Simple Card Tricks

There are three ways you can do simple card tricks:

A Prop/Fake Deck: This is usually the easiest method, but also the most inflexible. Sure, you can do the trick as soon as you've bought the pack, but do you really want to be limited to only a few simple card tricks at the most?

If you only use prop decks, you're going to rack up a pretty hefty bill. I don't recommend these for the serious starting magician!

A Pre-arranged Deck: These tricks can be very impressive. The only downside, of course, is that if you've already performed a few simple card tricks, you won't be able to do a trick that requires the deck to be set up; unless, of course, you use a different deck. But that's a little suspicious, isn't it?

The best time to do one of these tricks is to open up your routine with one. That removes the suspicion (especially if you know how to shuffle the deck without changing the card order) and let's you pull off one of these seemingly impossible tricks. Just use them sparingly!

A Sleight-Of-Hand Trick: These kind of tricks are my FAVORITES! At first, they'll take some practice. But once you know how to do them, you'll feel like a real magician.

These tricks involve picking up any pack of cards, arranged in any order, and performing a seemingly incredible work of magic. These tricks require the most skill, but are the most rewarding. These are the kind of simple card tricks you'll see David Blaine and Criss Angel perform.

What is a sleight, you ask? Double lifts, false shuffles, and the like. We will cover the different sleights you can learn in the next section.

So Vincent, which simple card tricks are best?

Simply put, each one has their own purpose. For those who don't want to spend time and effort learning sleights and tricks, the prop tricks are usually best. These are also ideal for kids.

However, for those who want to take their magic a little more seriously, make great use of both pre-arranged decks and sleight of hand tricks. Usually, the pre-arranged deck tricks also required sleight of hand. So mixing both is great.

Start off with the deck pre-arranged for your first trick, and then do one or two sleight of hand tricks afterwards.

In a lot of cases, you don't have to know ANY sleights. Only for the harder ones; but even then, with a little practice you can learn 'em all in a short time.

Here's a summary of the most popular ones:

The False Shuffle: This is an invaluable shuffle that you will reuse in hundreds of different simple card tricks. To the audience you appear to simply shuffle the cards as normal; however, what you're actually doing is giving the deck a fake shuffle. You keep the top card of the deck on the top the entire time!

The Glide: Another handy sleight. With this sleight, with the deck facing down, you 'glide' the very bottom card towards you with your ring finger so that you can pull out the cards above it. To the audience it looks as if you're pulling the bottom card from the deck, but in actual fact, you're taking the second bottom card. Very useful.

The Double Lift: One of the harder sleights to use, but once you get it down, you can pull off some sick tricks with it. As the name implies, you lift up two cards; however, to the audience, it looks as if you only pick up one. There's a very special technique to this sleight that makes it a piece of cake to learn.

Depending on how you learn, there are two methods I recommend; either learn from videos or from books.

Videos: Not my favorite way to learn. I've always found that I 'miss' the trick, and have to continually rewind the video just to analyze every little move. Very frustrating!

Books: My favorite method by far. Not only are books cheaper, but you can study them at your own pace until you master each step or technique. Not only that, but I've found the best, simple card tricks I've learned have been from books.

So do you have any you can recommend for a beginner like me?

I do! In fact, it's an e-book; something you can download and start reading 5 minutes from now. It's called "Master Mentalism".

I can't recommend this book enough. It's the first book I bought when I started to learn magic, and it's still my favorite. Being able to do the tricks Criss Angel and David Blaine use is extremely cool! I've had guys shouting, girls screaming at me, and the rush you get is just great.

Something I really liked about the book is that it comes with a free bonus, "Over 500 Simple Card Tricks Revealed". Any card trick enthusiast will love this; over 480 pages of simple card tricks exposed and revealed to you! Not only that, but it's the professional, impressive yet simple card tricks. Not the kind your kid brother will do on you. Inside that book it teaches all the sleights I mentioned earlier, and how you can use them in many different simple card tricks.

That's not the only bonus. If you want to see the other 3 free bonuses you get with it, go ahead and read the full details about the book here!

The greatest thing about the tricks revealed is that they're rare and no one has ever known how I did them! Not only that, but they're very simple tricks. It only took a few hours at most to master each one.

I've had guys asking me to teach them and girls begging me to do the tricks for them again and again! Of course, don't give in! A Magician never reveals his secrets, and a Magician never performs the same trick twice.