LEARNING CARD MAGIC

You can learn more magic tricks on the pages of this website, but there are more places you can learn, too. Checkout your local bookstore or school library. Magic books are easy to find, and they’ll expose you to hundreds of other tricks that you can do with playing cards.

Card magic happens to be the most written about type of magic in the world. There are more card tricks and methods for those tricks in existence than any other type of trick.This doesn’t mean there are a few dozen. No. There are thousands. Really. Thousands upon thousands.

If you find that hard to believe, take a look for yourself. Open up some books and start learning!

2 Card Monte

The Two Card Monte is a popular trick, especially amongst beginners. It’s easy to do, but can really amaze people with just a little practice.
What your audience sees is that you have two different cards. You show them which one you place behind you back, and ask them which one is left. They guess wrong, because the cards keep switching places! You can repeat this several times, but let’s not overdo it!
To do this trick, you need to buy the special Two Card Monte cards, or make your own! You can make your own by taking four different playing cards, and gluing two of them together face to face. This will look like one card that has a back design on both sides. The other two cards should be glued together back to back. This will look like one card with two different faces!
To perform the trick, you hold the two cards together to display them. Name the card that your audience can see. Then turn both cards over at once — still holding them together — and name the new card that’s facing them. The illusion is that the audience sees two different cards, front and back. What’s really happening is that they are seeing both sides of a double backed card, and both sides of a double faced card. Let them see you put the face card behind your back, and secretly turn it over. Bring it back out with the other side showing, and it will look like the cards have switched places. Now, do that turnover move again.
Take a look at The Toronto Magic Guy performing and teaching this trick in the video above, and you’ll see just how easy it can be!

The PaperClip Card Trick Illusion

Okay, I’ll show you how to do this. I’ll show you what it does. But I won’t tell you why it works.

This is a cool magic trick, but it’s even better to present it as a stunt or a “betcha”. Watch the video, spend a minute to make the trick, and then look closely at why it actually works.

What’s it all about? You show your spectator which card is in the middle of a row of five. Then all they have to do is clip that card with a paperclip. But, they can’t do it. Weird!

The Circus Card Trick

This is the Circus Card Trick, but is also taught simply as “The Key Card Trick”. The basic routine apparently dates back over 100 years, and was performed… at the circus! Not in the circus. At the circus. It’s something the workers would do to con each other… or entertain each other? The card trick is quite simple to learn, and even easier to do. Like most magic with cards, it’s best to follow along with a deck of cards in your hand.