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Excuse my ignorance but could someone please tell me the difference between a stripper deck and a svengali deck? I know about ESP cards and I also saw other types of decks such as invisible and haunted and mirage. Are these all the same thing? What deck(s) do you recommend I get? I know I want to get one where you riffle them one way its normal then you riffle them another and they're all the same card. Thanks

Im not going to say too much but get yourself a svengali deck

With a stripper arranged in a certain way, you can do things like rifle and cut one way to get at, say, reds and the other way to get only blacks, or evens and odds, or certan suits or... you get the picture. You can also show the faces.

Mind you, get 52 stripper decks and.. no that's just madness! Get a svengali!

My only problem with the svengali is that it can't be examined by a spectator.

Unless of course you can switch it on them...

If I get a svengali deck I don't need to get a stripper one as well?

they are different decks, with different effects, i would recomend getting both at some stage

okay thanks for your help matt its pretty confusing knowing which one to get since there are so many different decks out there!

I found the best way round this confusion when I first started is go to a magic shop on line and read the discription of each deck for example this is the one for Svengali

One routine is as follows: a spectator is shown a regular deck then selects a card by cutting the cards in two. The magician (amazingly) predicts the card before it is even revealed. The card is then cut into the centre of the deck, where it magically jumps back to the top. This happens a number of times, before all of the cards change to the spectators selection, and then back to a normal deck again. A classic of magic!


And for Stripper

a spectator chooses any card then returns the card to the deck. The magician can give the deck a shuffle then in an instant you remove their selected card.

Stripper and Svengali are probably the most well known gimmick decks but there are many many to choose from...

Brainwave Deck
Cardiologist Deck
ID
Mirage Deck
Rama Deck
Rising Card Deck
Plus many many more. Some do the same sort of thing as another so have a good read of the effect each can produce and see what suits your style best. I would say to get Svengali and Stripper first as these are easy to handle and the list of effects go on and on.

Hope that helps

Thanks Alex. I had a feeling that stripper and svengali were the most popular since those two get talked about the most so they're on my wishlist after that I'll just have to think about the others before buying. Some sound a bit unnecessary to me in my opinion

btw my names Andy. My first two initials are AJ for Andrew John (my middle name) but I was born in 83 not 82

also you might want to get hold of a svengali book which will teach you lots of routines and effects as well, get them from most good magic dealers

yeah I wouldn't know what to do with them if I didn't buy the book

You'd be surprised - the decks will nearly always come with routines included. Buy a few decks, figure out what they can be used for, decide which is your favourite, then buy the accompanying book.

Hell, you might not even need to buy the books anyway!

guys guys your confusing the poor fellow it quite simple and dosn't give anything away that isn't in the description if you look hard enough.

a stripper / wizard deck is an any card locator deck.

a svengali is a one way forcing deck.

a brainwave / ID, slightly diferent in setup are any card revelation decks.

Just to help complete the list, a Eureka deck is a marked stripper deck.

Thanks magicdiscoman thats exactly what I wanted to know. Looks like a stripper and svengali is on my list then possibly ID later