card trick – Page 2 – MagicShow.Tips

Hypnotic Rumba Count

I just stared reading the JP Vallarino book that was put out by Vanishing Inc. It’s all cards, which I’m not opposed to, as I enjoy playing with deck of cards.

The first thing in the book is the Rumba Count. This is a way to show four cards as the same card. The second thing in the book is the Hypnotic Rumba Count, which is a variation of the Rumba count and something that I don’t think I had ever learned in the past.

When I learn a new move, I try to figure out what I can do with that move before I explore what other people have done with it. It’s just a fun creative exercise. Sometimes it leads to new things, but usually I end up recreating the obvious thing with it.

The first thing I came up with is a change of 4 jokers to 4 kings

@louiefoxx Four Jokers Card Trick! From the new JP Vallarino book by Vanishing Inc #cardtrick #magic #sleightofhand #vanishinginc #louiefoxx #cardmagic #jpvallarino #playingcards ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

This is definitely the obvious thing to do with this move and probably the first thing that JP Vallarino did with it.

-Louie

Fiddling Around

Play is important! You should play with magic as a creative exercise. Learning from a book is good, but sometimes just fiddling around with a deck of cards or whatever with no purpose will lead to some fun things.

Here’s what I came up with the other night:

@louiefoxx Quick Card Trick! #cardtrick #cardmagic #sleightofhand #louiefoxx #magictrick #cardchange #aceofspades #bigfoot ♬ Vibes – ZHRMusic

There’s not much to it. I discovered I could drop an outjogged, double card from the deck into my hand below it. Once I kinda figured out the technique, I needed to figure out what to do with it. That ended up my a slightly flourishy card change.

Will I ever seriously use this? No.
Was it fun to figure out? Yes

-Louie

Auto Spring Fan Card Revelation: version 2

Okay, so I tried the Auto Spring Fan Card Revelation with misdirection to flip the fan over. The idea is that they don’t see me turn the fan over, their attention is elsewhere, and when they look back all of the cards have changed.

Here’s sort of what it looks like (it doesn’t work on camera as it’s an open move that’s covered by misdirection):

The reaction it gets has a delay while people notice it at staggered times, so it’s not at punchy as openly flipping the fan over. Reaction wise, it’s say it’s about the same either way, but flipping it covered by misdirection is a stronger magic trick. What’s nice is that it can be done either way and you can choose at the last minute how you are going to do the revelation, you aren’t really locked into one way or the other.

-Louie

Auto Spring Fan Card Revelation

When I travel, I usually have a ziploc bag full of things that I can use to make gaffed items or fix broken gaffs.

Yesterday I wrote a blog post about gimmicking an Auto Spring Fan. It’s because of this bag of stuff I was able to start work on making the gimmicked Auto Spring Fan.

Gimmicked auto spring fan with flap card

I spent some time splitting cards, so that they fan wouldn’t be super thick and glued them over the existing backs of the cards on the fan, and added a flap card

I’m happy to report from a technical standpoint, the trick functions properly. The next step will be to actually try it for an audience!

-Louie

Magician’s Choice….

I think it’s time we need to accept the fact that most kids that know a card trick no longer do the 21 card trick. This is mostly due to YouTube tutorials, and that’s great, that’s one place where YouTube “exposure” has moved magic forward. There’s a lot more variety in what’s kids do now!

The trick above, wasn’t a really good trick. It was a very clunky verbal magician’s choice style force to make me think of a face card, then a very clunky physical magician’s choice force to make me select a card. For a kid that only does one trick, it’s a fine gateway trick to your second trick and they’re actively involved in making the trick work, not just doing math.

A few weeks ago someone had asked in a magician’s social media group about how to practice equivoque, and I used to do a card trick that was inspired by something I saw Bob Sheets do. Basically you are forcing a pile, it’s not too crazy. I haven’t done it in many, many years, but I made a quick video to help that person out.

It’s fun to do and a great way to practice making the decisions feel like actual decisions. Go out and give it a try!

-Louie

That Way More…

This summer I started playing with doing the Ambitious Card with the cards spread on the table, not with the effect happening in my hands. For context, here are my two previous posts about it:

http://www.magicshow.tips/magic-show-tips/horizontal-ambitious-card/

http://www.magicshow.tips/magic-show-tips/horizontal-ambitious-card-3rd-phase/

I now have the three phases worked out and cleaned up the handling a bit. It’s a much tighter routine than before. Here’s the version I’m currently doing:

One of the things I’ve recently added was anticipating that in the second phase that the spectator would almost immediately point to the top card. Being able to foresee that and being able to show that card as not being their card is a great moment.

I’m really enjoying performing this version of the Ambitious Card, and like it much more than doing it entirely in my hands.

-Louie

Sticker Kicker

When I was at FISM, I didn’t buy much at the dealer room (compared to some people I know). One of the things I picked up from the FISM booth was Sticker Kicker by Jamie Williams.

This is a fun little trick where a sticker stuck to the back of a card becomes the card, and the back of the card becomes a sticker.

Here’s the promo video for it:

I have a slightly different idea for how I want to use it. It will be a later phase in a card routine. However this led me to another idea. I have a pack of Card Stickers. These are simply stickers that are the face of playing cards that are poker size. In theory I can put them onto the face of a blank face card. Then at the end of the routine, I could peel the face off the card and put it into a notebook full of other people’s card stickers.

I think that’d be a fun and strange ending to a routine with a signed card. Also as a bonus, I’m going to imagine it will act like a thick card as well.

-Louie

A Better 21 Card Trick!

I’m a huge fan of letting people show me tricks. I’ve written about it many times on this blog. Not only does it let the spectator shine, it encourages them to keep doing magic tricks!

Every now and then I get surprised and this kid showed me a great trick! It was like a way better version of the 21 card trick. It used three reverse faro shuffles and only 8 cards, so it was very fast when compared to the 21 card trick.

The ending was nice, as it wasn’t just a “Here’s your card”, it was a three phase reveal.

Full disclosure, I’m not the biggest fan of this type of reveal for what I do in my work, but the kid did it well and got a good reaction. I can’t argue with that!

-Louie

Horizontal Ambitious Card

A long time ago I was chatting with Nick Lewin and we were talking about the Ambitious Card. He said it was the “greatest card trick ever” and I agree with him! With the base effect, you put a card in the middle and it’s instantly on top. Very easy to follow. I do think that most modern versions are really multiple revelations of a selected card, as it’s more than the card simply jumping to the top.

A couple of weeks ago I started doing the ambitious card from a spread. Here’s what it looks like:

When I do it there are two phases, the first I push the card in and in the second they do. That gives it a sense of build. I like getting to play a little bit with having them move their finger along the spread of cards.

I’m liking doing it this way when I have a table. It doesn’t play the same with the cards spread in my hand. I think it’s because with the cards in my hand, it feels less impossible.

Give it a try!
-Louie

Choices….

Sometimes you find things you weren’t expecting when you are searching for other things on the internet. I ended up finding a video clip of me performing an early version of the final version of my “invisible deck routine“, which I call Choices

Here it is:

It’s not really an invisible deck, but that’s how I describe the routine to other magicians as that gives them an easy idea of what the effect is. Before I go further, yes I understand the trick would be stronger if I said, “Name a card” then it was reversed. HOWEVER, that’s not what I’m going for. First of all, I’m trying to get a little bit more time out of the routine.

The video above starts about 45 seconds into the routine, so that gives me a routine that’s about 4 minutes. It also allows me to involve more than a couple people from the audience. The trick also reveals some personal information about me (that’s at the beginning of the routine that’s not in the video). The routine is a lot more personal than, “I had a dream someone picked a card and when I work up I flipped it over“.

I’m happy with how this routine has progressed since that was recorded in October.
-Louie