Card Magic
Card magic is any magic that uses playing cards. It is a popular form of magic because this magic performance is impressive with its many fanciful moves and the prop which is a deck or more of playing cards easily carried around in a pocket.
Shin Lim, champion of 2015 FISM (Federation Internationale des Societes Magiques) in Card Magic, specializes in Card Magic. Shin Lim’s mother said that magic is an expensive hobby and so Shin Lim has chosen to focus on card magic. After being crowned the 2015 FISM Champion, Shin Lim continued to impress America and the world through YouTube, in his appearance on Penn and Teller: Fool Us and performance on America’s Got Talent, subsequently emerging the champion of the season. In light of all these achievements, Shin Lim has been proclaimed as the “Number One Sleight Of Hand Artist In The World” by Hufftngton Post. I have to disagree to this statement because it has been wildly overstated. Personally, I do respect and appreciate Shin Lim’s skills and performance. He has put a lot of thoughts and effort into designing his magic routines and they are full of originality. Nevertheless, the effects of his magic routines are still based on fundamental sleight of hands, misdirection and gimmicks like many older tricks are. It is the presentation that has “wow” the audience incorporated along with his skilful display of card flourishes in some case. Nevertheless, such a statement is made by non-magicians cum magic enthusiasts who are not well exposed to other famous magicians and magic performances. There are several legendary magicians who have established themselves as masters of sleight of hand card magicians as well as in other field of magic such as Dai Vernon and Darwin Ortiz. These magicians have conducted lectures, written books and have contributed greatly and made a great impact in the field of card magic and other forms of magic.
The most 2 commonly used sleight of hands in card magic are palming and the double lift. Palming is simply hiding a card in your palm where the audience could only see the back of your hand but not the card that is held on to your palm with your hand appearing in a natural gesture as if your hand is open. Double Lift is turning the top 2 cards simultaneously appearing as if it is only one card, showing the audience the second top card instead of the top. Magicians have modified this skill from Double Lift to Triple Lift by turning the top 3 cards.
These 2 sleight of hands are essential in performing many professional card magic and it is not easy to master for a beginner. There are countless of other sleight of hands in card magic but you have to take them step by step, mastering whichever one that is more relevant to your choice of card magic tricks that you want to master.
Card Sharks are people who uses sleight of hands to cheat in gambling in card games. There is an old book entitled, “The Expert at the Card Table” by S. W. Erdnase that teaches these techniques used by Card Sharks. Legendary magician, Dai Vernon studied this book thoroughly in his early years. Nowadays, these sleight of hands are incorporated into the moves of card magic. A magician can easily choose to be a conman if he chooses to use the techniques employed in magic in cheating instead of in performance.
There are 2 schools of thoughts in performing card magic.
Some magicians believe that in performing card magic, the magicians have to pretend to be clumsy in their handling of the playing cards. That will eliminate the thought from the audience that the magical effects are results of their card handling skills. This is a less popular school of thought.
The other school of thought is that the magicians have to demonstrate their skilful handling of the playing cards. In addition to performing the magical effects, the magicians have to spice up their performance with fanciful card handling called card flourish. Card flourish by itself is not card magic but it adds a touch of finesse to the magician’s performance. Shin Lim is such an example where he incorporated card flourish into his moves in his performance, which is very much a part of showmanship to entertain and to impress. Ordinary audience who knows from little to nothing about magic cannot distinguish the difference between magical effects to fanciful moves that are not magical in nature. Thus, they are merely impressed with the performance as a whole package, which indeed is the objective of the magician as a performer.
Card flourish moves are extremely difficult to master, much more difficult that the actual sleight of hands of card magic that are necessary for you to perform card magic. As a beginner, it is necessary to be able to master some basic card handling technique such as cutting and shuffling which include riffle shuffle. If you have ever play any card games, be it poker, black jack, bridge, etc. you would possibly have learned how to shuffle cards.
If you are a beginner in card magic, you can begin by using gimmick deck such as the Svengali Deck to perform simple to follow routine with impressive results.
If you could not manage fanciful shuffling, cutting and other simple card flourish like riffling, ribbon spread or card fan, it is unnecessary to employ such moves as they are not sleight of hands essential in producing the magical effect. They are just part of the showmanship to impress the audience. However, you would like to put in effort into mastering these few simple moves to value-add to your showmanship after all a magician’s objective is to impress his audience.
So if you are aspiring to be a card magician, you may want to read one of the classic book on card magic, “The Royal Road To Card Magic” by Jean Hugard and Frederick Braue.