Final Reflection Post 8

Wow Followers!

What a journey it has been! I have enjoyed my time immensely during the past few weeks. Doing card tricks has been an amazing experience and I plan to continue to learn some here and there but not on as steady and speedy of a pace. Card trick have truly brightened my days and nights and I can't thank myself for the decision I made enough.

The final presentation went very well. I was nervous to go first but the trick I performed worked and was a huge hit. The practice paid off and that is a huge win. Also the speech went well and I felt that my point was made about the importance of being relaxed but also being a little kid sometimes.

The genius hour has been a great opportunity to do become passionate and experienced with something completely out of the ordinary. It has branched my knowledge of many things including how these card tricks work and even how the brain works.

To anyone out there who has a passion: take time out of your day to practice or do that passion. I never realized how fun and worthwhile doing what you love can be. I never thought I had a love or a skill for card tricks but they intrigued me and I ended up improving so much.

Also, the expression practice makes perfect really does settle in with me. I have practiced and spent a lot of time on card tricks and I have gotten better quickly all due to this practice.

Most of all, if you love something do it as much as you can, it is worth the time out of your day. Doing what you love is so important and can bring your overall happiness up.

This experience has been amazing and I've loved every second of it. Thanks for following along!

Dave Potter

Winding down- Post 7

Hey team,
As I near my speech and live card trick (only three days away!!!!) I can't help but be more nervous and excited at the same time. I know I've worked so hard over the past few weeks and truly believe I've become greater at card tricks. I think the main thing besides actually seeing my card tricks is tracking the progress of the rate at which I've learned them. Before it would take me about 4-5 times of watching the YouTube video and then a bunch of other times to get it down without watching it. Now I can watch the video 1-2 times at most and be able to do it on my own in the first 1-2 tries. I find that truly fascinating as I never thought even though I would be spending so much time on something, I would still have such a drastic improvement. As I have learned my last few tricks there was a very cool one where I make it seem like I am reading 5 minds at once. Not only is it a great trick but it gets many involved.

I thought that not only to show how far I've come with card tricks by showing them but by teaching one. I did this trick many times in class and I had great reactions so I decided to teach it.
So without further adieu here it is,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q384EtsRLjg&feature=youtu.be

Also, I never realized how much I would love card tricks. They are so much more fun then I would have ever thought and I am so happy that I chose them. Not only have they brightened my homework load but they cheer me up whenever I do them. Whenever I'm sitting in my room watching Netflix or reading an article I find myself always shuffling the cards, ready to perform a new card-trick. And then when I go onto YouTube I find myself unable to click on the card-trick video. I truly have grown to love them even more. It has been a great ride so far. So excited for the Ted Talk!!!!

Dave Potter

VLOG!!!!!

Not only is this me talking for 2 minutes about my experience but there is also a card trick!!!!!

Card Trick from David W on Vimeo.

Snow day galore- Post 6

Hey guys
These snow days have been amazing and have sped up the process of learning card tricks. Over the past week I've learned about 1 a night. They are so much fun and I've put up a few on the blog and will continue to. Some I can't do without an audience and I can''t wait for the upcoming block days to perform them. They are very distracting. For instance, I might be doing science homework and then I go to YouTube to play some music. The problem is card tricks pop up in my recommended videos and I'm too tempted to click on them and I always do. This has greatly enhanced the speed of me learning these card tricks. I will easily surpass my goal of 10 as I've almost mastered that many. The most recent one I've learned was on where I match all the Kings and Queens:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1qF9u03bPw

Over the last few weeks I've learned about the way I learn. Using YouTube has been a complete success and I realize that I'm a visual learner. If someone was telling me what to do I don't know if I'd be able to learn these tricks. I can use this knowledge of being a visual and hands on learner in the future. This could help me with academics which is a bonus.

Also as an extra knack I may be able to figure out other card tricks that other people do. A lot of card tricks are math, something that I'm good at, and they follow many of the same patterns and little card manipulation. This also helps me learn tricks faster as I know what to expect.

Where do I go from here?
We probably aren't going to have any more snow days so my rate of learning will probably decrease but I still plan on learning 3-4 a week. One thing I got to be careful about is forgetting old ones. From now on I'm going to make a list of the tricks I've learned and 1-2 nights a week practice old ones instead of new ones to make sure I have all of them down.

Stay magical friends
David Potter

Snow day- Post 5.5

So I was studying for this Social Studies CUBA, and I got unfocused so I need something to do, and what better to do than another new card trick. This one is so cool and I hope you will enjoy it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buZ6BbM60-w&feature=youtu.be

Progress- Post 5

Hey team,
I am back from my hibernation ready to give you some cool new tricks. The first thing I learned this week was a new shuffle. A huge part of card tricks is decieving the audience and making them think that when you are shuffling they cards are actually being mixed around. The shuffle I learned is a few steps and is difficult but works very well.
Step 1. Take the deck in your dominant hand and slide a third of the deck off the front.
2. Put that third in the back of your dominant hand and grab another third of the cards. Note do not combine the 1st and third set of cards.
3. Drop all of the cards in the back of your dominant hand leaving the undominant hand with 2/3 of the deck.
4. Drag 3 cards from your dominant hand onto the top of the 1st and 2nd thirds. Place the rest in the back.
5. Take rest of the deck and as you place it back into the back of the deck, take the top 3 cards and put them back on.
For more clarification see here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1VEb-baDJY


Now as I promised I was going to learn the "Impress the Ladies" trick. The pun in the title is great and the trick is very good. Instead of telling you how the trick works, I'm going to show you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tdq6t98odyk&feature=youtu.be


Now after completing this trick I have 5 mastered plus another shuffle. I'm hallway to my goal of 10. I want to now learn some more shuffles and cuts to validate my tricks and make them look more real. This is a major setback as I have to make sure my tricks seem super real and if I can't get the shuffle, some people will not buy into them. As I get better with the tricks, I may want to increase the amount I'm learning as I would get more done quicker.
Thanks for watching and I hope you enjoyed,
David Potter

LOL Mom- Post 4

Hey fam,
I was sitting at my dinner table after tennis today when I was practicing my card tricks. My mom proceeded to walk through the door getting home from work. She looks at me and is so confused at what I am doing. The look on her face was priceless as I told her it was homework. Shout out to Mr. Perlman and McDaniels for that one. Now onto the important stuff. So today I brought out the big guns. I tried two tricks today in class. Both did very well. The first one I tried first on Matt and completely forgot to do a huge part of the trick.

But things went uphill from there. I confused the rest of my table and went around to a few more others and got them to. The first trick was pretty easy and was something even Mr. McDaniels could do. Then I went to the hard trick. The final result looked like this. 

I happened to get great reactions out of this one. Now I had to switch it up a little bit as tommy bent one of my 8's and didnt want to be suspected for cheating but it was such a cool trick. The rush I got from people's faces was fantastic and really got me excited about what I could do. By the next cycle I want to have 2 more tricks perfected and ready to be used on other people. So far I have three but two aren't that difficult. I plan on these next two to be difficult like the "8" trick. One that caught my eye was the "Impress the Ladies" trick. Now it does have to do with queens but I do love impressing the ladies. I'll make sure to keep you guys updated.

David Potter

1 Trick Down, A Bunch More To Go----Post 3

Well Team,

I have mastered, or at least am able to perform my first trick. This one is relatively simple but causes some deception. The trick is mainly about the shuffling and I have to be very precise and careful not to shuffle wrong, or else the trick will fail. The trick gets 4 aces on the top of 4 piles I've tried the trick on 2 groups of people. The first, I messed up, boo hoo, so I went home and practiced even more. The second time was even different, I succeeded, somewhat. The audience were so persistent at guessing my trick and one person even got it. YIKES!! But I didn’t tell them they were right, I just kept saying no. They enjoyed the trick and that made me feel good.

        The other day I watched Harry Potter and boy it got me motivated.I’ve moved on to try and master 2 more tricks. One that has the jacks robbing a bank, another that is a math sort of trick that I think is the coolest one that I’ve seen so far. It requires me to shuffle correctly, speak certain words the right way and at the right speed. It is pretty difficult so I hope it isn’t too large of a jump.

        Doing these magic tricks has gotten me even more interested and excited. Having to manipulate the cards and do such little things with such precision or else you fail and embarrass yourself puts a lot of pressure on you, but when you succeed its a great rush. I plan on learning 2 tricks or so a cycle and if I start to get good, learn even more then that but for now, baby steps.

       Just when a give a shoutout to YouTube for being my savior. Especially this Youtuber who has helped me learn tricks. This guy is amazing and you should check him out if you want to learn some tricks. Without him I would be nowhere, or on another YouTube channel. Check out his link below.

https://www.youtube.com/user/mismag822

Thats it for now team, make sure to check in every few days for more updates.
David Potter

History- Post 2

Hey Gang,

Hope all of you guys are doing well. Im sure enjoying this 4 day weekend and wouldn't it be magical if we had a fifth day off. Anyways I've been doing some research and practicing some card tricks. Let me tell you, Youtube is a fantastic resource, but I am just so bad at card tricks. On a scale of 1 to extremely bad at card tricks, I'm at pretty bad, which is low. The hand skills required to do them, and the buy in from the audience is huge. I think I need to do more practice in front of live crowds and work on different shuffling and deception techniques. I've also done some great research on the history of card tricks. Many people think that “card tricks were first developed by gamblers who wanted to improve their chances of winning when playing card games” (Cardtrick.com). Cards originated in Asia, but the first known written about card tricks were in Europe. In the last century card tricks have became more popular as magicians would use them because they are a cheap prop. Now card tricks are worldwide and anyone can do them. Card tricks are all about deception and that is what I find so cool about them. You play with your audience’s brains and you manipulate the cards. I think understanding the way the audience’s mind works and the way they will see the cards is a huge part of magic. Deceiving the mind is so cool and there are so many experts out there. I want to now go research them, the specific magicians and continue to practice my tricks.

http://www.card-trick.com/card_trick_history.htm

Intro-Post 1

Welcome Folks, glad you guys could join me on this ride where I try to become even more like Harry Potter, a magician. I plan over the next few weeks to be able to do tons of card tricks wherever, whenever, and eventually, however you give me the cards. I'm going to start off with simple card tricks and then over the weeks get to harder ones and then hopefully, based off time, get into real magic tricks. My goals are to be able to do at least 10 card tricks and maybe 2 magic tricks. I think card tricks are cooler so I want to focus more on them. I will measure my progress by practicing a ton. I will practice at lunches and in front of others as I feel as learning to perform in public and messing up in public only gets me better. Each cycle I want to learn and perfect another 2-3 tricks. I will achieve this by watching youtube videos and practicing a lot. I'm going to start off by researching the brief history of magic. I'm want to learn how it has adapted over the years. I also want to learn the brain aspect of magic. Much of magic is deception and I want to learn all about that by doing some research. Most of all I just want to be able to entertain my audience. I have an outgoing personality that love people laughing and enjoying what I do and I think being able to do magic will entertain people. I'm excited you guys are here to go along for the ride.

David Potter