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hi again lol....

I was wondering what to do.....

I own the complete card college books, but am wondering whether i should learn the majority of card sleights first before attempting to learn some tricks, or should i find tricks i like to learn, and then use the card college books as a guide to help me master the tricks and sleights involved?

i'll answer that question two ways.

if your learning for personal achievment spend a few months each learning every sleight that you can till they become automatic, then use the tricks as a guide to make your own using as many of the sleights as you can.

if your learning to perform for the public and ultimatly go comercial then pick 5 - 10 tricks that apeal to you and learn the routines and the seights till they are second nature and seemless.
out of thoughs 5 - 10 pick a few favourates and film yourself doing the tricks, play them back and make notes on your performance of the trick and how it comes across to you, re-film as needed and then show the films to your friends and make notes on there reactions.
after that show them live to your friends and again make notes and ajustments as needed, after all that and you know up to 10 tricks well and a few seemlessly in both performance and presentation, start advertising yourself.

Different people have different opinions. Me, I would love to learn every sleght in the world. I don't know why, I just feel much more satisfied comparing learning a sleight to a trick. Build up your repotoire (spelling?) of card moves and tricks in any way you want to, have your own, style, and rely on that you need to.

I fell much safer with sleights down pat. Okay, some tricks are miraculously clever and well thought out, but these are needles in haystacks. Have your own way of card magic, do whatever pleases you, I would just say one thing: Don't ever resort to gimmiks.

That is my opinion. Nuff said

thanks for your views

I perform magic for entertainment so i think il find a few tricks i like and film myself

I would love to be able to perform every sleight, but i feel that if i try to continually learn sleights, i will neglect the reason i chose to perform magic.

Many thanks again

I got the full Card College set in September have studied it almost every day and am still in the middle of Volume 2.

I would say that these volumes strike a nice balance for you so you don't have to choose which approach you will be taking right away. Just start reading them. Basically, the Giobbi teaches you sleights, then gives you tricks as an example of how to implement them.

I think you would be cheating yourself of a proper education if you chose to work your way through the book without reading through the tricks, because knowing how sleights can be used is just as important as knowing how to do a sleight.

Conversely, you would never be able to just search through the books for tricks without reading about the sleights first, because the trick descriptions simply wouldn't make sense.

So the bottom line is to stop considering this question at all, and just start reading and working! You have great tools. Use them.

I know that when I started reading RRTCM (Card college is on my christmas list), the first thing I did was go to the platform tricks section near the back to learn some of the famous tricks. Of course, I didn't have a clue what I was doing, as I couldn't really perform any sleight well. So, I started reading the first chapter on the overhand shuffle (originally planning to brush up on things), and ended up studying the whole book, one sleight at a time, with a trick or two to go with it. The point I'm trying to make is that (as has been said before me), just go for what works for you. You might start out to learn a certain way, and 6 months down realize that you completely U-turned and did it a different way. If I would have to give a "definite" answer though, I would say, learn each sleight as it comes in the books, and then a trick or two to go with the sleight. Obviously, you'll find that you start forgetting tricks as more advanced (and probably better) ones come along as you learn more advanced sleights. That's what happened to me, and I now don't really use many of the tricks (if any) mentioned in the first two chapters of RRTCM. I also find that learning sleights first, gives you the scope to invent your own tricks and be creative. For example, I used to use "poker player's picnic" (?) from RRTCM, but have now don't use it because I invented (as far as I know) a better ace cutting effect using the sleights from the book.

Anyway, this post is getting far longer than I intended, and I think that I have strayed off point a bit, but basically do what works for you, but if I had to say, go for learning sleights first, but with a trick or two to go with each......