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I have just started teaching a young boy magic (My first apprentice!!) and he is catching on very quickly. However, he is keen to run out and buy gimmicked decks

I have been teaching him really strong tricks with regular decks for this very reason. I told him he will always be armed with material, wherever there is a deck of cards this way. Of course there are some amazing tricks that can only be performed with gimmicked decks, but adding these into your routine is the way to go.

There is of course spooked.. *wink wink* as an exception to this rule, completely un gimmicked, borrowed deck, think I'll save that lesson for a while. I don't want a student/mentor batle after all!!

I must confess that when I first started developing our art as serious hobby for myself I was inclined to rush out and buy gimmicked decks (Sneak a Peek, In a Flash, Svengali etc) but over time I have come to realise that these only hold a certain wow factor and you do get the inspection question arising.

But since I have taken the time to learn tricks with a standard deck I do not get those questions.

For instance a typical set up for me is to always start with SANDWICH OUTDONE as found on Cutting Edge Cards And Coins DVD by the J Team CLICKY. The very nature of this effect and the way the deck is cut means I can do this effect and retained a stacked order in my deck ready to move straight on to another kicker which utilises a stacked deck (it changes regularly hence why I am not naming stacked effects )

In a flash is the only gimmicked deck I ever use now really (mainly cos my svengali and my stripper decks are well worn and used) so if you don't want the see your cards issue then the best way really really is to use a standard deck...... there are so many setups you can do with a normal deck and so many super strong effects from ambitious card to biddle trick to sandwich outdone to ......... well to just about any other card trick you can be bothered to learn.......

If you must use a gimmicked deck or decks then you must preplan your routine so that you start with a gimmicked deck and while they are sayin WTF they go into your pocket..... some coin magic or other magic then if you must your next gimmicked deck, back to pocket.... a different effect then for you last few tricks pull out your STANDARD UNGIMMICKED deck, do a few killer tricks to floor em AND THEN offer inspection of the cards!!

I don't think I've ever had a spectator ask me to see my cards.

When I begin, I always show my cards front and back and say something like "I've got a deck of normal cards here. You wanna check them?" They usually say no. If not, show them . Then I go, "You trust me then?" And they most likely say yes. Then I joke "not the best thing to do but we'll continue anyways!".

The introduction is very important. It builds up the spectator's trust in you. Once you get their trust, you can start doing gaffs. I think, if you have something that the spectator cannot inspect, start off with a trick that they can inspect with! Have them build up some trust in you and then do a deck switch.

The best deck switch is to put your cards back into the box, put them into the pocket with your gaff deck in. Then just take out the other deck saying something like "Oh, I've got another thing to show you". Voila!

Steve

You should never give the spec any reason to believe that there is anything fishy about your cards. Just handle and present them in the same relaxed and neutral way that you do with any ordinary deck. The idea of a gimmick or stacked deck should never even come into their heads.

In a couple other post I said about a guy who didnt belive a word i said and even told me i had a scotch and soda soon as i brought it out and decided to examine them. grrrrr.

Remeber some people will think your up to no good no matter what. you could perform naked and some one will tell you its still up your sleeve. I was in a t shirt once vanished a sponge ball and got told it was up my sleeve to wich i replied nope its up yours and produced it from her sleeve.

Deck switching, or being natural with the cards dont be guilty etc etc this is very sound advice. But I was once told this "I dont trust magicians., I know its all a trick" in them cases what can you do.

Just be natural is the best advice.

you will always get smart a$$es and awkward cases. It goes with the territory i guess.

Just thought I'd share a gimmick use having the opposite effect of raising suspicion, rather diffusing it.

Only last Saturday, I had just got a girl to "shuffle" a pack of cards by shaking up the inflated balloon that her signed card was in. I then proceeded to pull her card through the balloon without bursting it. Everyone was floored except for the smart guy who said smugly "I know how you did it!".

I leant across to enquire discreetly upon his theories and his responce was "well...oh, I used to do a bit of magic, it was JUST sleight of hand". I had to laugh. "Firstly if you delved far at all, you would know that even if you do spot what may be going on, you keep it to yourself as you would not like it if I were to reveal your methods openly should you have the balls perform in public rather just in front of your computer while leeching youpoohb, and secondly on further delving you would have learned that there is no such thing as JUST sleight of hand. And at any rate, the card really did go right through the balloon so meh ".

Anyway, long story short, I racked my brains for something completely hands off to blow away his vague preconceptions of sleights. As luck would have it, I had esp2 in my other pocket.
He was gutted, He shuffled as hard as his grubby, talentless little fingers could shuffle and I did not touch the cards once.
Spot on predictions 10 in a row.
The switch to a gimmick was both blatent and unnoticed in equal quantities. We had, after all, recently been chatting about psychological effects and tests.

"But, but...well, you must've, erm....oh" went he, looking despondent and baffled.

"your round then" went I, looking chuffed and thirsty.



Laugh? I nearly bought a packet of cigarrettes!

the most disarming thing i found to work is to start with something where it honestly doesnt matter what card they pick and hand over the entire pack and let them have a good rummage...

treat the pack as the vehicle, the journey is in your hands young jedi...

Very nicely put abraxus

It just goes to show what the general perception of magic is in the public eye and the respect (or, rather, lack thereof) that people seem to have for it and its exponents.

It's a shame, really.

As a few people have said, always have a backup normal deck in your pocket. I am never seen with a gaff deck and without a normal, identical one. I am not that big of a fan of the Svengali deck just because it is available in the "Marvin's Magic" series making it very well known, maybe it is just my paranoia but I do not like to perform too many things which are too easily available to the lay public. I do however have my ID with my almost 24/7, I keep it in my back right pocket and an identical un-gaffed deck in my back left pocket for a quick switch. I perform the ID replace it into the box and replace it into my pocket while the people are talking, I do this quickly, but VERY casually calling on no attention to myself (it is OK if they see you doing this, but if you do not pay attention to the move, they won't either), then (if and ONLY if) they ask to inspect the deck I pull out the normal deck which is in my back left pocket (even though one or two smart spectators might have caught a glimpse of me putting the deck into my pockets, they notice that I put it into my back pocket and not which back pocket I placed it in). If they do not ask to see it, I pull out the normal deck anyway, but instead of letting them inspect it I move onto another trick.

Also, like a few people have already stated:

When I first started out I always had people asking to inspect my deck (when I first started out I used a stripper deck a bit) and I could not give it away. I had no clue how to handle these people and would just say "No, this deck is special to me." and I would put it in my pocket and either walk away or pull out a COMPLETELY different deck... .

Now, barely anyone asks to inspect my decks (or anything for that matter) unless I do a very long performance. In a long performance you just get the "Well, this guy has done 10 tricks that there is no <excuse my language> way he could be doing this, his deck must be tricked." Normally I even get this to happen when I am already using a normal deck so no deck switching involved. When I am using a trick deck however I either say "Sure, just let me show you this last very cool trick first." and during this I quickly, but once again casually (making sure they SEE you placing it in the box, place the deck in the box (slightly secretively, in my back pocket, say a joke for misdirection, pull out the normal deck at this point, and pretend like nothing has happened. I then open up the box, trying to make everything look like it did when I showed them the gaffed deck, and then hand out the normal one I now have in my hands to the spectator for examination. I then move onto a trick involving a regular deck of cards.

Also, on a slightly off-topic note although it is still pertaining to cards:

Do you find yourself having excessive amounts of cards on you at ALL times? With me on a normal day (some times when I am having a "I don't want to do magic today type of day I will only have one deck but otherwise...) I have 3-5 decks in my pockets and more in my backpack/coat/suitcase/car and sometimes have 3 or so dupes per type of deck I have with me. Today I found myself with...

1 Black Tiger ID in my back right pocket.
1 Black Tiger Normal deck in my back left pocket.
1 Black Tiger Stripper deck in my front left pocket (for the smaller kids for which you need some "instant" tricks that seem impossible).
1 Black Tiger Svengali deck (for the same reason as above).
1 Ghost deck in my sweater pocket.
1 Bicycle Master's Edition deck in my backpack.
1 PK Ring on my finger
And finding myself reading PRISM in between classes and in the middle of class using up every second of my spare time.

WOW.

And on a side note to that comment, PRISM is highly recommended and as soon as I finish reading it I will post a very lengthy review. From what I've read so far though, the first trick (at least for me because the concepts in it where new [even though slightly basic], combined more than one concept to make the effect even more killer) is worth the price of the book.

Anyway I will shut my mouth now and quit rambling on and on. Sorry for making this so long.

Hope all of this helped above my "Off topic",
~David

P.S. Somehow the words "I also believe" ended up under everything that I wrote so if any part of this post is missing those words, please let me know so I can edit it!

Check it out...


My current bicycle blue svengali is an Ace of Hearts deck...

Ill take an ace put it in a napkin hold it under a pint of beer, have a seat at the bar and put the beer/napkin down on the table...

Ill sit there for a few seconds drink my beer and say mention (this is a bar inside a huge casino i go to) something like "ya i cashed out of blackjack tonite and made a couple bucks but when i cashed out they gave me some crazy dollar bills... ya check these out"

*perform 2 dollar window*

they look floored by now

then ill get out my svengali deck, give it a shuffle show the cards all different a few flips...

ask them if they believe in the ability to predict cards... ill write my prediction down on a napkin fold it up and give it to them... force the Ace of Hearts open the napkin and tada

Ace of Hearts put it back in the deck... it pops to the top of the deck..

they take their card put it back in the deck ill ask for a number between 2-5 and dribble the cards out in piles on the bar and ask them to select a pile... boom theres their card...

put it back in the deck..

show cards all different casually

put the deck of cards on top of my beer (by now 5 mins have passed since i sat down with my beer and they forgot all about me sitting down with the napkin under my beer) ask them if they believe in telekinesis or somethin to that effect... ask them to rub the top of the deck... ask them to move the beer... ask them to look inside the napkin boom theres the card....

if they are sayin "that deck is all aces" i dribble them upside down and fan em out and flip em over showing them all different....

then i usually say sometin like "if they were all aces the deck would look like this!" then dribble them down fanning them out showing all aces..... then say sometin like... but the deck isnt! the deck is normal... see? and flip thru them showing all different...

but its not until i dribble and fan the cards same when they know my deck is gaffed.... so how do i incorporate that effect into my routine without creating doubt.. cuz it is very stunning when you transform the deck to all aces.....


oh and on another note.. yes i do believe clean decks are best ok. However there are some effects by gaffed decks that blow people away and gaffed decks do have their own purpose.

saying NOT to use a gaffed deck is like tellin someone NOT to use a raven or NOT to use coin shells... i mean seriously. beginner to advanced, gaffed decks DO serve great purposes.

I get very good feed back from my current little bar routines its a great way to have a good nite making people smile and laugh ... i love it!! I would say that maybe 1/5 people suspect my deck is gaffed but not until i show the deck as all the same at the end of the routine. So i just want your feedback to help tidy and clean up my routine a bit.

thanks!!

datazing wrote:
so I do about 5 or 6 tricks with some people at the table... i show them the cards are all different... this, that, and the other thing... but for whatever reason everyone wants to "see" my cards!! Im wondering what you guys do to prevent them from even asking to see your stuff... the only thing else i can really think of is putting a legit bicycle blue deck in my pocket and switching them out... what are your thoughts?

And later you write:

if they are sayin "that deck is all aces" i dribble them upside down and fan em out and flip em over showing them all different....

then i usually say sometin like "if they were all aces the deck would look like this!" then dribble them down fanning them out showing all aces..... then say sometin like... but the deck isnt! the deck is normal... see? and flip thru them showing all different...

but its not until i dribble and fan the cards same when they know my deck is gaffed.... so how do i incorporate that effect into my routine without creating doubt.. cuz it is very stunning when you transform the deck to all aces.....

Disaster I cannot believe your attitude to magic. So you are essentially just showing people that there are trick decks and with one stroke you remove all the magic you so nicely created in the previous effects you did. By showing the cards are all aces, you completely undermine the great effects you created before, and you certainly should expect people suspect the deck. And that lot of spectators will be difficult suspecting spectators other magicains might have to cope with later.

The problem might arise the next weekend when the spectators encounter a serious card magician. All the damage has already been done. When he is doing signed card under napkin, they kind of know what to expect. They will expect that it probably just is a cheap trick. All cards are probably the same and he just asked the spectator to sign a copy of the card in advance. I am telling you, a lot of damage can be done to magic if you do not seriously analyse what exactly you are doing.

My suggestion is that you NEVER show all cards as aces, but simply do the other effects you talked about. By displaying the cards as aces you are destroying the magic you just created! Gone is the stop effects, gone is the card under tissue effect. Suddently its all reduced to how the gimmiced deck of cards have been constructed. I am very concerned....

Soren, I have the perfect patter for a Svengali deck that allows you to show all of the cards the same and it gets great reactions.

I'll PM you and the author of the thread tomorrow with it as it is time for me to go to bed right about now...

~David

I must agree with the majority of posts above......it is a bit ironic, but the more gimmicked you decks are, it seems that the less likely someone wants to see them, and the less gimmicked your decks are, the more someone wants to see them......just comes down to confidence, wording, experience, and being able to sell/perform the effect in a convincing enouhg fashion.

One thing that I do find is that often people want to go for the gusto, by the biggest and best trick available......it is then the only effect (gaffed deck in this case) that they know........unfortunately very few effects stand alone as well as they do in a set or series of effects.....you need to "save the best for last" and show a few other magic effects to soften the specs up and establish you talents prior to trying to walk throught he great wall or levitate over the kitchen table........

That is just my opinion......it is not to say you can't have success with a gaffed deck the day you buy it, it is just that your conidence comes in the fact that you can perform some material that is "bullet proof" and is completely clean for inspection....this confidence shows through when you are using gaffs, and you are far better at performing the gaffed effect

There's some good points from Moodini there. I tend to find that gaffed tricks are best saved for encore type tricks. I have a few 5 trick routines which use ordinary deck with maybe the odd gaffed card. The big gaffed tricks are great for when the spec wants one more trick and you need to out do your last one. This also gives you the perfect chance to switch the decks.

As the world's greatest exponent of the svengali deck I must obviously comment upon the matter.

OF COURSE you must show the deck to be all different and all the same again! That is the idea of the bloody trick! It is the STRONGEST thing you can do with the deck. And I don't just mean for selling them either although that goes without saying. I am referring to entertaining the public with them.

I understand Soren's concern and I can assure him that it is quite wrong. However he is not MARK LEWIS and I am so the fact that he has it wrong is perfectly understandable. I do respect everyone's opinion providing of course that they agree with my own.

There is no stronger card trick than the svengali deck PROVIDING you show the cards to be all different and then all the same again! The people freak out when you do that!

I often see the daft notion presented my magicians that you "should never show the cards to be all the same". Since they know virtually nothing about the svengali deck and how to handle it properly they are in no position to comment upon the matter.

There are two main arguments made against my most sensible policy. First that people will know that it is a trick deck and second they may already own the deck and know what it is.

Twaddle. Understandable twaddle but twaddle nevertheless.

I shall comment upon the matter later. I wish to let the mud bubble first.