Magic Card Tricks

16-11-23 00 / episode: 304

I thought card tricks were pretty cool but I was never interested in learning how to do a card trick.

It always seemed like it would take too much time with a small payoff.

I’m going to tell you some of the things I learned like the card manipulation techniques, location and psychology.

Let’s start with the manipulations.

Welcome to the Les Perras podcast episode 304.

This episode is all about magic card tricks.

Stay tuned to the end of the lesson as we will have a list of all the major vocabulary that I used in this podcast.

Dealing

This is the most basic manipulation. When you deal the cards you pass them out to people.

Usually you pass them out to players in a card game, but for a magic trick you could pass the cards out to the audience.

If you do some of the tricky dealing techniques, you can control who gets each card, and then it looks like magic, especially if you use it in combination with the next technique.

Shuffling

Now we have the second manipulation.

This is a way of mixing the cards.

Of course everyone thinks you are mixing all the cards fairly and randomly but you might actually be mixing them in special ways like mixing only part of the deck, or mixing them and then unmixing them when people aren’t looking.

Or you might only mix part of the deck or you might do the next technique which is especially tricky.

False shuffling

Another really important manipulation is to mix the cards so that you are not mixing them at all … you are only making it look like you are mixing them.

This is false shuffling.

It is important in a magic trick because you want to deceive people.

If they think the cards are mixed they will be more surprised by whatever trick you have done.

But sometimes you don’t need to do false shuffling, especially if you are good at the next technique:

Palming

Another fundamental manipulation is palming where you hold a card close against the palm of your hand so no one knows its there.

Controlling where the cards are is super important in magic, just like controlling people’s attention.

And there are different ways to control people’s attention depending on the location of the magic, which is my next topic.

Location

Card tricks are often done in close-up magical performances.

These are like a situation where people are within 3 metres of the magician.

Then there’s parlour performances, with larger audiences and a bigger venu but not as big as a stage.

Then there’s street magic which is performed, as you may guess, in the street.

Psychological Techniques

Finally and maybe the most important, are the psychological techniques where you are controlling the attention of the audience.

By controlling their attention, you make sure they don’t see some things, and so it appears to be magic.

The main trick magicians use is distraction so people are looking at the wrong place and do not notice the magic.

There’s a tonne more to learn but already I’m hooked.

I would love to learn magic now that I can see it is a combination of piled up techniques.

If you like listening to English for your extensive listening then hit the Subscribe button below so you can get more of my podcasts.

These podcasts are great for listening to a wide variety of vocabulary.

To that end at the end of this video I'm going to include a list of some of the major vocabulary that's in my podcast.

Thanks for listening.