card magic – MagicShow.Tips

Slippery Cards Gag!

When I open a new deck of cards and have them shuffled by someone in the audience, 90% of the time they will comment that they’re slippery. That’s where this gag comes in.

When they comment on the cards being slick, I take out a little caution sign and set it on the table. That gets a laugh, and it’s a gag that will introduce the prop. I like using a gag to introduce a prop, another example of this is my Bodega Coin Tray. Also, when you use the prop for a gag, it serves a purpose and is less suspect later, since the audience thinks it’s already fulfilled its role.

What happens is that during your card tricks, at one point, the signed card appears under the little sign (like card under glass). Then later, you say the card is under the sign, but it’s not; however, the sign has changed to say the name of their card! Then, a moment later, the signed card has reappeared under the sign again!

I’m having a lot of fun with this little prop!

-Louie

Card to Impossible Location

When it comes to the Object to Impossible Location type of tricks, I like them when the object never disappears. I don’t like how things like the next of boxes are typically presented. You borrow a watch, the watch disappears, and then you show the box. The audience knows the watch will be in the box. There’s no surprise there, it’s a puzzle at that point.

I’m working on a card to impossible location for my show. The thing about this is that I need to get the card from the person who signed it at the end of the trick, but I want the audience to think that the person who signed it gets to keep it. My solution to this is the card below:

I’m simply top changing the signed card for the thank you card. I hand it to them and say, “This is a thank you for helping me out,” and let them see the card’s face, but not the audience. I tell them they can put it into their pocket and keep it. What that does is make the audience think they walked away with the signed card, when in reality, I have it and can load it somewhere later.

I’ve done this once so far, and it worked. We’ll see how well it works long term.

-Louie

Magic TV Appearance

A couple of weeks ago I was on a local TV show to promote National Magic Week. It was a fairly quick appearance and I did one trick which was a card trick, and you can see it below:

The trick uses The Fortune Teller prop for a routine that’s in my 2025 lecture notes. What I like about this prop is that people react positively when it’s introduced, and it’s got a nice three-hit punch at the end of the trick!

When doing TV appearances, I try to do one trick with big impact over multiple tricks. It makes the appearance cleaner. I also did have other stuff in my pockets if I needed to fill time!

-Louie

Tutorial for the Ace, Two, Three, Four to Four Aces Trick

Here’s a tutorial for the card trick I posted about yesterday where the ace, two, three, and four turn into four aces. You can watch it here:

-Louie

Ace, Two, Three, Four to Four Aces Trick

Recently, I posted a trick where four aces turn into an ace, two, three, and four. That trick felt like it needed some sort of kicker ending, like the cards having a different colored back or something. Well, I tried making the cards work backwards, going from an ace, two, three, and four into four aces and that fixed the problem. The trick feels complete at the end.

Here’s a demo of the trick:

There’s only one move in the trick, which is an Ascenio Spread. That move is repeated, so it’s not very hard.

This is the better version of the trick.

-Louie

Magic Show Station

At a recent Halloween event, I was hired to perform at a close up magic station. This was simply a table that kids came by and I did close up magic for them.

This was a fun format to perform in, and with the table, I had more props with me than I would usually for a roving gig. When the crowd grew bigger, I did a couple of bigger tricks.

Another thing you can’t see in the picture is that I brought a speaker with me and used it to amplify my voice. The event was in a noisy gym, so a bit of audio support was nice!

-Louie

The Fortune Teller on TV (again)

On a TV appearance last week I did The Fortune Teller trick from my 2025 lecture notes. You can watch the appearance here:

What I like about this trick is that the moment you bring out the prop, the audience gets a hit of nostalgia. That makes it a trick that instantly connects with the audience.

Then my card routine with it has a three-reveal punch. The card routine I did in this TV spot is different from my stage routine, which wouldn’t work with this setup, with the host standing next to me.

-Louie
PS, if you like the routine, you can learn more about it at:
https://www.magicshow.tips/lecture-notes-2025/

Portland Society of American Magicians Meeting

Last week, I was able to attend the Society of American Magicians meeting in Portland, OR. It was their Most Entertaining Card Trick contest night.

It started with John doing a prediction that played like an invisible deck, but was a very different method!

Michael did a version of Fly Cards, where cards with pictures of flies moved around and ended with the pictures of the flies being smashed.

Vinod did a routine where the cards were shuffled by a spectator and they colors ended up separating into piles of red and black cards.

Jin did a do as I do routine where at the end he and a spectator both selected the same card!

Mel is a card trick with 3 piles of cards where a selected card jumped from pile to pile!

And the final contestant Larry did a trick where aces turned to jokers and back to aces!

The winner by popular vote was Jin!

It was fun to see all the different styles of performing card tricks!

-Louie

Another TV Spot

Here’s another media spot from the 11 days that I was at the Utah State Fair. This video is a little behind the scenes to getting to the TV station, if you want to just ahead to the media spot, it’s at about the 1 minute mark.

This particular news spot I was supposed to have about 3-5 minutes, however it ended up being less than 3 minutes. My initial interview time was 12:10pm, and when I arrived I learned I wouldn’t be on till about 12:40pm. That told me that I probably would have my time cut short. This particular show was interesting as I really didn’t have any idea how long I was going to do, I really had to read the cues from the host.

-Louie

Snake Basket Magic Trick

I’ve wanted to make a snake basket for a long time. I think it’s from when I was a kid seeing Rich Block demo the Collector’s Workshop Kyber Kobra at a magic convention. This is one of the tricks I could never afford when I was a kid, and I honestly don’t think it’s something I could justify buying now when I can afford it.

As I’m learning to use Arduino, one of the projects that I want to make is a snake basket. I made a post about it here: https://www.magicshow.tips/magic-show-tips/making-a-snake-basket/

Well, I wrote some code and made a layout and it works on an Arduino simulator!

The next step is actually building it, but I’m on the road for another week, so it’ll be at least that long before I can work on it. I have a feeling the moving it from the simulator to a real, physical thing will have some unforeseen challenges!

-Louie