talkmagic.co.uk

how many cuts and shuffles would you suggest to go in a card routine?
I'm stuck a bit, i found, to many and the effect at the end isn't as hard hitting. to little, and people aren't as amazed and start guessing at what you done.

so, how many is the right number?

What routine is this? In an ACR - practically none! In a "Let's find your card" piece as few as possible from you, and lots from your audience. It is near impossible to suggest how many would be right without knowing what material you are performing.

This really depends on the routine. Some magicians have made a career out of just fancy shuffling and cutting. Personally, i find too many gets boring, i am not really into "SHOW BOATING" and only do it if i am asked. Just two or three should be fine. however, having said that some routines do require quite a bit. If you say what the effect is then we can help you

As someone who really isn't in to card routines, can I suggest that you keep it simple, concentrate on the magic and entertaining the specs and don't worry about how many fancy bits you can incorporate. View the whole thing as a spectator and ask yourself why they would want to sit and watch what you're doing. Save the finger flinging routines for practice and to show to fellow cardicians who would probably appreciate and understand it far more than the public.

Rather than being about a quantity of actions covering your tracks, think of it in terms of perception: every single thing you do has to be there for a reason, and in an order that is clear and easily understood by the spec. What you do, what you say and when are all he has available to weave his own version of events. Your job is to lead him naturally ever further away from what's actually going on and into a false reality. How far from what's actually happening he gets is directly proportional to the strength of the effect the revelation will have on him.

tomo. i never quite got tht. but thnks anyway. lol

well... lets pick 2 examples:
the spectator picks a card, i split the deck, then riffle shuffle, i take the top card, which isn't their card, give it them, wave another card over, and the card tht i have jst given them is in my hand, and they are holding their card.

is a cut and a shuffle enough in that routine?

and:

a card is picked, placed on top or bottom, the deck is split, three cards are delt out, the spectator turns a card over, which will be their card.

is one cut enough?

thanks.

Mikey.666 wrote:tomo. i never quite got tht. but thnks anyway. lol

well... lets pick 2 examples:
the spectator picks a card, i split the deck, then riffle shuffle, i take the top card, which isn't their card, give it them, wave another card over, and the card tht i have jst given them is in my hand, and they are holding their card.

is a cut and a shuffle enough in that routine?

If that's all it takes mechanically then yes, why not. You still have to gently and logically increase the conceptual gap between where they think the card is and where it actually ends up using patter, so that when you both turn your cards over, the discrepency between what they think happened and what actually happened are impossibly far apart. That's where the magical feeling will come from.

As the old acronym goes, Keep It Simple Stupid. I only ever cut or shuffle the deck when it's specifically required by the routine. The reason for this is due to two factors, one of which comes from my own preferences and opinions, the other from observation.

Firstly, when I began to concentrate on proper sleight of hand magic I had some preconceptions about magicians. Specifically I was aware that sleight of hand magic requires misdirection and clever little bits of finger work to get the job done, therefore whenever I'd seen a trick done which has any kind of extraneous movement I thought that something arcane was happening. Similarly I knew that magicians could apparently cut and shuffle the deck whilst really retaining it's order. Now I know that it's not nearly as cut and dried as all that but a lot of lay people have these ideas too, so I try to keep all my tricks as clean as possible when viewed from this perspective. It works for me and my performing style.

Secondly, over the time I've been doing cards I've observed the reactions I get to tricks and modified or experimented accordingly, as well as watching other people perform some of the same tricks as myself. For example, I once did Triumph in a busy pub and it went down well. Later on another of my friends did it to a different group of people but it so happened that one of the original spectator's saw it too. I asked the guy what he thought of our respective styles and if he had any preference. He replied that he was equally baffled both times but that my chum was a bit flashier, and overall he had no particular preference and liked both performances.

So try performing with and without cuts and shuffles and see how it suits you.

As the old acronym goes, Keep It Simple Stupid.

See also
http://www.talkmagic.co.uk/ftopic8649.php&highlight=