sleight of hand – Page 8

Hanging with Jeff Martin

A couple of days ago I was at a showcase and saw my buddy Jeff Martin showcase. Jeff is a working magician and hypnotist.

I first met him years ago when I was performing at an Oktoberfest near where he lives. He came out to see another act I was working with, but stuck around for my show. We had a good time chatting cups and balls after my show.

If you don’t know Jeff, he’s an amazing sleight of hand guy and he won the Magic Castle’s Roving Olympics. We had a good time jamming a few cards tricks.

Here’s Jeff doing some coin work:

If Jeff is ever performing in your area, check him out…and tell him I say hi!
-Louie

Tiny Bible Magic Trick…

Yesterday I posted a dollar bill trick where the dollar was used to produce a tiny bible. The “bible” was one I made was just some paper that was stapled together, covered with duct tape and wrote on it in white pen (These pens are also handy for marking cards!).

The homemade bible is fine for a test run, but the first thing the people I’ve shown this to did was flip through it. That tells me it needs to be a real bible or at least pass the flip test. There are certain things where having the object people want to touch be real and not something that pretends to be real makes the trick stronger. There’s a sense of disappointment if someone realizes that the oranges you use in cups and balls aren’t real. It doesn’t make the trick any less amazing, but it takes them out of the magic headspace there were in. With that in mind I went out and hunted down a tiny bible!

Sometimes it’s the little things that add a lot to the trick. Having it be a real bible makes it more than a sight gag…not much more, but it does elevate the trick!

-Louie

Four Ace Production…

Last night I was playing with a deck of cards while I watched the final couple of episodes of Dexter New Blood and came up with a little pop out of a card from the deck. It’s pretty easy to do:

Hold the deck in your right hand in biddle grip.
Swing cut the top half into your left hand into mechanic’s grip
Your left thumb side jogs the top card about half an inch to the right
As your righthand approaches the left hand, the back of the right hand’s middle fingertip contacts the side jogged card. The right hand continues moving forward and slightly up. That will cause the side jogged card to flip face up. When that happens, your right hand moves down to put the two halves of the pack together.

That’s it.
It’s not much, and it feels really familiar. I think it’s a mix of a lot of thing that I already know and that’s what makes it feel like it’s something I already know.

After playing with it with one card, I started thinking about producing a second card. That ended up being a four card production:

While not the greatest or flashiest four ace production, it was fun to come up with last night!
-Louie

Triumphant Flip Off

I’ve been facinated by using the old card revelation where you drop the deck on the table and the top card flips to reveal a selected card as a way to correct the deck for a triumph style effect.

Here’s a video demo of one that I’ve been doing lately:

About a month ago I wrote up a quick outline of the working of the effect:

http://www.magicshow.tips/magic-show-tips/triumph-clean-up/

One of the challenges was figuring out how to do Daryl’s Triumph Display with the deck in the condition that the deck is in for my routine. It’s basically the same as Daryl’s except the final two blocks of cards are hand hand and you rotate your hands palm up to show the face up and face down blocks.

I’m glad I figured out how to do the final display, it just took sitting around and playing until I worked it out, and the solution was soo simple!

-Louie

Twisting the Aces…

A couple of weeks ago I posted a method for doing an Elmsley style false count that hid the second card from the top (you can learn this false count here) that I came up with on a long flight. Unfortunately, this count isn’t particularly useful and doesn’t have much of an advantage over a normal Elmsley Count.

Well, last week I was on another long flight from New York to Seattle and I was playing with the false count that hides the second card and I came up with a trick with it. It’s Twisting the Aces, but it has one advantage over the original Dai Vernon version and that’s that it all four counts look the same, so you don’t have to openly turn over the ace of clubs or do that weird strip out of one of the red aces and then flip over a few cards.

You start with the four aces (could be any order) face down in your left hand.

Triple turn over to show the “top card”.
Kill your wrist and turn just the top card over.
-The position of the cards are: face down – face up – face up – face down
Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, but don’t flip over the packet.
Do the Second From the Top Elmsley and this will show the first face up ace.
Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, but don’t flip over the packet.
Do a regular Elmsley and this will show the second face up ace.
-The position of the cards are: face down – face up – face down – face up
Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, and secretly flip over the packet.
Do the Second From the Top Elmsley and this will show the third face up ace.
Do the “Thru the Fist Flourish”, but don’t flip over the packet.
Do the Second From the Top Elmsley and this will show the fourth face up ace. As you do the count, leave the final ace out jogged.
Strip out the final ace and put it on top of the packet face up
Half pass the bottom card as you spread out the packet to show the three face down bottom cards (this is the Asher Twist move)

The main problem with the above version of Twisting the Aces is that it’s soo much harder than doing the Vernon version. Honestly, I don’t know if this is better than the original Twisting the Aces, maybe the variation in procedure makes that trick more watchable from the audience perspective?

-Louie

Triumph Clean Up…

I’ve been fascinated by the idea of using the old card production where you drop the deck of cards on the table and the top card flips over as a “clean up” for card trick triumph. By clean up, I mean the last thing you have to do in my sequences where you need to reverse one card…or half of the deck.

In the past I’ve published a fairly complex version of Triumph that used a stripped deck and had a kicker ending, but used the flip over production to clean up the deck for the reveal. About a month ago, I think I finally hit on a sequence that makes sense, and it’s pretty simple, I’m surprised I didn’t think of it earlier. Here it is:

Card is selected and returned to the deck, but secretly controlled to the top.
The bottom half is flipped face up and you are going to do a modified zarrow shuffle. You will shuffle all but the top card (selected card) of the face down half into the bottom half of the face up cards. Then run about a quarter of the face up cards, drop the final face down card, and run the remaining face up cards.
You will now strip out the face up cards, but add the face down selection to the face up cards, so they to on top.
Find the natural break between the face up and face down halves. Side jog the face up half and drop it on the table. They should flip over, giving you deck that’s all face down except for the face up selection!

That’s it. While the shuffle procedure reads fairly complex, it’s not. If you can do a Zarrow Shuffle, you can do this.
-Louie

Double Cupped…

One thing that drives me nuts is when I go to coffee shops and they give me a to go cup that’s double cupped. To me it feels wasteful to give me two cups, when one will do the job. That inspired me to mess around with a way to make the second cup disappear.

The method that I came up with was pretty simple. It’s the top inch of a cup and only half of the “circle”, and this makes a sort of a shell for the top of the front of the outer cup. If I held the cup so that my hand covers the bottom of the shell, it looks like a coffee cup that’s double cupped. I can also lift the top cup up and it creates the illusion that the two cups are separate. For the vanish I simple need to steal this little shell for the vanish.

The hard thing is to figure out how to ditch the shell. My idea was to palm the shell as I take the lid off of the cup. That still leaves the actual ditch of the shell, I think if I put the lid into my table, then it’s out of sight out of mind.

So now the second cup has been stolen, and the audience doesn’t know that yet. How do I reveal it? Maybe I could produce a cup and then call attention to the original double cup is now a single cup?

Honestly, I don’t know how to end the trick. I will say that this is probably a trick I’ll never do, so I don’t know how much energy I’m going to put into figuring it out.

-Louie

Hiding The Second Card…

A couple of weeks ago I was on an airplane and messing around with some cards. I was thinking that there wasn’t (that I was aware of) a false count like an Elmsley Count or Jordan Count that hid the second from the top card of a face down pile. After playing around a little bit I came up with a count to do hide the second from the top:

Count 1: Push off a double
Count 2: push off a single with the left hand. The right hand buckles the bottom card and when the card from the left hand covers the right hands cards, the the left hand steals the top card of the right hand’s pile.
Count 3: deal one card
Count 4: deal one card

That’s it, pretty simple. There’s not much to it. I think the reason not many people have explored a count that hides the second from the top card is that you have pretty much have to start with a double push off. This isn’t the easiest thing to do…it’s not crazy hard, but hard enough to scare away people.

I will say there are probably better ways to hide the card second from the top of the deck. I will also say it was a fun way to spend some time on a plane!

-Louie

Let Them Show You…

The amount of magicians that complain when people want to show them a magic trick is staggering. I don’t get it, why not let the person show you?
The person will be the star for a minute, and I think that’s where the problem is, most magicians have a ego that won’t let them step away and let someone else into the spotlight.

At a gig the other night a someone wanted to show me a trick and I say “yes”.

They did the trick with the glide where at the end the slap the cards out of your hand and one card is left in your hand and it’s the selected card. When I let her do it, she nailed it! That’s going to be one of the memories from the party for the dozen people that say it, and something they’ll talk about longer than my roving set.

I’m not saying you should 100% always let the person show you the trick. There are times when it’s inappropriate, like in the middle of a ticketed formal show. but if you’re roving or after a show, why not? It’s not going to hurt anything.

-Louie

Mish Mash Wallet

A few weeks ago I ordered a custom designed wallet that had playing cards on it (you can read about my card wallet here). I had totally forgotten about it, until it arrived yesterday. It was a fun surprise!

Here’s the wallet:

This wallet is essentially Harry Anderson’s MishMash card design, but set up like John Kennedy’s Mind Power Deck! I’m happy with how it turned out, however if I was going to make another one, there are a few small changes. Right now it’s a way to force one of 8 cards, then a fishing procedure to know the card.

I’ve got an idea to then have the card appear in your wallet, with no sleight of hand! I’m going to play with this idea later this week!

-Louie