Chapter 2

     Among the multiple things that a magician needs to know to be a good magician, one of the most important is called sleights. Sleights, also known as sleight of hand, are the different techniques used by a magician to manipulate cards or coins and do secret moves. There exist millions of sleights but the most important or the basic ones are the brakes, the double lifts, and controls-forces. These are the most important sleights because are the basic ones and if a magician doesn’t know them, he can’t learn other more difficult sleights. With that in mind let’s take a look into the first sleight, the brakes. 

     To perform the most difficult sleights it is necessary to know and to understand the basic ones and relate them to create your own tricks. All the sleights can be unified to create one great trick or illusion.

     Breaks are a useful move that is often used to retain the position where the spectator returned their selected card to the deck, so the magician never loses the spectator’s card. The important thing is that thanks to brakes, the magician will always know where the spectator’s card is and therefore he can perform other sleights like double lifts, passes, controls or forces (S.W.Ersdnase).

     The Breaks can be done in 2 ways, one is called pinky brake because we do it with our pinky and the second is called thumb brake obviously because we performed with our thumb. A pinky break is the act of keeping a gap or space between the cards of a deck (S.W.Ersdnase).

     To perform brakes, magicians need to also know how to hold the cards correctly. This is called a grip. There exist a lot of grips, but the most common are the dealers grip (also called mechanics grip) and the biddle grip. If you are right-handed you will be grabbing the cards with and left hand; on the other hand, if you are left-handed you will grab the cards with the right hand, so if we grab the cards with our left hand for the dealers grip we’ll have to put our thumb all across the left part of the cards, the pointer finger at the top right part and the other 3 fingers in the right side. In the biddle grip we’ll need to put the thumb in the lower part of the deck (center) and the other 4 fingers in the top part (center) ( S.W.Ersdnase).

     To learn how to obtain a break is very easy. For a pinky break we should be in dealers grip and just where we want our brake we introduce our pinky a little bit in the lower right part of the deck, the spectator won’t notice it. For the thumb brake we split the deck where we want our break in biddle grip and place our thumb in the middle part of the deck (Card Sleights).

     Now that we have seen the brakes let’s take a look into another great slight, the double lift.

     The double lift is a sleight used by all the magicians in card magic. It is a method where the magician can keep the identity of the top card secretly just by lifting the top two cards at once, this gives the spectator the illusion that only the top card has been displayed or shown . Therefore the audience is tricked into believing that they saw just the top card in the deck but in reality the magician showed them the second card. There are different ways to perform this sleight and also there are different double lifts (variations) such as a triple lift or even a quadruple lift (turning over three or four cards over as one respectively) (Echidna, Mark).

     In summary, the double lift allows us to apparently show the top card to the spectator, but we are really showing them the card below it (second card)

     The double lift can have many uses, for example, popular use of the double lift is when you have the spectator’s card at the top of the deck and want them to think that the card is lost in the deck, if we perform this correctly, we can have an amazing card trick or illusion. Another use of the double lift is to show the spectator a card then does something with it like to lose it in the deck, when in fact the card they saw is still on the top of the deck. These are the most common uses of the double lift (Jason England).   

    With this in mind, is time to learn how to do it. To perform the double lift, first hold the deck in dealers grip or mechanics grip (point one) in your left hand and catch a pinky break (point one) under the top two cards. We can catch the break we by simply counting two cards with our thumb or using misdirection and push off with your thumb the deck 2 cards as one. Lift the two cards as one holding them with all the fingers but make pressure with the thumb so the cards won’t flash, this is done with your right hand, then to put the cards face down again, lift the cards with your left middle finger and obtain a break beneath the top two cards, then repeat the same process. The triple lifts and the quadruple lift are performed in the same way (Paul Wilson).

     Now that we’ve learned the double lift, let’s take a look into the last two indispensable sleights, the force and the control.

     A card force or a force is often used in close-up magic. The objective is to apparently offer a free or random choice of a card, when in reality the magician knows exactly which card will be chosen. The magician makes the spectator pick the card the magician wants. This can then be revealed later in the trick depending on the trick. (Card Sleights)

    There exist a lot of variations and ways of doing a card force. Many tricks using card forces are among the simplest tricks to perform, but also are very powerful like the classic card trick of a magician trying to divine which card the spectator has selected, the trick is that the magician made the spectator pick the card that the magician wants, is very common and powerful this trick. Maybe it is for this reason that card forces are among the tricks most frequently performed by professional magicians (Card Sleights).

     There exist a lot of forces like the Hindu Force, The classic force, Glide Force, or the Riffle force. Some of them require some hard sleights so we’ll talk about the most easy and common one, the riffle force. The riffle force is a utility move for forcing a card. We take the cards in biddle grip (explained in point one), then we make a pinky brake in the card that we want to force (this card should be in the middle of the deck), then we just simply riffle down the cards with  our thumb maintaining that brake in the card that we want to force, when the spectator say stop we simply lift the cards in our brake, no in the part they said stop, showing their “random” selection (Card Sleights).

     In card magic there is also exist something called controls. A control is a utility move to secretly pass a card to the top or the bottom of the deck, once you master locating a card with a break; you're ready for more complicated maneuvers. It is important though to keep track of your card in the deck (Card Sleights).

      The most common controls are false cuts or false shuffles like the false overhand shuffle, the false Hindu shuffle, false riffle shuffle, the zarrow shuffle or the swing swivel cut. Some are very difficult to do. Controls are primarily used to maintain the deck in the same order and doesn’t losing the selected card (Card Sleights).

     So far we’ve seen the basic and the most important sleights that a magician needs to know to be a good magician these are the breaks, the double lifts and the control-forces.  It’s very important to master all this sleights so we can do or perform the hardest ones. Some of them will take hours of practice but if we really like magic the hours will be seconds and the result will worth the effort.

Now It’s time to see some personal experience and other professional magicians experience so we can help to future magicians.