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[TheOldForum]

Expert Card Technique: Close-Up Table Magic
Authors: The legendary Hugard and Braue
Pages: 448
Illustrations: 318
Price: £12.99
You can buy it from somewhere I can't say
Rating 8/10
This book has been somewhat overshadowed by the amazing Royal Road to Card Magic, and it was upon the merits of RRCTM that I bought this book. I was surprised (correct me if I'm wrong) to see that there is no review already for this book, so here it is.

This book is more technically advanced than RRCTM, yet there is still an amount of overlapping, this, however gave me courage as there were a few things that I could already easily do, and also some sections that I was slightly confused about in RRCTM were usually cleared up by reading ECT. The style and clarity of writing is mirrored in ECT as to RRTCM and this is a miracle in itself as there are few other books that I understand so clearly. ECT, unlike RRTCM gives all the tricks in their own chapters, and all the sleights in their own, yet there is the same gradual progression in difficulty as you turn the pages (as in all good magic books.)

Here is the set-up of the book:

Part 1: Sleights

Chapter 1: The Secret Lifts- this chapter has the one hand push-off, something I was particularly pleased to see, despite the fact I still cannot do it!

Chapter 2: False Deals- nearly all the methods around to false deal, I found most of the stuff in this chapter pretty hard, but I have not really practiced it yet!

Chapter 3: The Side slip

Chapter 4: The Pass

Chapter 5: Palming- you won't believe how many different palms there are here, some easy, some hard, and 16 pages of em!

Chapter 6: False Shuffles

Chapter 7: False Cuts

Chapter 8: Changes

Chapter 9: Crimps

Chapter 10: The Spectator Peek

Chapter 11: The Glimpse

Chapter 12: The Jog

Chapter 13: The Reverse

Chapter 14: Sundry Sleights yet again a very filling chapter, 21 pages crammed with them.

Chapter15: The Rear Palm

Chapter 16: The Perfect Faro Shuffle- A difficult skill to master, definitely needs good cards to do this one.

Part 2: Flourishes A very useful chapter that I have spent most of my time on.

Part 3: Technique- Yet again a useful chapter, yet there seems to be overlapping within its own book here, as there is a section on Palming again!

Part 4: Tricks with Cards

Chapter 1: The Rising Cards

Chapter 2: Selected Tricks

Chapter 3: Birds Of a Feather

Chapter 4: Routines

Chapter 5: One Hand Card Magic

Chapter 6: The Ambitious Card

Chapter 7: Using The Double and Triple Lifts

Chapter 8: Discoveries

Chapter 9: Mental Discoveries

Chapter 10: Reverses

Chapter 11: Spelling

Chapter 12: Double-Faced Cards

Chapter 13: The Stranger Card

Chapter 14: Self-Working tricks

As you can see there are quite a few tricks here! (183 pages)

Part 5: Miscellany

This chapter covers everything from gimmicks such as the Carbon Card to the Svengali Shuffle, how to peel cards and tips on the pass. (One of the shorter chapters, 14 pages long.)

Part 6: Misdirection and Presentation

Chapter 1: Misdirection- a big essay on the subject, kinda hard on the brain but useful to improve your magic as a whole.

Chapter 2: Presentation- again useful for your magic, this chapter gives the usual and basic tips on the presentation of magic, including tips on patter, humour, Plots for tricks and Confederacy.

That my friends, is finally it, as you see this book gives you a lot to think about, and will improve your skills with cards immensely, it can be used with other sources to back it up, or it can be used as a stand alone book, and will take even a beginner to a high standard of card magic (with a lot of time and practice) I would say the difficulty of the book varies from about 2 or 3 to at least 4 in some places, yet I would suggest that absolute beginners should buy Royal Road to Card Magic first, (Believe me it is worth owning both ECT and RRTCM.)

I would definitely recommend this book, and please reply if you want any further detail about any of the chapters (it would take a year to detail all of them here)

Cheers
RJB

[jkrarup]

I agree this is a great book for a magicain to become familiar with an abundance of card slights.

Isn't there a sequel, "More Card Techniques"?

[dr_tezza]

fantastic book, i got my copy today and the stuff contained in it is great and well written so you can understand it

some other books i have you have to be a master magician just to figure out what it all means

thumbs up