theory11 — Magic Tricks & the World's Finest Playing Cards

Practise #1 - Passes

The passes look great. If i could offer any advice it would be to not rush it at the point of execution..
Your hands move at a casual pace whilst spreading the deck and displaying the card but then go into
hyper drive during the pass.. If you can keep the pace fairly even the whole way through you'll avoid
suspicion and the pass will go completely un noticed.. Hope this is helpfull. Best of luck...
 
You really need to slow down a bit, while the actual transposition of the packets is very fast and would probably be unnoticed by spectators your hands move so quickly and so unnaturally they would have little doubt you did something even if they don't know what. It seems like your moving your hands so quickly for extra speed, however in the case of the spread pass, the movement of the packets is already covered by the spread and it's just as invisible when executed slowly. With the classic pass there seems to be some tension in your wrists. Obviously a deck of cards is very light so you need very little force to lift half of it. I find it's helpful to be very aware of all my muscles from my shoulders to fingers because all of them used to become quite tense when I did a pass (and many other sleights) and I never noticed this for a long time but I think audiences are likely to perceive that your doing something. You are doing very well though and I think with a few minor refinements you'll have some extremely deceptive passes.
 
TomPrescott said:
You really need to slow down a bit, while the actual transposition of the packets is very fast and would probably be unnoticed by spectators your hands move so quickly and so unnaturally they would have little doubt you did something even if they don't know what. It seems like your moving your hands so quickly for extra speed, however in the case of the spread pass, the movement of the packets is already covered by the spread and it's just as invisible when executed slowly. With the classic pass there seems to be some tension in your wrists. Obviously a deck of cards is very light so you need very little force to lift half of it. I find it's helpful to be very aware of all my muscles from my shoulders to fingers because all of them used to become quite tense when I did a pass (and many other sleights) and I never noticed this for a long time but I think audiences are likely to perceive that your doing something. You are doing very well though and I think with a few minor refinements you'll have some extremely deceptive passes.
Click to expand...

thanks this is very helpful:) I gonna try to film myself while doing it slower and be aware of the tension in my arms.
 
Also watch the sound of the cards, in addition to what Tom said.

There were a couple in there that didn't 'speak', but most of them had a loud scrape.

Also, minimize the forward movement of the spread pass. You only need it about a half an inch forward to conceal the forefinger.
 
With your Hermann pass, you are executing the shift after you close the spread. Try tossing the packet AS you close the spread. Otherwise, it just telegraphs that something is happening. Overall, each pass that I saw looked like a move. I could either hear, see, or just tell by how your hands looked that a move was being executed. This is why I think the pass is one of the worst card controls because of how it is situated. I wouldn't recommend using any of these except for the Hermann pass as a control because that one is the only one that flows nicely without much tell since you using an action for cover while squaring the spread.
 
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