Magic Cards

[natalie]

 Magic Cards

Magic cards is the art of creating magic with a normal, day to day used card deck or packet of playing cards. It is widely performed in most magic shows and is even a major tool in street magic.




Card magic is being performed since times immemorial. Easy and cheap to acquire, magicians have always used cards for their performance as the number of tricks which can be performed are large and varied and relatively easy to learn after mastering the basic techniques of magic cards.

Even though there can be thousands and thousands of card tricks, the basic principals underlying all these techniques remain the same and number around a few hundred. Most of these techniques can be classified either as sleight of hand, self-working or trick decks.


Sleight of hand and self working basically involve using the hands skillfully to move the cards within the deck around. These techniques are largely a test of the dexterity of the hand movements.

They require a lot of practice and are used in the performance of most card tricks. Since the audience is always watching the hands of the magician, especially during the performance of card tricks, both the sleight of hand and self working have to be truly mastered in order to perform a perfect magical show.

Trick decks are special decks of cards which have been specially developed for magical performances. They do not consist of the normal fifty-two cards present in a pack of cards. One such example of trick decks is the Svengali deck. A Svengali deck consists of 26 cards of the same color and denomination, such as the eight of diamonds, and twenty six other normal cards.

These twenty six, eight of diamonds are slightly shorter in height than the other twenty six and help the magician to perform several tricks with them.