A deck is the collection of cards that a player plays with; it becomes that player’s library. The Faro Shuffle is one of the most legendary, and underused card sleights in magic. What it actually does to the deck is insane (I’ll tell you in a second), and I can’t believe more magicians aren’t… Learn a few basic moves and you can do endless tricks and routines.
Still, there are cheaper options available if you’re not worried about quality. Walk into any dollar store and you can grab a deck, or maybe even a 2 pack, of generic no-name playing cards for $1. And while it might entertain his ego to try and pull off that kind of thing using sleight of hand alone, the memorized deck makes it so stunning that there’s no better option. The effect is a perfect example of what I call ‘coincidental’ magic. Where two things line up that the magician surely had no control over—such as a playing card and a freely named number. The concept of a “forced card” is a very useful technique in magic.
What are the best stacked decks?
Once you master it, you can perform all sorts of miracles very easily, with many options for how you reveal the card that you have `forced’. There are ways to force a card with sleight of hand, but here are two very simple ways to accomplish this in a self-working manner. Remove the ad cards and jokers (you’ll use the Jokers mtg combo later) and lay out the 52 playing cards on your working surface.
You’ll need to learn some deck switching or solid audience control to avoid getting yourself in a jam with these decks. You can find lots of handlings to achieve an effect like the Invisible Deck with regular cards, and some are quite good, but nothing beats the gimmicked version. But when the magician reaches the thought of card, he can simply apply a little pressure to reveal that one, single face-down card. Half the cards (odd numbers) are turned one way in the deck, and half (even numbers) face the other way. The cards are aligned in back-to-back pairs adding up to 13 (9s with 4s, 10s with 3s, Ks with Ks), clubs with diamonds, spades with hearts.
Most of them will be completely examinable and can be shuffled and handled by spectators without any suspicion. But for certain effects, something like a One-Way Force Deck (an entire deck of one card, with maybe a few additional cards for “cover”) could come in handy. The color twist ending is also pretty fantastic and makes the whole trick even more visual and baffling. It sort of eliminates the idea that the magician could have used sleight of hand to achieve the effect. A stripper deck is a normal deck of cards with one edge slightly shaved on a diagonal. The other half of the deck consists of 26 copies of one single card (say, the 2 of Clubs).
It’s just a deck of cards with one turned over, which you can even hand them or have them pull out of the pack. I like to make a really big deal out of the card selection. I turn it into a whole process, first narrowing cards down to just red or black, then to one suit, then just high or low, and finally to a specific card. Because there’s ONE big Spade on the front of the Bicycle box (an odd number), so if the spectator chooses an odd number I take the cards out from that side, evens facing up and odds facing down. Simply “This deck wants to win the game,” or “This is a red-white deck” isn’t enough to help guide your decisions.
But I find that the memorized deck offers the best of both worlds—it LOOKS like you’re some kind of cardshark, but in reality, anyone with a basic level of skill with playing cards could do it. One of the more important aspects of constructing a deck is the mana ratio. This ratio determines how many basic land cards players will need in their deck in order to “cast” spell cards for combat and defense when playing a game. Too much mana can lead to players becoming “mana swamped” or pulling out mostly basic mana cards and not enough spell cards to attack. The opposite can also happen where players become “mana starved” and have too little mana to play their spell cards. Both of these leave players open for their opponent to attack their life points directly which works against them to win a game.
How many cards you need, what to include and how to put it all together from scratch. Learn the basics, then add one or two of these into your routine for special occasions to really WOW people. Or look into specialty cards like Mint or Black Lions that have built-in marking systems. However, there are few truly special, knockout effects that you can only do with a marked deck.
The MTG mana curve explained – and how to control it
I put the EVEN cards facing up toward the front of the box. In any case, there’s no WRONG way to arrange an Invisible Deck. You may want to arrange these cards closer to the middle of the pack for the best visual effect.
Learn how to Do 5 Advanced Card Magic Tricks.
This deck includes a repeating pattern of two alternating types of cards. One half of the deck is normal, while the other half is made up of shorter cards of the same rank (but different suits). This allows for seemingly impossible tricks, such as changing the entire deck to the same card. Inside the deck, the cards are typically divided into four suits (clubs, hearts, spades, diamonds), two colours (red and black), and face cards and number cards. The four Aces are a category of their own, and each deck comes with 1-2 Jokers and a handful of advertisement cards, as well. The memorized deck makes all of the above ‘child’s play’.
There’s no other conclusion to draw from the performances. This trick is one of the card tricks that made David Blaine famous, as he performed it in his early street magic specials, to insane reactions. Ambitious With Cards is a website entirely devoted to…coins. We share what we’ve learned in our daily journey to card mastery, along with our absolute love for card magic and games, with all of you. If you’ve ever purchased a pack of premium playing cards (in other words, not Bicycle or Bee), you might have noticed something.
These decks have subtle markings on the back, allowing the magician to know the identity of the cards without seeing their faces. The markings can be anything from slight alterations in a pattern to invisible inks visible only under certain conditions. Similar to a Svengali Deck, the Mirage Deck allows for easy location and control of a spectator’s selected card. The deck can also be fanned to show every card as being different, making it seem like a regular deck. If you’re getting into card magic or cardistry, you’ll find the most common cards available are usually Bicycle and Bee.