Dennis Rourke - The Everything Card Tricks Book: Over 100 Amazing Tricks to Impress Your Friends And Family!

The

EVERYTHING

Card Tricks Book

Dear Reader:

My fascination with cards started at age three. My parents were avid canasta players who used cards to teach us to count. Like most kids, I learned some tricks. But I had no idea what could be done until I saw a magician for the first time.

I was absolutely enthralled. He made cards appear, disappear, and rise from the deck. I laughed with delight, and so did everyone else. The secrets of his skill were a complete mystery. Yet the truly wonderful thing was his ability to bring smiles and laughter to everyone there. He brightened the whole room with just a deck of cards.

I simply had to learn to do that. With a library book and a burning desire, I learned one trick. I practiced for two weeks. That practice paid off. My friends were fooled. I was hooked.

If you are as fascinated with magic as I am, then you are about to learn that magic with cards is even more fun than you had thought. It takes practice, but be patient. You will be greatly rewarded each time you hear them laugh and say, How did you do that?

Best of luck,

Dennis Rourke

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Visit the entire Everything series at www.everything.com

THE

EVERYTHING

CARD TRICKS

BOOK

Over 100 amazing tricks to impress your friends and family!

Dennis Rourke

Adams Media

Avon, Massachusetts

Copyright 2005, F+W Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher; exceptions are made for brief excerpts used in published reviews.

An Everything Series Book.

Everything and everything.com are registered trademarks of F+W Media, Inc.

Published by Adams Media, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

57 Littlefield Street, Avon, MA 02322 U.S.A.

www.adamsmedia.com

ISBN 10: 1-59337-421-6

ISBN 13: 978-1-59337-421-1

Printed in the United States of America.

J I H G F E D

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rourke, Dennis.

The everything card tricks book : over 100 amazing tricks to impress your friends and family! / Dennis Rourke.

p. cm. - (An everything series book)

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-59337-421-6 (alk. paper)

1. Card tricks. I. Title. II. Series: Everything series.

GV1549.R86 2005

793.8'5-dc22

2005017391

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional advice. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

-From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the

American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations

This book is available at quantity discounts for bulk purchases. For information, please call 1-800-289-0963.

Contents

Acknowledgments

There are many wonderful people whose help made this book possible. First, my dear wife, Ann, has been my partner in entertaining and a patient mentor in the art of showmanship. And thanks for the thousand times she smiled and watched when I said, Hey, honey, watch this trick.

My thanks to Pete and Babe Petrashek who first taught us magic so many years ago. And to magicians Walt Graham, Larry Brodahl, John Bowery, Howard Huntington, Tom Porter, and Tom Zepf, who shared so much of their magic with Ann and me.

For encouragement and understanding, I owe a debt of gratitude to Ron and Judy Parks, whose support we've shared through this and many projects.

Big thanks go to my agent, Barb Doyen. Also to editor Gina Chaimanis and the folks at Adams Media who have been very helpful.

Top Ten Reasons to Learn Card Tricks

1. You will bring fun and laughter to those around you.

2. You will be able to entertain a small group with only a smile and a deck of cards.

3. Your hands will gain a great deal of dexterity that carries over into other skills.

4. You will be asked to parties and gatherings because people love to see you perform.

5. You will find it easy to get people interacting and talking to one another in awkward social situations.

6. You will gain more confidence in front of a group and learn to control an audience.

7. Card tricks will give you a very effective way of illustrating a point when speaking.

8. Your sense of the magical method will extend to other situations. You will see new ways to solve difficult problems.

9. You will become known as someone special. People will think of you as magic.

10. You will enjoy a really fun hobby that costs no more than a deck of cards.

Introduction

Card tricks are great fun. They are even more fun for the performer than they are for the audience. This book will introduce you to the concepts involved in playing-card magic and guide you through the learning process. You'll find that some tricks are hard at first and require practice. This is a good thing, actually. The bit of effort that it takes keeps the casual observer out of the know. By investing the thought and exertion to get past the initial difficulty you will enter a world that is truly magic. You'll love it when you hear your first Wow!

The Everything Card Tricks Book introduces you to methods, called sleights, that can be used in a variety of ways to mislead, fool, and, above all, entertain those who watch your magic. Tricks are provided for each sleight so that you can put your newfound skills right to work. Sleights exist for moving cards about the deck, making things vanish or appear, finding lost cards, and planting cards on unsuspecting volunteers. But the real goal of every trick is to entertain the audience.

Just as important as knowing how to handle the cards is knowing how to handle the audience. This book shows you how to catch their attention, lead them to conclusions, and then surprise them with a magical outcome. The real magic will be seen in their eyes and heard in their laughter.

As you practice more sleights and tricks, you will realize that there are often several ways to get the same result. By learning more than one way to do something, you will be filling your magical toolbox, so to speak. Each new sleight gives you much more versatility. Before long, you will be using your newly found tools to construct your own tricks. Keep track of your creations. You will want to remember them later. Eventually the tricks that you create will be your best.