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Now I love packet tricks N F W being one of my personal favorites, but i always wonder how to fit them into my routines. Now if i have them on me and someone wants something impromptu then i have no trouble in "getting them out" (ooer pardon the pun) but i always feel that if I'm doing a show and i've already used a deck of cards then why not use 3 or 4 out of that deck? I think it's just me being a little paranoid in that the spectator would start to quetion - "why is he using some new cards that are put to one side when there is a whole deck there? AAh they must be Rigged or fake". Now walking round table to table in restaurants there's probably a different kind of flow to ones performance (i've never done it myself yet) and packet tricks could probably be used alot of the time as only 3 or 4 effects are done at each table and you want your magic to grab them as it were.
Anyway any ideas would be great Thanks.

If you look up Twisted Sister and NFW using the search function, you'll find lots of advice that you can use with NFW and how to work packet tricks into routines.

Good luck

Just leave the cards in the deck to start with, and take off the first howevermanycards you want when you want to show the effect.

If you want to do some tricks with the deck beforehand, just palm off the packet, and load it on the deck whenever you want to.

Kati

I keep any packet tricks wrapped in a couple elastic bands in my pocket.
The motivation I use to take them out is to perform Crazy Man's Handcuffs. That way, I have the cards out already on the table ("I keep these bands around these cards for safe keeping/so I don't lose them/[insert reason here]... etc") and can use them right after the elastic band routine.

I suppose it's all about finding a 'motivation' to use a different set of cards... i.e. the packet.

Hi Sam,

I use packet tricks, faked decks and straight decks all in one session. I use the Nudist Deck to open because it really can't fail and is a confidence booster.

When I put it away no-one is surprised when I get out an ordinary deck later on because the first deck had reverted to blanks and was no longer any good for doing magic (my routine for nudist deck hinges round a poorly deck unable to perform magic, cos they're blank, getting better, and then going poorly at the end again).

The packet tricks I do are ones which its obvious to the spectator are cards I wouldn't have removed from my normal deck and that is the secret to using packet tricks, choose them carefully.

Twisted Sisters, Emsley's 4 card trick etc leave you with cards that can be examined at the end but by their nature don't give spectators a reason for thinking that they should have been taken from your deck of cards.

Tenko wrote:Twisted Sisters ... leaves you with cards that can be examined at the end.

Are we thinking about the same Twisted Sisters here?

And the reason for not taking TS from a normal deck is that normal decks don't have so many jokers, I guess.

Kati

Cheers for the advice people.

personally I only use packet tricks in a group to group situation where I will also be performing to the same people table to table later.

I claim that I am going to show them a couple of quick effects now and will be performing more elaborate effects at the table.

This is good for me in two ways, it warms them to me so that I am not going to the tables cold (they are expecting me) and although the effects I do for them in their small groups by the bar for instance, are quick, they are always chosen for their impact on the audience so they also know of my ablity as a magician ie. I am not Uncle Jim boring the a@se off them with a mathematical counting trick.

That's why I believe effects like NFW are good in this situation, Crazy man's handcuffs is also good! etc. I have a wide range of quick effects that are good in this situation!

JB,

I follow what you are saying, what types of packet tricks do you perform in your initial meetings of your punters ??

I find 'Any queen' where one queen is reversed in the packet of four is a killer in that type of situation.

Tenko wrote:JB,

I follow what you are saying, what types of packet tricks do you perform in your initial meetings of your punters ??

I use NFW, my own version of Colour Monte, Dr Daleys Last Trick and a follow on to it that seemingly shows them how it's done but really leads them up the garden path as you would expect any magician to do!

I also use Jumping Gemini, and a trick that I call Yours and Mine but is a version of a trick marketed under a different name which escapes me now but a few of us Plymouth Magicians go together and came up with a better version than the marketed product.

Basically you show six cards and claim you already know which cards will be chosen by the specy.....you ask them to name a number and you count to that number and deal a card into their hand, you ask them not to look on the back for now as the proof is written on the back, you then deal the cards down and are left with two cards which they have a free choice of!

Then you show that the backs of the cards the magician is left with has Mine written on the back and the two the specy chose has Yours written on the back and they are also different coloured backs....The Mine cards are normal red colour backs the Yours cards are yellow backs!

I know some of these effects are not marketed packet tricks but they are small packet magic which are not taken from the regular deck.....I just bring them out and do them, never been questioned in 10 years of performing!

As Kati noted, NFW starts off with four jokers (apparently), which is a couple more than you'd have in a normal deck anyway.

I don't personally do NFW anymore, but I used to and I did use it walkaround. Because it was four jokers I just bought out a little envelope and pattered about "how every deck has jokers and us magicians always remove them, and over time I ended up with a big pile of them. But I also discovered that out of the dozens and dozens of Jokers I'd accumulated, four of them were very special... and here they are."

For other packet tricks, it kind of depends on what the gaffs are you are ringing in, but let's say you had a packet of five cards that is going to be represented as four and the top one you could show the back of and the bottom you could flash the face... load them onto the bottom of the deck via a palm/cop/whatever you are happy with. Run through the deck face down, up jog four cards, and then do the Vernon substitute transfer to switch the packet in the action of stripping them out and putting the deck out of the way.

Personally I don't even work that hard most of the time. For instance; I do one trick called 'Post Natal Prediction', it needs a packet of special cards, but because the audience is going to be openly shown three special cards, I just bring out a small packet of cards from my pocket and say "I have 3 special cards here - I will show you what's special about them in a moment" and I drop the packet on top of the deck and I'm set to go (I've also got into play a couple of extra cards at the same time).

Andy.

Hows about this - for TS I sometimes mention that the cards are in the wallet as they're from different coloured decks and it's just easier to carry them around together as opposed to two different decks...personally I don't like to have the cards coming from the deck as it's a load of hassle and I think that the above comment works fine. Alternatively, how about, when conditions allow, making a deck up of all the packet tricks you have so that you can carry em around with you and just take choose the ones you need?