Card manipulation

Card manipulation—often called card magic—is a form of magic that relies on sleight of hand with playing cards to produce effects. It appears frequently in close-up, parlor, and street magic. Well-known figures in this area include Dai Vernon, Tony Slydini, Juan Tamariz, Ed Marlo, S.W. Erdnase, Richard Turner, John Scarne, Ricky Jay, and René Lavand. Before he became famous for escapes, Houdini billed himself as "The King of Cards." Two common tricks that depend on card manipulation are the Ambitious Card and Three-card Monte (also called Find the Lady), the latter a frequent street hustle.

Playing cards became popular with magicians in the 15th century because they were cheap, versatile, and easy to get, and card cheats had already developed sleight of hand with them. Card magic has since grown into one of magic's most popular branches, with thousands of techniques and ideas. These range from complex mathematics (as used by Persi Diaconis), psychological methods (taught by Banachek), to extremely difficult sleight of hand (as practiced by Ed Marlo and Dai Vernon). Some form of card magic likely dates to when playing cards became common in the late 14th century, but its early history is largely undocumented. Compared to general sleight of hand or cups and balls, it is a newer form of magic, but its versatility as a prop has made it popular among modern magicians. Martin Gardner called S.W. Erdnase's 1902 book *Artifice, Ruse and Subterfuge at the Card Table* "the most famous, the most carefully studied book ever published on the art of manipulating cards at gaming tables." That book inspired Dai Vernon to become a magician; he is considered the pioneer of modern card magic.

Illusions with playing cards are built from basic manipulation techniques, or sleights. The performer aims to execute these sleights undetectably, which requires practice and a thorough grasp of method. Key techniques include:

- **Lifts**: Extracting one or more cards from the deck, often ones already known to the audience (like a selected card). A "double lift" extracts two cards held together to look like one.

- **False deals**: Techniques that appear to deal cards fairly but actually deliver predetermined cards. Examples include second dealing, bottom dealing, Greek dealing (a bottom deal variation), center dealing (rare), and double dealing (dealing the top and bottom cards of a small packet together).

- **Side steal**: Invented by magician F. W. Conradi, this controls a predetermined card to the top of the deck using the classic palm. The diagonal palm shift, first published by S. W. Erdnase, also uses the classic palm but usually controls cards to the bottom, and is often used to "teleport" a card to a pocket.

- **Passes**: A pass secretly moves an identified card—inserted somewhere in the deck—to the top or bottom by swapping the portions of the deck above and below it (a secret cut). Pass techniques include the classic pass, Zingone Perfect Table pass, flesh grip pass, jog pass, Braue pass, Charlier pass, finger palm pass, bluff pass, and Herrmann pass.

- **Palming**: Holding or concealing one or more cards in the palm of the hand, unseen by the audience, until needed. Palming techniques include the Braue diagonal tip-up, swing, thumb-count, face card palm, crosswise, new vertical, gamblers' squaring, gamblers' flat, Hugard top palm, flip-over, Hofzinser bottom, Braue bottom, Tenkai palm, lateral palm, and Zingone bottom.

- **False shuffles**: Techniques that appear to randomize the deck but actually keep cards in a desired order. These can position one or more cards or leave the entire deck unchanged. Examples include the perfect riffle (faro shuffle), strip-out, Hindu shuffle, gamblers' shuffle, Zarrow shuffle, push through riffle shuffle, and various stock shuffling techniques.

- **False cuts**: Cutting the deck in a way that splits it into two portions, with the split point appearing random but actually controlled by the performer.