When I was a teenager I put together a four ace routine that I did all the time. I haven’t really done it in probably a decade, but did it the other day and now it’s creeping into my close up set.
There’s not much to the routine, here’s the flow:
1: Deck is shuffled by the spectator and I cut to the four aces
2: The aces are put in the middle and appear on top of the deck
3: The aces are put into the middle of the deck and the deck is given to the spectator. They shake the deck and the four aces jump out.
It’s a nice little three effect trick with a fun, interactive ending. It’s a good trick to have in my brain to use whenever I need to fill a couple of extra minutes when doing close up magic.
I think you should always have some back up material that you can do with the props you already are carrying. I have my main close up set of material, but I have a ton of things that I can do with a regular deck at a moments notice.
-Louie
Tag: card magic
Card Production
A few nights ago I was dinking around with a deck of cards while watching a movie with my wife and came up with a production of the top card of a face down deck.
It’s not the greatest production, but it’s something. The action of the card reminds me of something in Ernest Earick‘s book By Forces Unseen.
I think the next step to making it better would be a way to have it come out of the center of the deck…but not sure if that’s possible!
-Louie
Custom Printed Gimmicked Deck
I finally used MakePlayingCards.com to have a custom gimmicked deck made! I’ve used them in the past to get large size double blank cards, but those weren’t custom printed.
There wasn’t much from a design standpoint as I just used their standard card faces. This deck is a deck of double faced cards, but the back is all the same card. I had these made to do my version of something that Eric Stevens had shown recently at the NW Ring of Fire magic club.
The cards came out great, and I would totally use them again!
-Louie
Blankety Blank Blank Blank by Ken Driscol
Here’s a packet trick that I found in a junk magic bin. It’s a twisting the aces style effect with the backs turning blank at the end.
There are a couple of things that I didn’t like about the trick. The big thing with this style of twisting routine is no one really shows all the backs at first. This is easily accomplished with a Flustration Count and half pass. I think the surprise of the blank cards at the end is more amazing when the audience feels like they’ve seen the 4 regular backs.
-Louie
Demi Deck – Review
I bought into the hype and picked up a Demi Deck while I was at Hocus-Pocus in Fresno. Here’s a quick review of it.
First of all, it works exactly how I thought it would work. If you think about it, there’s really only one way it can work. I wasn’t buying it to figure out how it works, but it’s an interesting prop.
Let’s get into actually doing the trick. I was doing it for the groups of people who showed up as I was packing up the show. I would tell them when my next show is and then offer to show them a quick trick and would do the Demi Deck. It got good reactions from the people.
Next there’s the angle issues. It’s pretty solid from the front, I probably personally wouldn’t take this out for a roving gig where I’m going to be surrounded. But for a group of 4 or so people in front of me, the angles are pretty solid.
Now here’s what I like and why I bought this trick. This reminds me of old school Tenyo tricks where the method is frequently more interesting than the trick. It’s just a gimmicky trick that’s fun to do!
Personally this will probably never be in my “paid” close up work. Is it something that I’ll show people who are at my house…yes!
-Louie
Working on the Rising Card
The rising card routine, that I’m working on right now is missing something. What is missing is time. The routine is really bare bones and is very short, I think without any bits it’s maybe two minutes. Since the routine involves bringing someone onto the stage, I need to get at least three minutes out of it. Ideally if someone is coming out of the audience, it needs to be closer to about five minutes.
One of the ideas that I had was to have a kid do the most “epic” card trick. I have the kid show me their epic, hero face and walk. That didn’t hit the time I tried it, but the kid was younger.
The next time I used an older kid which played better and framed it a little bit different. I had said that they are in show biz now and had them show the audience their show biz smile and walk. That played a lot better than the doing an epic trick with a younger kid. I’m not sure if that’s the route that I want to take, but it’s a step in the right direction!
The other thing that the trick is lacking is music and a punctuation when the card rises out of the deck.
-Louie
Trying to Read More
I’m trying to do a lot more reading in my free time. I have a huge stack of things to go through and I just started reading From Witchcraft to Card Tricks by Stephen Minch.
This is a short paper backed book follows the history of card and close up magic and it’s very interesting! Lots of things that became popular 200 years after they were first invented. It’s a real eye opener, ever you wonder who invented the double lift or at least the first place it appeared in print? This book answers that!
I totally recommend it if you’re a magic nerd like me!
-Louie
Giant Dice Hat Load
A couple weeks ago when I was roving I threw a giant die into my bag. I was going to play with a hat load to produce it. I’ve done hat loads in the past and familiar with many techniques to get the giant die into my hat. I didn’t have a plan for the load, I just used the appropriate technique at the right time and if that opportunity didn’t present itself.
Here’s a highlight reel of some close up and the giant die production is in it:
I don’t know if this is something that I’ll actually add to my show, but it was fun to play with for a few days!
-Louie
Roving Close Up Magic
In my roving magic shows in Arizona, my set was essentially two parts. The first part coin magic, which is about one third of the close up set. The second part is my card set which in the remaining two thirds of it.
Here’s a little highlight reel of my close up roving magic set:
@louiefoxx Close Up Magic at the Yavapai County Fair! #closeupmagic #cardtrick #cointrick #magician #sleightofhand #louiefoxx #yavapaicountyfair #prescott #arizona ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx
Sometimes I will another part to this, and that is the shell game. I don’t do the shell game for every group as it really needs to be the right group for it to play how I want it to play.
Also, I’m really digging Craig Petty’s Apparition coin set! One thing with it is I’m trying to use the purse less. Right now the coin set I’m doing with it has four parts and only the first two use the purse. I’ll probably write a bit more about what I’m doing with the Apparition coin set and why I’m doing it the way I am.
-Louie
Three Phase Card Routine
I’ve been working on a thing that I used to do, which is a three phase card revelation. The premise is that I’m going to find their card three times. The first uses two hands, the second uses one hand and third uses no hands.
It begins with the Piet Forton Pop Out, then Daryl’s Hotshot Cut and the final revelation is Haunted 2.0. When I did this previously I was having trouble with the transition between the last two phases. Essentially there was a strange moment after the hot shot cut where I had to find the gimmicked card for the Haunted 2.0. I hit on the solution, which was for me to use the Hot Shot Cut to throw the card to the person. Them catching the card, or it landing in their lap gives me the few seconds I need to find the gimmick.
Here’s the three phase routine that was recorded by someone by this family:
That was recorded at the end of the life of the Haunted 2.0 gimmick and it needed to rebuilt, so it didn’t have as much action in it as I’d like, however the seemed to like it!
Also in the video is the first half of my main card set.
-Louie