Week Two Tutorial Video and Links
NEW! Interesting facts abut a shuffled deck of playing cards - FACTORIALS
PATTER IDEA: "One deck. Fifty-two cards. How many arrangements? Let's put it this way: Any time you pick up a well shuffled deck, you are almost certainly holding an arrangement of cards that has never before existed and might not exist again."
Equivoque - The Choice is Yours
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The Magician's Code:
1. Never tell beforehand what you prpose to do. Forewarned, the audience conceivably may discover the method. Wait until the climax, when all the necessary secret preparations have been made, before announcing what you will do.
2. Do not repeat a trick, unless you can duplicate the effect by another means.
3. Never reveal the secret of a trick. Many good card tricks are so simple that to reveal the method is to lower yourself in the estimation of the audience, which has given you great credit for a skill which you then confess you do not possess!
4. Use misdirection to help you conceal the vital sleight or subtlety employed in a trick. Misdirection is simply the diversion of the audience's attention during the moments when a sleight or subtlety is made use of.
- You can divert attention from your hands by addressing a remark to someone, at the same time glancing at him; all eyes will turn to the person you have addressed as he makes his response.
- You can divert attention by requesting someone to hand you a nearby object, which has the same effect of turning everyone's gaze, for an instant, towards the object; and in that instant you perform your secret sleight.
- You can divert attention by having someone show to others a card which he holds; as everyone glances at it, you perform the necessary sleight.
5. Know what your patter will be for a given trick. Not only will your patter help in entertaining your audience, but it aids in concealing the modus operandi of the feat. Since a certain amount of a person's powers of concentration must be devoted to assimilating that which you say, he cannot analyze quite so clearly that which you do.