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