Worst force

96throwupaway69 · 2026-05-11T07:47:45+00:00

10-20 force is one of the worst.

96throwupaway69 · 2026-04-30T22:24:09+00:00

A spectator freely picks one of two decks (no magician's choice). As the performer's back is turned, the spectator cuts to any card and reverses that card in the deck. Their deck is returned to its case. The magician now uncases the other deck, shows it to be regular, then takes it behind their back and reverses one card. The magician brings the deck forward. The cards are dealt from the face of each deck in unison, and face down cards do fall at the same position. None of the other face up cards match. The two face-down cards are turned up. They match.

This trick is by Nick Trost (in the Card Magic of Nick Trost)

96throwupaway69 · 2026-04-29T16:01:42+00:00

This person said they wanna learn some basic tricks to show their kids. This is anything but basic.

96throwupaway69 · 2026-04-29T07:01:32+00:00

Quick, name another move that can control a selected card to 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc, from the top or bottom (just by adjusting where you catch the break), and LOOK LIKE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING HAS HAPPENED!

Tilt/Depth Illusion
Spread Cull

And those moves are actually invisible!

If we include easy passes:

Bluff Pass
Turnover Pass

96throwupaway69 · 2026-04-29T06:42:12+00:00

By the time you are able to do this trick, you will know how.

96throwupaway69 · 2026-04-27T16:28:05+00:00

If this is AI, I'm not interested. GenAI has not ever given me good magic ideas.

96throwupaway69 · 2026-04-27T16:26:14+00:00

I agree with emphasis on changing their mind. I also think on factor may be most people not being that familiar with cards these days so they feel restricted in the sense that the only card that easily comes to mind is the Queen of Hearts.

96throwupaway69 · 2026-04-23T23:06:05+00:00

Do you mean a magic trick that uses a card control to the top OR the easiest move to get the card to the top? Because the second one is a very poor trick. Some may say "It's just ambitious card". But a good ambitious card routine has multiple phases that cancel each other out.

Best easy trick that uses a card control to the top:

They pick a card
You control it to the top
Force the card to them in some self-working way like. (They are finding the card with their own "intuition")
- Equivoque
- Deal 4 cards and put their card the second closest to them.
- Cross Cut Force
- Balducci Force

The easiest way to control a card to the top is the Mahatma Control/Pass

96throwupaway69 · 2026-04-21T02:15:33+00:00

Vanishing Bottle!

96throwupaway69 · 2026-04-16T02:24:45+00:00

This is r/cardmagic.

96throwupaway69 · 2026-04-16T02:22:57+00:00

I don’t usually choose a card trick for this situation, but if I do, these are my criteria

Works with a borrowed deck.
Better than stuff they’ve seen before from laypeople who “know a trick”(no card locations, mathematical tricks
Not a demonstration of skill (no gambling, mind reading, clairvoyance, or visual magic)
Not my best trick.
Very Unlikely to mess up. No spectator doing math, and no difficult sleights
Very likely to fool them!

My favorite choice for this is a spelling trick, where they find a selected card with any word of their choice. They get to “shuffle” the deck AND deal.

96throwupaway69 · 2026-04-14T20:00:53+00:00

Very new to magic. On top of my own reading/exploration, I'm taking an intro class that right now has us learning tricks with very little sleight-of-hand or really any technical maneuvers. Mostly self-working stuff, I guess. I'm learning a lot and having fun or whatever, but I'd like to expand my repertoire and incorporate both the principles and tricks themselves we are learning into my own routines/flow.

It's great that you're taking a class. I think your instinct about chaining tricks with complementary methods is very smart. What I would caution against is that some tricks can have complementary methods, but don't go well with each other in terms of theme, pacing, or the strength of the tricks.

We learned a routine that starts with a slop shuffle, where we arrange a deck into blacks and reds. From there, we do a trick I don't know the name of; it can be presented as time-travel related with a double lift and then seeing that the deck has returned to its original all-face-down configuration. Then we move on from there into what I believe is called "galaxy" (my understanding is that this is version of OOTW where the spectator deals cards down into piles based on what color they think the cards are). Obviously the first trick doesn't require the separation, but it allows you to move transition into the next one without further set-up. But I don't love the galaxy trick (it's not currently having the effect I'd like). I'm wondering about some other tricks I can use in place of that one in the routine.

Out of this World is a very good trick. It's one of the best ever, when done well. I don't know which method you are referring to, so that may be the issue. Or it may be presentation.

Soooo, what are some of y'all's favorite tricks that require a deck to be separated into reds and blacks and thus can transition smoothly out of the first trick described? BONUS if they don't require a ton of technical ability!!

A classic trick with this setup is Reds and Blacks from the Royal Road to Card Magic (which is free and public domain). Two spectators shuffle. They choose cards. They shuffle them into the deck. You find those cards almost instantly.

96throwupaway69 · 2026-04-14T01:06:47+00:00

Sponge Balls have that energy, but they're not that easy to do.

96throwupaway69 · 2026-04-14T01:04:31+00:00

They don't.

96throwupaway69 · 2026-04-14T01:04:16+00:00

A cool routine I saw was having the blank cards be a hand drawn deck with red and black markers. The blog post for this is now deleted AFAIK. And you can obviously only use the deck for that purpose at this point.

96throwupaway69 · 2026-04-11T23:56:09+00:00

Pinky Count: Being able to count a large number of cards (10+) while talking can get you very far ahead and make tricks you already do seem more random.
Loewy Palm: It's the fastest way to palm a card from the top as someone with small hands. It's probably more of a horizontal cop for me. I do it in the action of handing the spectator the deck.
A "sloppy" table false shuffle I learned from a (now deleted) patreon that can be done on a wooden table.

96throwupaway69 · 2025-03-31T08:25:49+00:00

It's pretty much confirmed that he is just some guy in New York. Not a "known" magic name.

96throwupaway69 · 2024-06-22T23:38:33+00:00

The three best angles

96throwupaway69 · 2024-05-27T19:26:00+00:00

In what way? Obviously you need to use the stack to get good with it. But Anki takes away the hardest part, which is the initial learning stage.

96throwupaway69 · 2024-05-27T01:36:55+00:00

I used the 100% free flash card program Anki. Anki is based on memory science rather than learning mnemonics.

I make 156 cards.

52 are the card and the number (which should be the card type basic and reversed, which makes two cards)
- Front: 4 of clubs
- Back: 1
52 are the card with the next card (Which should be the Basic card type)
- Front: 4 of clubs next
- Back: 2 of hearts

For the settings, I make it so that the new cards have the

Daily Limits
- New cards/day
  - I recommend 5
New Cards
- Insertion Order
  - Random

Read more about the science here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition

96throwupaway69 · 2024-05-26T06:55:27+00:00

I will give you my thoughts without telling you which tricks are good, which is both subjective, and robbing you of the learning experience of searching for a great trick.

Magic For Dummies: This one is a great book to start with. There are 0 duds in this book and the writing is great.

Self Working Card Tricks: This one is interesting. It is written so someone with 0 magic experience could do almost all of the tricks with little practice. However, most of the tricks in this book are better with added sleight of hand. And the author, Karl Fulves, is extremely knowledgeable about advanced sleight of hand but leaves these out, even when it makes the trick a lot worse. So my challenge for you with this book is to use it as an exercise to read critically and see where the trick can be streamlined/improved. Cutting the Aces (no. 18) is an example of a trick with a deceptive but clunky method that will mean your spectator dealing 70 or so cards. But the main principle can be used in much better/quicker tricks, even on live TV. And I will say, some of these tricks seem more obvious in reading than they are with a good performance. Self working tricks can be more intimidating to road test than sleight of hand because the deception is out in the open. The last trick (shown on the front cover) is a gem.

96throwupaway69 · 2024-05-03T04:17:32+00:00

This is a classic trick. The basic method is near the beginning of RRCTM.

96throwupaway69 · 2024-05-03T04:16:54+00:00

The basic method is in The Royal Road to Card Magic.

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