talkmagic.co.uk

Lady of Mystery wrote:As people have said above, there's much more to a sleight than just doing the sleight. Misdirection is a massive part of this, you should be acting as naturally as possible, turning over a card isn't a big deal so do draw too much attention to it. Also you need to think about how you show cards when you aren't doing the sleight, try to make that look exactly the same as the times when you are performing the sleight. That way people will get used to the way you handle the cards. Suddenly do something different and people are going to notice.

Lady of Mystery hit the nail on the head. Misdirection and conditioning are equally important.

'Nobody turns a card over like that'

Give 20 people a deck & tell them to turn over the top card. You'll find they won't always do it the same way. There's no need to worry about how you do it as long as you do it the same way each time.

And do the DL in the same casual manner as you'd turn a single over. To them that's all you're doing. If you feel guilty about it then people will pick up on that.

And check out Al Schneider's site - http://www.omenquest.com/wmcezine/i003/imain.htm

There's a whole bunch of free stuff there on the DL.

when i first started with the DL, i got a bit obsessed by it - and learnt loads of different versions. Personaly i like bro hammans version without any get ready. but depending on the trick i'll use other dl's (depends on which handling fits with the rest of the trick / or tricks that I'm doing).

consider what you do before the dl starts, and what you do after the dl is done. think about your movents, make it flow and seem natural. use your eyes and voice to dirct the attention (you shouldn't need to misdirect on a grand scale, just slightly remove the focus for a moment)

above all act like you have just turned 1 card over (make yourself believe you have turned one card over)

i improved not by making the slights perfect but by working on my acting and direction by reading stuff like Tameriz, Ortiz, Stanislavski, Wonder. There's load of stuff out there that can really help. All these guy have been recomended on this site.

When i was learning the DL to begin with, (i learnt it in Mark Wilsons Complete Course), there was a very good tip in there. He said to make sure that you don't perform it that much, treat it as something you use sparingly, that way you wont overuse it and you have more experience with slotting it into a routine without people noticing as Lady of Mystery said.

Im still working on getting it smoother, as my break is rather sloppy.