The GIF of the Magi: Move Bitch, Get Out the Way

/

As I mentioned in previous posts, I won't be writing up as many fully formed routines for the site because I'm saving them for the people who bought the book. But I still have plenty of half-baked ideas that may be of interest to people, and may, in fact, be more in their wheelhouse than my usual types of effects and presentations. I will be briefly describing these with some quick GIFs I made to illustrate things in a new feature called: The GIF of the Magi.

Move Bitch, Get Out the Way

The title of this trick comes from the Ludacris song that I enjoy singing while practicing the main sleight involved in this effect. Give it a go. Really hit the bitch part when you flick the card. You'll see.

This trick involves two things I like:

  1. Cards being split into component cards. Like a deuce being split into two aces. I like it because it's a bizarre concept, but it has an internal logic to it. 
  2. The concept/sleight -- and someone will have to help me as to where this originated -- where you use discarded cards to hide the extra card in a color change. It's a fun one to practice and the organic "black art" principle is an interesting thing to think about.

Set-up: Face-down from the the top down: red two, red ace, red ace, black ace, black ace, black two. Turn the bottom half of the deck face-up. Turn the entire deck over so your set up is face-up on the bottom of the deck.

Performance: Start dealing off the cards in a very messy pile, and ask your spectator to tell you when to stop.

When they do, draw attention to the pile and push the cards around a little with your right hand making some comment about how many you dealt while your left hand secretly flips the deck over. 

Say, "There's no way I could have any idea you'd have me deal this many cards, stopping at this one. [You pull off the top card of the deck, the red two, and hand it to him face down.] It could have been anything, a four, a king, but in this case it's a...?" While you're saying this, get a break under the top two cards.

He says, "Two," and at the same time you say, "Ace." Act confused, take the card back from him face-up onto the deck. Scratch the face of the card a little. Say, "It was suppose to be an ace. Maybe it got stuck to another one? That can happen. " Take of the top three cards as one, and flick the edge ("Move... bitch!") over the discards, secretly revolving the packet and splitting the 2 into two aces.

"Yeah, sometimes if two aces are next to each other, they get stuck and become a two. You know, depending on the weather and whatnot."

You now give the deck an in-the-hands false-cut that doesn't expose the reversed bottom half (or you can adjust the reversed half via a halfpass during your previous bullshitting). Say something like, "Since you found an ace, now it's my turn." Do a triple-turnover to show another two. (You can spread the cards to get a break before that.) When you're done you have a two face-up with two face-up aces underneath. (I spread the cards in the GIF below, but that's just to show the condition, you don't actually do that.)

Say, "Goddamn this humidity! It happened again."

You take the three cards as one. The action that follows will be more easily explained via the GIF. Essentially you want to make it look like you rip the 2 into two aces. You hold the card(s) as if you're going to tear it. Then you push the top card into your right hand and pull down the bottom cards with your left, in a tearing motion. Your right hand makes an upward motion to draw their eyes, while your left dumps the deuce on the discards.

Now you're clean and you have four aces with which to go into your least favorite four ace trick. 

The discard camouflage pile is a fun thing to mess around with. I think it works particularly well in casual performances. I first read about it in use as a straight color change, but I can't remember where.

But I've also used it to merge cards together in order to find a spectator's card.

Or -- if you can justify the flicking movement -- you can use it as part of a delayed change: changing the back of a card or having writing appear on it.