The one and only previous reviewer must have had a faulty DVD or player. The sleights start with employing 1-way decks without yourself having to do the dirty work. Admittedly, he does spend a lot of time showing one-way decks, even non-1-ways that are slightly misprinted.

Then he goes into gaffed cards. A pretty good coverage of available gaffs. For those who don't know about them, this alone is a very good education. He also shares some goofy gaffs for laughs.

Next up is special decks: ESP, Numbers, Alphas, Astrology, Slot Machine, Tarot, Crooked, Transparent and so on...

Ton Onosaka gets a mention for rub-on pips.

Next is Technical Terms. Just as it sounds, but if you don't know what a block is or the "top" of the deck, this will help you understand not only the other DVDs in this series but also most other books and DVDs.

Lots of cuts demonstrated, genuine and otherwise. Same with shuffles and some shady deals.

Stacked decks, whole or in part and an intro on how to use them.

Different breaks. Control techniques. More.

And a lot of ways to employ the Glide, as mentioned by the other reviewer.

I'd call cuts, shuffles, effective use of gaffs, use of a 1-way deck (especially a subtle one) and other others as being sleights.

This volume is definitely for beginners and it's a very thorough basis for building upon. This entire set of 8 gets progressively more difficult and takes a lot of practice to master some of his false counts on volume 8 (see his Cardboard Chameleons; Glen Guldbeck does a magnificent job on UToob).

Should you buy this complete set? Well, are you exceptionally experienced with card handling? That is, could you show Ed Marlo a thing or two if he was alive? If so then skip it.

Otherwise, there's some stuff here that will surprise you and expand your abilities, much the same as the full, original Card College will do but this is video. Buy the whole set if it is cheaper that way (and usually is).

But as mentioned, if you know your way around a deck already, this first volume will open your eyes to possibilities you never thought of but it won't teach you any whizzo skills. You could skip it, but then why have 7 volumes of an 8 volume set?

I bought Volume One, expecting to learn everything that was listed on the back of the DVD and was stunned when the DVD ended much earlier than I thought it would.

For $ 30, I expected to be taught how to do an overhand shuffle, a Hindu shuffle, etc. All I really learned was the Glide (which I already knew), various breaks, the step and the jog.

Volume One is a great DVD for beginners, because Daryl goes super-slow and explains things very well, but it's just not worth the steep pricetag in my opinion. If you can afford the complete set, it would probably be money well spent, but if you're going to buy Volume One as a standalone, I wouldn't recommend it.