Magic Tricks

I give pretty harsh reviews to tricks that oversell themselves, but this one actually works. Some people said they were up and running with this trick in five minutes; it took me about an hour to practice it because I wanted to come up with workarounds for all the points in the trick where I wasn't sure my card handling skills were good enough to prevent flashing, etc.

Note, like most tricks that claim there are "no moves involved", there are... some moves involved. You do have to either (a) be good at card handling, or (b) come up with some awkward patter to cover for not being good at card handling. Without giving anything away, for example, there is a point that you have to riff to a small break in the deck and cut the cards there to control a desired card to the top. Good card magicians can do that without thinking. Me on the other hand, I peek at the deck, riffle my thumb along the edge, and say, "I'm going to count to card [whisperwhisperwhisper] thirty-five...", break the cards at that point, and then reveal the card which is *not* the spectator's card. The way I do this is just to make a faux-dramatic expression while I'm riffing and counting and say "Wouldn't you be amazed if this was..." and then reveal the card and say, "Just kidding, that's not your card." So then to the spectator, the riffing and the counting was all just part of the joke, and it doesn't register with them as "cheating" since in their mind you didn't actually use it to accomplish anything.

I like easy tricks and taking the path of least resistance, and if it's good enough for me, you'll be able to do great with it as well :)