sold — otherwise, it’s just a silly bit of “Nya nya, look, I mathemtically forced a card on you!”

General Thoughts on this Chapter

While I’m not so keen on some of the reversal methods, two modern classics and one trick with a lot of potential isn’t too shabby. Can’t complain.

I should probably elaborate on the point I made earlier about how it’s generally weak to reveal a card within a deck, only to then recommend two tricks that use this as a final revelation. The reason why they strike me as exceptions to the rule is because of this… Usually, in magic, spectators get to see very little actual magic. Instead, they usually get an initial state, a final state, and a suggestion that “magic” was the cause that got from one state to the other. As Derren Brown pointed out, one of the things that a lot of performers fail to do is make the cause of the magic the dramatic focus, when in fact it can be as interesting (or more) than some of the supposed miracles you’re doing.

As such, it’s not enough if the magician has a selection returned to the deck, and then does some fumbling, and then shows the card has reversed. There’s nothing in that which is inherently interesting, there’s no dramatization of a magical cause. Now, with Double Reverse, if you can involve the spectator in being a part of the magic, then you’ve got a magic moment you can really sell, which is made more legitimate by the fact that the Do As I Do premise to the trick strongly implies that there’s no magician’s advantage. As mentioned previously, Eugene Burger has some great ideas with this. With Triumph, we’re not just having a single card reversed at the center, we’ve got a totally messed-up deck completely reorganizing itself, and that’s another trick that can benefit from having a really solid magical moment (again, I like riffling the deck, since it has just enough plausibility mixed with just enough mystery in the implied cause for how the magic happens).

Now, when the magic is more obvious, such as in Card To Pocket or the Colour-Changing Deck or whatnot, you can probably lighten up on the dramatizations of the magic moment, but there are some tricks which are really strengthened by paying attention to this idea. One reason why I like both “Triumph” and “Double Reverse” is that you can get a lot of mileage not just out of the effect, but also what the effect seems to imply about the magical cause at work.

That’s another reason why some of the other tricks in Royal Road piss me off so much — there’s an implied cause to the magic, but the way the effect unfolds, that cause is totally undermined by the handling. You do a lot of unnecessary finagling with the deck and then show that the selection is reversed — chances are that your method was hidden somewhere within all that finagling, rather than within the magic moment itself. You say you’re going to read a spectator’s mind, but then he’s got to think of a number, and count down to that number in the deck, and then bleah bleah bleah — again, you may say it’s mind-reading, but it certainly smells like something else. People come to a card magic show wanting to see magic done on the cards, not senseless twiddling. People come to a mind-reading show to see a performer lock eyes with a spectator and struggle to pull the thoughts out of them, not to have to follow math.

Anyways, enough blathering on about that. Next up, the Hindu Shuffle.