talkmagic.co.uk

good evening all,
i was mucking around last night and came up with a sleight to change the order of 2 cards in the middle of the deck in the process of turning over the second one. ie 3H and 4H next to each other in middle of deck, turn over and show 4H, flip back over and close deck, from top to bottom it then goes 4H then 3H.
I guess no sleight is completely useless, but this one seems to be pretty up there.

But it got me to thinking, has anyone on here come up with a sleight that they consider to be completely useless? I thought it might be a fun topic at least...

The 51 turnover?

The clip shift is pretty bloody pointless in the real world

Probably a little controversial but for me it's the pass. I spent ages learning it but can't remeber the last time that I actually used it.

51 turnover, can be good.

I have a routine that uses a float pass, I used it in a competition, but in real life, 9/10 times I just do a double undercut, that 1/10 I do the float pass, so maybe not totally useless, but nearly.

Jing wrote:51 turnover, can be good.

surely the '1 turover' is a little more useful though

thinking about it, i've never once used the psychological card forces that derren brown teaches despite spending ages in front of the mirror practicing the scripting and actions and making it look natural.

tbh i'll agree that the pass is rather useless, in that there are much easier ways of achieving the same goal, doesn't mean i'll stop using it though!

not exactly a useless sleight but I'm trying out a particular whole deck shuffle that leaves the cards in sequence.
Last night I somehow forget to include the shuffle and performed the effect with the cards straight from box. I was probably talking too much and distracted myself.
The effect obviously worked and afterwards someone said "but they can't have been set up, because you shuffled the cards"
I love false memory. One day It might replace all sleights !

Or the 0 card turnover.
I will make your card turn over and then , the hard bit, I will make it turn back again without me even touching the deck.

For me it's the one handed (bog-standard) fan. I never use it in my work, but I still practice it!

I'd agree with Lady of Mystery, the pass. People get so worked up over "making their pass invisible" but I think in all of my working magic I only use it once. Same for the DL. People seem to get so caught up in learning a "perfect" DL and yet I don't use this at all in all of my working card magic. I'm not saying I don't hold double cards at all, but I use much better methods for getting and using them. I'm sure this will get some negative attention but really, I'm making my living this way so I'm not wrong.

has anyone on here come up with a sleight that they consider to be completely useless?

All my slights are pretty useless

Karma wrote:
All my slights are pretty useless

i suppose on a universal scale, yes they are i feel an existential crisis coming on.

Lawrence, clip shift? wuh? never heard of that one before.

and discombobulator- thanks for that, it gave me a good giggle. With a good moral to boot! My favourite was when doing an ambitious card routine and the spec swore blind that i had let them check their card and then let them put it in the middle of the deck themselves; in reality i had done no such thing, just your standard DL. Couldn't believe my luck, especially when they were telling everyone else about it a few minutes later! Had to politely decline to repeat the effect though