Tag: double lift

Three Card Reveal Sequence

The other day I wrote about working on a variation of Alan Wakeling‘s trick Aces Front. Here’s the rough outline of the sequence of events:

I think the sequence is good, where I think there’s a sense of progression. For the first card, I do touch the deck before it goes into the glass. For the second card, it happens with the deck in the glass the whole time and then the card rise for the final card.

What’s fun is my starting point was something like Aces Front, but my end point is something completely different than Aces Front. I always love it when there are a couple of twists in working on a variation of an existing trick that leads you to something completely new.

-Louie

Aces Front Variation

Many, many years ago when I was a teenager, I remember a trick if Tarbell that used a wine glass and a deck of cards. The deck was in the wine glass and the card at the front of the deck changed. Then a few years later Lance Burton did it on TV and the version he did was basically Alan Wakeling’s Aces Front.

I’ve liked this idea and for a long time wanted to do a version with three selected cards. The first two appear at the front of the deck and the third one rises out of the top of the pack. I’ve had all the stuff I need to try to figure out the trick, however just lacked time/motivation to start playing with it.

I’m coming up with a lot of challenges for the trick. The main one is that with only a couple of cards, the deck will be in a crazy face up and face down condition for what I’m envisioning. Then it hit me, what if I revealed the a card this way:

This was a situation where playing with the cards ended up coming up with a solution for changing a card inside of a wine glass, and one that I don’t think has really been done before.

Now to work out a sequence…
-Louie

The Phoenix Ace Move

I don’t know why, but I’ve been fascinated by the Phoenix Ace move. I don’t know the official name of the move but this is the one where you have a multiple cards held as one and you palm off the stack leaving one card visible. I think it’s really more of a stage more, but I’m trying to come up with uses for it where you’re palming off of the deck.

One I’m playing with uses an outjogged double card that’s in the middle of the deck. Another one is this one below:

@louiefoxx Waiting for the post office to open, so heres a card trick! #cardtrick #magictrick #postoffice #waiting #sleightofhand #kingofhearts #car #bored #louiefoxx ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

I don’t think this is something I’d ever really do, but it’s fun to play with. I think that maybe if I keep playing, something useful will happen with the move.

-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

Magic Jam – Texas

I just wrapped up a conference in San Antonio and in my usual style I got the magicians together to have a little magic jam.

The two guys in the middle I’ve hung out with many many times. The guy I’d never hung out with before is Josh Farley (holding the cards in the pic). Here’s his Penn and Teller appearance:

Josh is a fun guy to hang out with and BS magic. He’s got an interesting move with a double lift. If he’s ever in your town, go check out his show!
-Louie

The A.C.T. Card Trick…

Here’s the second video of me revising a packet trick that I got with a collection of magic that I acquired. Today’s trick is the A.C.T. (another card trick) by Bill Pryor.

Here’s a demo of the trick as written, then how I revised the trick:

The big problem with this packet trick is that the whole effect is a “kicker” without the initial ending. What I mean by that is that you start by asking someone to think of a card, but you never reveal it. You need the initial effect for a kicker to really work. I think at the end spectators will still be thinking, “what about the card I was thinking of?”

Also I don’t think the gags are strong enough to carry the trick past you never revealing the card they are thinking of.

Double Lifts…

One of the most overused sleights in card magic is the double lift. It’s a great move, but soo many people do it poorly (I put myself in that group). One of the problems is that a double lift looks like a double lift. There’s virtually no one that does one that looks like all the other times they turn the cards over. Everyone says, “turn a single like a double” and they’ll all look the same. In theory that would work, but in practice, it doesn’t. There’s soo much going on with a double lift from the get ready, to however you are getting your alignment down and the force or lack of force to hold the two cards together.

There are other ways get to the end results such as a top change, second deal, or a palm and replacement. The problem with these is they are much harder to do poorly than a double lift. A double lift is easy to do bad, which is why soo many people do it. They can put in a minimum amount of time to do something and sort of do it.

There are some good double lifts, but they are much harder to do. My favorite one is the Stuart Gordon double turnover. While it still looks like something is happening to me, it’s one of the more natural ones to do. I play with it a lot, but I don’t do it, the way you move the card isn’t natural to me. It’s great and I think you should learn it, not necessarily do it, but learn it!