Hello everybody today I am joined by the extremely talented Nathan Kranz Oh Nathan Kranz
Oh has wore many hats at penguin magic he has released several products. He has lectured several times and
He has hosted a few of our penguin live lectures
he is the brains behind penguin magic monthly and
One of the most all-around creative guys in the business. How you doing? Mate? Thanks, man. I'm doing great
Nathan Crandall has agreed to help me as we try to sort out some of the and talk about some of the best
Decks some of the best gimmick decks or gaffed decks trick decks that uh that there are in magic. So yeah, you might
Just sitting in your drawer waiting
Yeah, absolutely, so we're gonna try to
Do some weeding. If you're looking for a new damage deck or gasp deck then maybe we can give you some ideas jog your memory
Remind you of something that you've put away for a while. Maybe you'll go digging like Nate said and and
Pull it out and go perform something amazing with these with these awesome decks of cards
Nate Kranz, oh is a little bit of an authority on some of these as well?
So it's nice that he could he could join us. Yes. Um
Which one do I bring with me because you only have so much pocket space, right?
so I always have to make sure I have a regular deck because
I've been that guy that forgot to bring a regular deck and just had like an invisible deck with the gig
Actually, actually that's a good point because if that ever happens
You can totally use an invisible deck as a regular deck. You just have to go through and Unruh verse every other card
They're all gonna be rough, but they still shuffle you can still do double lifts
And some of the moves are actually better because it's like if you reverse a card it will vanish
So, yeah, if you're ever in a predicament you can use an invisible deck as a real dick and then if you're uh
Almost at the end of the gig you can go back and reverse every other card and then go back through everybody
Yes, your finale
Yeah, absolutely. There's actually a lot of
sometimes when we when we purchase these decks we want to use them exactly as they are and
There's a lot of material out there
We think of the invisible deck and we'll talk about that more in just a moment
But we think of the invisible deck is having one routine or one specific
Like effect and there's so much like unexplored territory there
We can go in and get our creative juices flowing and and just change it up
If we if we have if we're brave enough to like ruin the way that it comes in the box, right?
Yeah, we have to we just have to remember that most of these decks were
Created at least a hundred years ago. So that means there's been at least a hundred years of smart guys
Thinking about it and performing with it and a lot of this stuff just gets lost. You know, so so yeah, what's the
What's the first one? Yeah, so, um one one more thing. I just wanted to yeah, I guess
No, it's good
I just want to make sure for anybody out there
That we chose ten decks that are popular ten decks that are that are great. They have a
lot of material with that these are by no means the only
like decks, which you
Yep, there's just way there's just way more maybe in a future video
We'll talk with somebody else about or we'll bring Nate back and talk about
Yeah, absolutely in the comments below let us know if there's if we're missing your favorite
Gaming's deck first deck that I wanted to mention to talk about is the nudist deck
So with this with this deck you're able to show a blank deck of cards
Fresh from the factory is is usually the line
You're then able to magically print the faces and the backs on
Onto the deck in a somewhat visual way depending on which routine you use
This was made popular by Earth out
Gossman
Had a had a really awesome
routine with this that was kind of like the
It's kind of one of the go two's a whole bunch of other people before him and after him have created things
Penge magic has a
Has a tutorial I think Rick lacks goes through his version of the deck
It's really awesome deck what think about the the nudist deck. I definitely love it. It's one of the
It's funny because I never I never actually saw gosh Minh do it, but I've heard
stories about him
performing it and
If you know anything about gosh Minh, he was very
Over-the-top guy he had a lot of energy
You know very loud and so he had jokes about a nudist colony and all this stuff
You know, they kind of flowed into the routine which made it very funny
And obviously if you've got a funny presentation that ties in with the cards
That's great too and on the other side of it
you've got a guy like Ellen Jackson who that's a great example of an amazing performer and
This is one of the few decks of cards that you can actually perform with
Doing stand-up or even stage and he was kind of known as a stand-up in like a parlor
platform entertainer and he had a whole routine that he would do with the nudist deck on stage and because it goes from
Blank to print it you can see that from very far away as opposed to if you're just changing a five-o hearts
To a to a stage or something, you know, that's beautiful
But it needs to be seen from a few feet away where as blank
You know can probably be seen almost from the back of the theater
You know anywhere you are so that's I think one of the great
things about the nudist or the
Mental photography deck as it's sometimes called as well
The first time I ever saw it was when I was a kid
I went to local magic shop, which was actually in this guy's garage
Which this which is a great story just in itself, but that was one of the first things he showed me
he pulled out this deck of cards and it was blank and I'm thinking I
Definitely am NOT interested in a blank deck of cards
I
Mean he he said oh I have to do is think of a card and then just cut the deck and then he held his
Hands over it and he said that the light or the shadows
I don't know member what his presentation but something about the light will make that that the photosynthesis and the cards
come to life and then he moves his hand there's a car and then he dribbles the cards and they're all printed and I'm just
Like wow, that was like not what I expected at all
it does have a little bit of a one-trick pony feel to it because you basically you can print the cards or you make the
Cards turn blank, but if you look into it more and you look up Alan Jackson's routine or you know
Gosh is routine. You see that it can be used for for definitely more phases and different things as well
So, yeah, if if it all outs it's worth to just you know
go digging and looking up some of the other routines or just playing around with it with yourself because once you
have the combination of blank cards
Or once you are able to go from blank to print it or print it to blank
There's a lot of things that could happen. Maybe you can make two decks of cards change places
Maybe somebody's holding a blank deck and all the sudden it turns into printed and then your printed deck turned blank, you know
There's lots of different ways to go with it. Yeah, and you can you can stretch it out too with something like David Riegel's
Got a few different versions of his sudden
Sudden deck or whatever where?
Yes, he has a box
Yeah, you can make a box appear and then and then you can print them and see if they're coming from the factory. I think
the original
Remember that yeah, yeah. Yep. Just got water
Merge' sank, he had a little vial of he said it was close-up magicians sweat
You just add a little drop of close-up magicians sweat and the deck will expect that's great we don't know that idea it was
This idea where you come up with a folded up deck of cards just fold it into a little bundle
Not perfectly neat just like a little jumbled
then he would kind of unfold the box and then magically the cards would be dumped out of the
Dehydrated deck, you know, so that'd be a perfect lead-in like you said
Making the deck appear type thing, you know. Yep making it making it
appear instead of just just once and it's there to
Kind of like stretch that out and things great opener as well if you're going into card tricks
you'd probably have to do a deck switch if you're going to do anything else besides I
Love the idea of combining it with some mentalism, too
if you
If you're really familiar with the deck
I don't see how you I
Don't see why you couldn't produce thought of card or make it seem like you are having the thought of card print
You know black deck which is really strong and then just print the whole deck as the finale
Right, right. So talking about mentalism
one of a great deck of cards used by many mentalists is the cyclomatic deck and
So has a yeah
That was a set me up. I just caught it. I just tossed it mycotic. Um
Yeah, but Nathan Crandall has some of the best material with the sacrum attic deck out there talk about that
It's actually a great great deck. It's an old deck of cards so I can't take
too much credit for other than just kind of maybe repopulating it but
Bob Cassidy was the one who kind of turned me on to it. Shaun Robinson is one of the guys who's
credited with the
original idea
as well as
Danny Tong has has one of the first versions that was actually published and it was a marketed version
It wasn't with I'm drawing a blank because it wasn't with cards. It wasn't with playing cards
It was still cards, but it was maybe like I think it was countries or something
So he'd look through and look at all these countries and then you think of a country
So it was still the same principle, but just made it play different because it was like you were thinking of a country
But it was still cards just not playing cards and there's also a deck called the telematic deck
Which is very similar it basically was constructed differently
But accomplished the same thing or you could apparently show the cards is all different
But then when they look at a card themselves or when they cut to occur themselves
They're able to basically force themselves. You have to think for card it. This is yours a really great force deck
And it also has similarities to the tossed out deck
Which we can talk about later
Because it can be used as a tossed out deck but it isn't a tossed out deck that makes any sense
Because it can you know, it's basically
The cyclomatic and the telematic deck are very similar to the Svengali deck and that they are
Basically used to be able to show the deck is all different
But you can also force the card that you would like by having them cut the deck
I guess the advantage over the cyclomatic in the telematic deck is
that
you can actually hand it to a spectator and they can spread through it and
They would just think it's a normal deck as long as they're not Michael Weber
The horizon normal deck, you know
as long as they're not a
Pit boss and a casino. They would probably just think it's a normal day
So I think for for mentalism, it's one of the most powerful decks
I remember seeing Bob Cassidy do it and basically a lady just stood on the other end of the stage, you know
25 feet away from him
She looks through the cards. She says yes, they're all different. She turned them facedown. She cuts to a card
She's thinking of the card and he tells her exactly what it is. Not much more direct than that
You know, they think of a card and you tell him I'm just I just remember thinking
Wow, I want to do that trick, you know, cuz it was just he didn't ask her anything
He didn't say he didn't pump her there was no, you know so direct
So if you're looking for a real direct mind-reading effect
I think that's it's hard to be as far as the beginning or the special decks go
Yeah, and one thing with this is if you're really brave
You can hand the deck to somebody and they can do like an overhand shuffle
Probably not like the riffle shuffle but if they but if you're gonna have them do do an overhand shuffle
Then they could they can do that and it'll still force the card that you want. You still get some really clean stuff from there
Any really particular order kept with the deck because the way it's constructed it really can't get
Whereas Aspen Valley you could definitely like if you Faro that sucker
Somebody if somebody wants to get fancy on you and shuffle a different way
Yeah, yep another
A psycho mattock deck. It's much easier to put it back together than SN go
Yeah, yeah a little side note, I guess. Yeah, absolutely
Another another popular foursome deck is the well kind of the we can go all the way back. You mentioned the tossed out deck
uses a specific forcing
Way to force things. Sometimes we call it the one-way force deck or a 3-way force deck or five wave force that could guess
Depending on which version of the tossed out deck that you do
The original one that we kind of that we all
most people contribute David hoy as
as the first guy to to kind of
Popularize this idea of throwing out a deck of cards and then having several people
Look or peek at cards and then you naming them all
But you said there's you know so many different versions now, but that original one
That that's attributed to David. Hoy
he would use a one-way force deck and
Honestly, it's just one of my favorite things
sometimes I'll
Like you mentioned use a two-way force deck or half-and-half, you know
Sometimes they call that the half half and half is kind of its own
beast
But if if you want to have someone pick a card in the fairest way possible, you know
Yeah, magic castle act. I do a trick where I predict a card in the newspaper
and
all I do is I just take a deck of cards and I put it in a paper bag and I shake it up and
Then I have someone reached in the bag. I feel like I just blew it and I just ruined my castle axe, but it's okay
It's worth it because it's such a I do it
I do a different Act many times every time so but it's just such a clean force, you know
Because I'm using a deck of cards that they see
throughout the entire show
I have people shuffle throughout the entire show and then at some point
that deck goes away and they don't realize it and then the the one-way force that comes into play and they don't know that it's
already too late
You know and I think that's a really strong thing too is if you're going to use a trick deck
Use a regular deck as much as you can before you use the trick deck so that way people can touch it and people can
Shuffle it because when they want a shuffle and when they want to touch it
They probably can't once you've got the trick that can play so take advantage of that
You know those guys like ass can yo and Henry's that have a lot of thoughts on that just you know when they can
Let them shuffle and let them touch they can because they'll remember that shuffle shuffle shuffle shuffle. Yeah
I use this all the time. Now remember I shuffled and then someone will correct you as they know I shuffled. Yeah
Because it's like this, oh, yeah, that's right. You shuffle that's right
You did shuffle and of course, I know that and it's just it's just that enforcing that memory, you know
Right, right, you know you bring up your magic Castle
I your magic castle act Darren brown had one of the the most fooling pieces of magic that I've seen
and it's it's just because he puts loads all of this presentation into it and
and when he flipped around and explained how he did it it was it was just the a
One-way force deck it was he he had built up the presentation to where he's reading people's thought theory
It's like reading their body language and stuff. It was very involved. Very very
Presentation heavy and then when he when he came out and it was at a lecture
Whatever when he came out and explained that no, it's just a one-way force deck. Everybody brought the place down it was
Surprised. Oh
that's
Because they don't expect it right so I can so I guess that's a question that comes up
Sometimes you brought up Bob Cassidy and and a couple other people
mentalists King mentalists use cards
What do you think if there's like this coverage? This debate goes on. Yeah. Yeah. It's an age-old debate argument
There's also kind of this debate about whether if you're a Mentalist, you can do a magic trick or vice versa
you know, but I really think it just comes down to
the audience and I really had the
The pleasure and luxury to be able to perform for a lot of people in a lot of different places and cultures and countries and
The honest answer is the audience doesn't care
You know, they don't care what you use to entertain them and mystify them and I certainly understand the idea of behind it
is that well if you're a
Mentalist you kind of don't want to use cards because that will make you look like a magician because that's what magicians do
But I think there's so many amazing mentalists that have broken that rule and like Christian and Max maven
And Richard österlen and you just the the Derek brown and the list goes on
There's just so many of these great performers who have proven that you can perform great mentalism with cards
I never really thought about it honestly until someone
Until like a magician, it's usually a magician or a Mentalist. Yeah points, though
I've never had a layperson say oh, I can't believe you did that magic trick in that mind-reading show
You know, it's just it's not a concept that occurs to them because to them there's not really a difference
You're just doing impossible things
I guess if you come in and you just do a QA Act, you know what I mean, and you just do telepathy. I
Guess they could maybe see okay
This guy's more of a mind reader than this guy who is juggling and doing linking rings and stuff
I could see how there would be a difference in their mind
But to them, I don't think one of them takes away from the other
Yes, you do a really strong mentalism act and then throw in hippity-hop rabbits it's not gonna make sense theatrically
Yes things that might not make sense theatrical a but that doesn't mean it won't be entertaining
Well, I don't think it would either take away cuz if you've ever seen Chris Kay part
I mean, he does one of the best like fraidy-cat rabbits I've ever seen it makes me want to do the trick
Yeah, some guys that can take anything and make it amazing
So yeah, I guess the short answer is I think that of course you can yeah
Yeah, I when you're talking there
I got thinking it makes me wonder if
An audience might see it as something different and I think with somebody like Kreskin, I think they do
He does like the linking rings
I think they understand that's different than this like pseudo hypnosis or real hypnosis that he's actually doing
It's almost like if the Mentalist was to start out his act by playing the piano
Nobody would be like, oh you can't do that. He's showing is the skill or something or whatever
it's like with like comedy a lot of people say oh, you know, I don't really like
Comedy magicians or I'm not necessarily in like a can
comedy musician and
I think at the end of the day you you're just a comedian if you're really funny and you play the guitars and you're a
Comedian that happens to play guitar Matt King or like Jeff Hobbs and they're comedians to me that just happen to to do magic
It's there's no like comedy flutist or comedy oboist, you know, just a comedian and whatever you pick up, you know
Like, you know Reggie Watts, you know, I don't even know how to describe what he he makes me laugh
I don't know if he's a comedian or a musician. He's just everything you know, yeah, I mean, yeah, absolutely
Um, there's a lot of things right?
Nature used to do that thing where he would show he would expose the key ring. Uh-huh
This is what magicians use but I don't use that here. We toss it off and then he would go and grab another key. Yeah
So it's just all about the framing of you know how the perception is with a spectator like just like you said
you know with the I
think they know what's what's different and what's unique and what's like not hypnotist like you said when you mentioned Kreskin
Yeah
Um, so another another different
Moving onto another deck that is also used in mentalism. Sometimes is the pop-eyed Popper deck
Yeah, you had another name. Yeah, you had another name for it. I don't remember
Oh, there we go like 1920s ad copy or something
I think it just got shortened to the pop-eyed popper and then it's it's essentially the Mirage deck
I I think is kind of the same thing
Generally the Mirage deck and the pop-eyed popper are kind of interchangeable. Sometimes there's like one little thing
One little principle that's changed. Mm-hmm
basically, like the spy galley principle can be added to the Mirage deck and then right it can be called a pop ID popper which
Sounds like we're talking in code now. I know I know
Yeah
I remember the pop-eyed popper was something that I I kind of discovered myself
When I was like really really like really young and magic kind of came across it myself and thought man
this is a great idea because it kind of it combines the invisible deck and it combines the
Swing dolly deck and then come to find out going like somebody else
It's it is a good idea and somebody else had thought of it hundreds of years ago
And it seems like I've it's come up a couple times in my magic career where somebody will come to the magic meeting or come
to a lecture or
Whatever and say hey
look
I thought of this and and they'll show it to me and
it's kind of its kind of that if you were to mix the swing gaali deck and
makes the the invisible deck or the principles behind both those decks and and it's really
Almost identical to the zygomatic deck just a little difference
The cyclomatic deck you can if you've got a willing spectator that's willing to shuffle
Overhand they can shuffle the deck too, which is nice
There's a really good
Routine if you look back a couple months in penguin magic monthly that uses the Popeye popper from Mike cascada
So just a little tip
If you want to if you want to look that up
It's a great routine
And I just remember a couple of different guys over the years Darrell actually had a really cool routine with the Popeye popper. It's
buried in his lecture notes or something somewhere, but
Definitely look up Mike's routine and any anywhere where you need to force a card
It's great anywhere where you make maybe use this Bengali deck. There's a good chance. You could probably use the Popeye popper instead
And like I said, it just has that little bit of an advantage that you can hand it out
Somebody could spread through quickly and they're not gonna think anything of the deck
Yeah, David Copperfield used it on a whole bunch of his specials. Yep
He's really like if you spread the cards face down have someone just touch the back of any card?
Johnson soon as it gets, you know, if you want to do like a if you're not quite
if you don't have like the chops to do a
What's that called? Like a classic force, or you can get really close to that with this. We're going to spread through it
Yeah
the I think the only like difference with this and maybe a swing golly deck or
The cyclomatic deck is that you can do kind of a spread you can do the magician
like
Here we go with the spread where with the other decks you're doing more of a peek or your coaching audience to peek the deck
so I
Yeah, let's see
The next deck that I wanted to talk about is the many tackle deck and this is another deck that that you have
have a whole bunch of information on yeah, I just I
started
As one does as one does I always I always liked it because I saw
Probably was the first person I saw to do it and
he just blew my mind because he's so great and funny and
Eric me I saw do it and he had a really
Eric meet actually fooled me with it because I I didn't see him palm the card or anything
So I was fooled by that and then Matt King
He does it in his show and he does kind of like a running gag with it and I always thought well
That's pretty funny, and I thought well it would be cool
If you could just have someone think of a card and then I could show my hands empty and then you know
You know reach in and pull out the thought of card
I know it's a silly thought but still even though it's silly you would still like people think huh?
That's that's impossible. I just thought of a card, you know
and so I basically just sort of playing about with different methods and to make a long story short, but many Tekel was
My answer and not only did it solve my problem, but it made it so it was self working
I I don't really have to do do any sleight of hand
I just have someone name a card and I have this like to read a five minute
you know stand-up comedy routine now that I've been doing forever that just is it's just a basically a deck of cards and
A handkerchief and I can I can go anywhere and do it for a theater full of people
But the reason I I love it so much is because once I started playing around with it
I realized that it's so versatile. You can use it for so much and then when I started looking up
Tricks with that. I'm like wow, there's like, you know hundreds of different tricks scattered throughout the last hundred years of literature
there's actually a chapter in the encyclopedia of card tricks on the medical deck which is
up until my DVD that was like the best source of many tech old tricks because all the tricks are great and
It's like a five dollar book that you should anyway because it's a great book
Yeah, it's like new card tricks has a lot of cool stuff in it. But yeah those um
It can be used for like card at any number you basically have access to a duplicate card of any card
so that makes it so you can kind of do like
card to impossible location
There's just like once I started playing around that I realized that the possibilities were endless
So if you're if you're interested in it
you could definitely find my DVD which is available at penguin magic, but but don't stop there just you know, find the
encyclopedia of card tricks and and
just if you just
Google, many Tekel I'm sure there's some stuff on YouTube that you'll find as well. Yeah, absolutely
It kind of it's almost like an index that stays on with yeah. Yep, that helps you find a duplicate of all the cards
That's how I've always thought of it so I can open index, you know
Hidden in your pocket. You just got like an open one that you're staring at, you know? Yep. Yeah, which is which is awesome
Bullock Burling hull
Earlier because he was one of the guys who whose name is on a lot of these decks
But he originally marketed this as the self shifting pack
Brian could have any card and then put it in the middle and then it would be back on top
So anybody can do the ambitious card without any?
Sleight of hand or any practice, you know
That's how that's how we demoed it and sold a lot of and you could do it
You could do it with a different card every time we're with a different deck like a swing golly deck or whatever
You're stuck with one get with my card
Yeah. Yeah, and um, I think it was I don't know if it's technically called the Manning tackle deck
I think Shawn Farquhar used a version of this when he performed on Ellen. He did like a
Shuffling thing where he was finding finding pairs of card the mates. Yeah. Yeah rather than I'm not sure
He was one of the first I saw, you know routine it was called Cupid and
It was basically like, you know
You pick a card you pick a card you find each other's mates. And at the end you show that the deck is all
It was the same, you know, well, you know same principle, you know applied to that right? All right
Let's see, so
another another awesome deck that has a ton of different applications like more
Yeah, just a whole bunch is the stripper deck and thus it always reminds me don't search for these decks while you're at work
like the stripper deck and the nudists that I could make sure that there's other crazy things but uh
No, the stripper deck also called called the tapered deck or a narrow and narrow deck or there's a handful of different ways
Yeah, yeah do you want
The stripper
The mini techo deck and the Svengali deck and the invisible deck. I think those are
Our four decks that like the possibilities are endless you you're not limited to one trick
It's just it's more about like which trick do you want to do?
And if you're clever, you can use it maybe two or three times in a set and they won't realize that it's the same
factor the same principle
And with a with with a stripper deck you can go back to
just using it as a normal deck of cards because you have one of every single card in the deck and
Someone probably shuffle for a while. Yeah, they probably would never discover anything. Mm-hmm
If you're unaware of the I mean, I think most of everybody's probably aware of how it works that you're unaware
The stripper deck allows you to take basically any card in the deck and make it easily findable easily accessible
Yeah, even after a shuffle so you can take a card out
you can take slices if you wanted to you don't have like
The four aces prepared so they could shuffle and then you pull the four aces out or whatever card lot. Really?
Yeah
You could you'd have of all the cards of one suit or all the cards with one color you could do aces you could do
A royal flush a magic shop when I was a kid. That was like one of my demo tricks
I would always do the the red black
Separation you have two people pick cards and you find both cars and then you show that you separated the deck. That's
Pretty hard to be it's so impossible, you know. Yeah in I just watched Woodie Aragon second lecture for a
again after a while and he has a version where he's using a stacked deck and then
that looks like it's been shuffled really really well, and then he just cuts it and
it's and it's completely in new deck order and I use a tapered deck for that and it's a
Kick myself for forgetting but
Hopefully, we're a boy if I remember we can add it to the
But there's a Japanese magician who came up with a really cool version of unshelled
It was basically self working with you just washed
Yeah, yeah remember thinking why you don't have to do
Yeah, absolutely. Um, all right
If you were to look it up there's probably the most tricks in the literature
There's tons of tricks with with the stripper deck, you know, there's bill Goldman has a book called
My week with a stripper which is which is a great book and there's little little things here and there
You know, if you look in like linking Rainey's GD magazine, there's all kinds of different tricks for those decks. Yeah, absolutely
So you've done a lot of like stamp you're talking about stand-up magic a little bit you've done
like a whole bunch of comedy magic and
You've worked it like comedy clubs as well and done kind of that
That thing I know a lot of people are nervous about working with decks of cards on stage. What what would you were?
What what's your tips and tricks for people who are working with met with card magic on stage?
I think the the biggest thing is just to figure out like what first of all what the effect is
And then figure out is it is it going to play on stage?
Like there's certain things like maybe card to pocket or card to wallet. You know that
Are kind of based on proximity, you know?
so something like that the way you can cheat is that you have to bring someone up on stage and
They have to be like the eyes and in the hands of the audience
And that's kind of what nate leipzig did he was like the first person to do close up on?
Stage because he would bring up a committee of like four people
which is basically what a lot of people do Nellie's if you watched like temari's that's basically
How he ends his you know
the first half of this show is
Like stand-up stuff and then the last part of this show he brings three or four people up and they sit right next to him
And they the audience lives through them because they're crapping their pants because they're seeing this amazing card magic, you know
so, yeah, you either have to bring someone up to experience the magic or my
My preference is to not have to rely on that
I'd rather try to figure out how to make the trick to play big with either
An over-the-top
Presentation or just an over-the-top premise?
like for example, David Williamson does the card to mouth which is usually a
Close-up trick, you know someone Carden and ZUP folded inside the magician's mouth
But when Williamson does it?
half the time someone ends up like thrown over his shoulder and he's like pulling them up on stage or he's like saying that
in order for me to find the car and I have to smell your clothing and then he's like
This this this over-the-top presentation makes it play bigger
There's the Tyler
Okay, I was gonna say Tyler Wilson. Does that too with the over-the-top? He does a whole bunch of card
Magic that's on stage as well
And I think that it would play just fine and it is that over-the-top thing where he does
He basically has a version of French kiss where you hold two cards up and put them in your mouth. But
Across just play over the top because I don't wanna give away max show
But right just adding one little premise if you think about he just added one little thing with that one little thing
Made made the whole chicken now make sex less, you know each piece. That's usually something that's plays place for close-up or parlor. I
do uh, I
do
Maybe three different things. I do a prediction. I do the card to card to fly and then I do
Maybe maybe four things depending I'll do a cards cards across as well. And then sometimes I'll do a
tossed out deck
But I've found just just little things like if I have a card
And it's a coincidence thing, you know
they show the card that they they match I
Can make this play a lot bigger if I stand and if I hold the cards like this at the end because it's a natural
Applause q right as little things like that are going to make little card tricks play
bigger, yeah
and I guess I just thought of this many of many of these decks are available in a jumbo deadbolt if you really feel like
You need to you need to do that. I think that
Things like the pop-eyed popper deck or
Even like a swing galai dad cord the invisible deck. They all saw
His live show he does the Jumbo split deck yeah, which is another one we could talk about sometime. That's a good trick, too
Yeah, yeah
so the
so the next step that I want to talk about was the Miss indexed deck and this is
this has been used in a whole bunch of different ways and
It a whole bunch of I mean
Think about it even just like packet tricks like there's so many like Skinner's Monte, you know, things like that
You know that are just just that one miss index is all you need
You can do a lot of cool stuff. You make cards vanish. You can make thought of cards. So I think of a
Whole bunch of different things. It's hard to it's hard to mention specifics. I'll post links
In the description, of course
But so many different things as far as thought of cards of vanishing and reappearing the princess card trick
Realm if we stick with kind of the classics. I
Yeah, you can make cards like move in the deck
Yeah, I think so, yeah or the John Kennedy
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yep. So many cool different things you can do with it. You can take I
completely what looks like a shuffled deck and
Without any sight of point. Yeah. Yeah without any sleight of hand or anything. You can put it in a new back order, which is
Probably one of the cool things you can do, you know
yeah, because because I would I would love to just you know, just stand there and just do a bunch of false shuffles and then
all mixed up
Yeah, Greg Wilson does his revolution gimmick? I
Where he sticks the deck on his finger and spins it. Well, he shows it him completely
Well mixed up then he spins it on his finger
and talks about like how in the first Superman movie Superman ran around the world or like flew around the world a few times to
Turn time backwards or whatever then he opens up the deck and it's in completely new deck order
So it's a kind of a fun thing talking about
Yep, there we go. There we go. No, but tons of stuff you can do there
The possibilities are endless because
Anything from doing a full deck trick to just pulling out four cards and doing a small packet thing. You know that yeah
But the possibilities are endless and really it's great for just a simple vanish, you know
Just making one card vanished. I've used the misc index. I used it IMT. I remember I did on a morning like TV spot
I was my goal was to try to make the card vanish, but I wanted to happen in his hands, you know
Yeah
All I did was basically just show him they're different and then just in the action of handing the deck
the work is done and now he's going through it and
In the way that I want him to and so now the card is apparently gone and then he was end up he ended up
Sitting on it, but can't get much better of a hands-free. No, you know no slight vanish
So talking about television you've done a lot of tel-aviv II, I believe you auditioned for America's Got Talent, right? Yes years ago
Yeah, what would you tell what would you say to anybody who was looking into that looking into auditioning for America's Got Talent?
What would you tell them?
Well, I guess the the first thing is
Figure out why you're doing it because there's so many different reasons to do it
It could be that you want exposure. It could be that this is your dream
It could be that you just really need that million dollars. You know, there's there's so many different reasons to do it. I
actually
thought about doing it and then just kind of
Got lazy and then the next year I was like, oh, maybe I should do it
So I talked to a couple of friends that did it and then after talking to them I was like, ah, you know
It sounds like more of just like you're kind of a playing it game for them and you have to kind of play there
And then the next year they contacted me so I was like, alright well
What's your decision Crandall? So I was like what the heck there's nothing to lose here. I'm just gonna do it
And I did it and it actually was a great experience. I went really far. I did like the initial
Tryout in Detroit and
it was cool because I didn't have to wait in line, you know with all the other 20,000 people they give you
Basically, they called it ahead of the line past if you're an actual established entertainer
So that narrows it down to like there's probably like I don't know like 300 people in every city
They get that, you know, that'll pass right just if there's still the other thousands of people that have to audition anyway
So I got to audition for those producers and that was great. They loved me I did another
Skype interview slash audition with some more producers and then they finally decided that yes, they wanted me to come to LA and
audition for the actual judges of you know, Heidi Klum and Mel B, and
Simon Cowell and
Howie Mandel and
It was a great experience. It was probably the most nervous I've ever been in my life
Which is kind of funny cuz I very rarely get nervous when I perform anymore
It's just kind of something I do right
I was I was just nervous because I knew that it was important and it was gonna be
potentially seen by millions of people
But I did good, you know
It was mainly because I did things that I was very comfortable with I wasn't trying to do any new magic
I was just basically, um
doing things that I was really good at I
Did kind of like some coin stuff, you know some cards stuff
They wanted me to do specific things that were closed up and I basically did specifically what they told me to do
I sent them like video of tons of things and at the end of the day I was like
Can you do this and of course, they're not magicians
So they're just like can you make her ring appear in her chair?
You know, they're just asking weird things that no
maybe I could maybe I couldn't if I had a few months to work on it in a team of
consultants
But eventually I just did what they wanted me to do
Which was essentially they wanted me to do a cards across and they wanted me to do 52 gone
My deck vanish and they wanted me to do my coin routine. So I did that and I got a standing ovation
It was great
And it just never aired. It's just kind of the nature of the the beast. Sometimes it airs
Sometimes it doesn't and they tell you all that ahead of time
so it wasn't like they were you know tricking me they say
You know might get completely xed out and you might get completely voted
No, but we'll still maybe use the footage or you might know. Yeah. Yes all the way definitely but we might not use it
so that's just the nature and I think because of
Magic being so popular the last few years. That's why I was called they were
Specifically like calling magic clubs and recruiting magicians because they want a lot of magic
So I think they probably had you know
75 different magicians trying out and they just had to whittle them down to who looks the cutest
Okay, I still learned a lot it was a great experience I got a free trip to California I got I
Met some amazing people at the actual tryouts and I would definitely do it again
my only
Hesitancy would be that if you do do a bad audition, there is the chance that they will use you as an example
So keep that in mind because they're not the nicest people in the world. They're just trying to make money
They're just trying to make sales make an interesting
TV show and they have to you might be the bad guy or whatever like stories about
You just saw the worst show ever
I remember bizarro talks a little bit about his
About his experience and it was similar similar to yours. They didn't actually show his
Audition, but he talks about how when he got in there. He he lit like his pants on fire and things
and
And which is I guess everybody really liked it
I guess like Sharon Sharon Osbourne was on it at the time and everybody really liked it. The crowd liked it
they got like a very good reaction and things and then once he watched the actual episode it was like
In the terrible acts like montage
they just they just showed it because it was a little weird and different or whatever and
When in reality it was it was a fine performance in the course
The audience liked it a lot and that's where you have to kind of be careful because you can be used as an example
And we both know that bizarro has great stuff
Yeah, but it's just that that framing of whatever producer decides how to edit it
And that's the other thing that you have to be careful of is you're signing your life away
Yeah, I can edit it
However, they please you know, and and I even on wizard wars when I did wizard wars
They edited that in a weird way that made it look like things happen the way that they actually did not happen
You know and that's Penn & Teller, you know
There are two magicians running the show and they're still editing it in a way that can make the performers look bad
You know, all right, so you had to be yeah, we did a lot to take into consideration, I guess with that
Definitely do it but just keep in mind that
they they're always looking for people to make an example of as well because I think even I
Kind of agree with the old, you know any new, you know, any press is good. Press even if it's bad
Press speaker' you know because people are at least people are talking about you
But then I I think if that would happen if I was in that case and if they made me look bad
I would say you know what at least I'm on TV
But even more importantly I think then you have to do something good after that
You know if you were to maybe go back and be on again, or maybe you go on some other show
I think you just have to keep your face in front of them good or bad. You know, right? Right, right
Cool. Well, we've got three more decks that we want to talk about and these are three of the of the old classics
These are the ones that keep coming back that magicians always go to we've got the invisible deck
A marked deck and then a Svengali deck and we've already talked a little bit about the Svengali deck and the visible deck
For those of you who don't know within what's usually called the invisible deck
Is a deck of cards that allows you to
invisibly and without any sleight of hand or anything reverse reverse a card in a deck and
And
It was actually not really a magic shop. It was a magic kiosk in a mall
So a lot of people were just walking by and that was the trick that I would always use to get them to stop
right is
people would literally be walking and I would walk with them and I would say hey name a cart as I'm walking and maybe like
Four hearts and I just spread and they would always just stop
And it was because it's so direct you don't you look anything. You don't do any weird move
He just grabbed the cards and then the line which was great was how do you do that?
Well, I can teach you the cards are actually chemically treated so that whatever card you name will appear facedown
And that sounds amazing, doesn't it? And it's the truth
Yeah, yeah, that's so funny
Yeah, that's so funny. I'm totally I'm I remember the day that I stole that line from you
No, that's so good. I'm totally gonna use that and that's
You can make you can make a card appear face-up you can make a card vanish you can make you know
The original ultra mental deck when it was advertised we had advertised
by Jill Berg, which isn't the original
Invisible deck, but that was like one of the original marketed versions here in the actual ad copy. He would say go
Through and have the spectator initial any card and then spread and show that you have the other three mates facedown
Which I thought that's a great trick too. And you never see anybody really do that
So it's kind of like a prediction you can also
You can also do like a mental thing where you're like
I'm thinking of a digit three digits that are odd just name it and then you can use the invisible deck to reveal
You know, there's just all these different things you can do. Yeah, yeah
Where you shake them up you haven't the cocktail shaker, I've always loved that thing too. Yeah, that's awesome
then there's the is it I
Forget now. Is it Eddie fields? Who did the original like the reason we call it the invisible deck? Yeah
Which apparently
Bill Abbott has that did you see that bill Abbott from that old video of
Abbott and Costello doing it. Uh, no, they're not actually doing the trick with the dreaded presentation. So that's funny
Maybe that's where he got the idea
Yeah, yeah
rather than the yeah rather than definitely should get credit for that presentation and making the whole
Shaking the deck and making the deck appear and all that stuff, you know. Yeah. Yeah the UH
Dot Alan's the one who kind of popularized it, right? Right, right great. So I
Know you're you shorted to Paul Fox
And Paul Fox was like you should have the car be a different color cuz you can't and then I swear the the brain wave
came
Yeah, yeah and today one more tangent
Go ahead. Bagshaw is actually the first person to come up with the concept of
The principle but instead of the principle that we now know he used wax
right, so that was basically so he kind of gets lost in the shuffle because
He didn't he was never the first to market it, but he was actually the first one to be able to reveal a facedown card
using that principle
Awesome to edward Bagshaw. Yeah, I
great, there's there's so many things and I know with a lot of people the the invisible deck is is the best card trick of
All time because it's it's such a fair a fair thing. They named the card and it's in its river directness
You can definitely do other tricks where they name a card and then you reveal it in some way
but there's like some procedure or some thing, but it's just like you spread the deck and they're all face out except for
Yeah, it's hard
yeah, I
Remember the first time I did like a mentalism routine and and I just revealed someone's name and like it's that same feeling it's like
Well everything I did for that person up until now was silly compared to that thing
Right because I told them some name that they thought of
It goes into this
Like I think lay people have specific tricks that they think the magicians can do
and I think like the linking rings is one of those then pulling rabbit out of the Hat is one of those but um,
when they know about like palming
Yeah
I think the layperson would want to go up to a magician and say I'm gonna name a card
What is it or whatever I'm thinking of a card. What is this challenge?
Uh-huh, and you can you can get pretty close to that with with the invisible deck which makes it really really awesome. Yeah
Another another great deck that has I mean too many applications to name is the marks deck and
My favorite version specifically is the the maiden marked deck that penguin put out a few years ago
Relax worked really hard on the design and things it's got six clear markings
When we used to with if you've bought a like at the dollar store if you bought a mark a marked deck
Then you see that they have like little like pin pricks and like little teeny tiny lines
So they're supposed to help you architects or you have to like literally
Yeah, yep, yep just to try to figure out
If you can't like use it
Quickly, it's not
It's not effective
So the best marked deck is the one that you can use quickly and easily that you're not having to stare squint, right? Yeah
That's why the ones that you can do from a spread are really good as well, you know. Yep, absolutely
There's a few. Yeah Boris wild
Yes
One of the most dangerous things that you can have is a marked
Stacked deck. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah nation, you know. Yeah. I was actually I was gonna that's great
Um, I think I saw I've seen a few people do it
but it's just the idea that I
Can I know about where the card is I can cut through it and I can check it without looking at the faces of any
decks or without
Yeah, there's just so many things and and like the stripper deck. The mark deck can be in use the entire time
Yeah, I met you
Yep, and it goes back to what you said a minute ago
You know, if someone just comes up to you it names a card you can kind of almost
The quick cut or a pass it's there
We have that index, you know if you're off by one or two
You know exactly where it is if you have to do a double or a glide
right
And there's so many good. I mean I mentioned the Boras wild deck
There's the maiden deck which I like
But there's like the there's a new
Butterfly deck and there's a couple decks where you can actually you can see it through a spread or see it as the cards are
Stacked you can tell which cards are where lots of really awesome things. I definitely I definitely like divorce wild as well
I think that's great and the I
Don't even know if they still sell it
But the Ted Leslie thing where you'd actually get the transfers that you could kind of make yourself. That's great, too. Yeah
Yeah, for sure. There's a
Tons of if if we have it. I'll link to it in the in the description below for sure
the mentalism obviously I
Think my favorite applications of the marked deck is when you don't have to
Win. Oh
you're using a mark a marked card as a key card or you're doing
In all these like what you said with the sax deck with new Monica or something
It's a great way to learn new Monica or to learn the Arrington stack or some of these other stacks
because you can tell where the cards are that you're cutting to and
It just gives you a little bit of a safety net and all those. Yeah
Right, usually you have to get a glimpse of a car it's just like one of my favorite tricks is uh, Gianluca has
a version of the the diary trick
Right if you're watching and you don't know the diary trick
Basically, you show a diary and then you show there's a card on every day
it's like a diary with dates of the year and then you ask them their birthday and they pick a card and then lo and
Behold, they actually pick the card
Which is actually a really good trick because it's personal it involves their birthday. Um
But my friend Gianluca has the best version ever
He just has them pick any card from a mark deck and you know, he never has them turn it over
So not even they know what the card is, but he does
And now he goes what's your birthday? And he just turns to the page and he just bluff. Lee
Miss calls the card. He says Oh on September 18th. The card is the FiOS pace. What car did you pick? Oh, I'm so good
You don't even have to all you have to do the worst part about the Diary trick started to go off on tangent
Is that you have to spend three days?
Writing in every single card and depending on your method you might have four Diaries or whatever
It's you have to like you have to write in and things that's so good
Was like a printed one
Yeah with like a specific handling and everything and I think he uses that one because it's already made up
And then you don't you know, you don't ever have to like actually verify it
Anyway, you know, but yeah, and if you're interested it's in
Flint Lucca in new tops, it's john lucas book, which i'm sure is that
Yeah, awesome. Great. Yeah, the mark stack is awesome
one of my favorite decks and this is kind of like the classic when people think of a mother of a regular ordinary deck of
trick cards
Is the Svengali deck?
I think we call them up. Yeah, we've talked a lot about it already a Burling whore
I know I know or yeah, yeah
Yeah a good pitch. They'll sell a few hundred decks. Just you know
Yeah
You don't you don't do that with a normal deck of cards?
That's like testament to the deck like there's not a whole lot of trick decks where you can do basically like a whole Act
Right. Well there is of course but not many like this finale and the stripper, you know mark deck. That's about it
But with the Svengali, you know, that's kind of the goal is to like see it
Like how many tricks can I do?
You know before you get bored and really if it's a good performer
Like I've seen some guys do like a thirteen phase spend alley deck pitch and every phase is great and impossible
You know, I remember bill Goldman or not bill Goldman
Billy McComb
He showed me a great handling where you have the spectator deal the deck into two piles
And then you have to pick a card from this half and put it in that half in the picking car from that half put
It in this half and obviously you can find each of them
but I just thought wow what another great, you know use for the deck that I would have never thought of and
Milk court has a great trick that I've used on TV before. Um
Called spent ilysm, which is basically just over the phone
You can have someone name any number and now you can deal down to that card that they've picked in the studio audience
You know, it makes it this huge huge big plays big packed small, but it's just a Svengali that you know, yeah
yeah, and there's so many things there's there's
The amount of different types of tricks that you can do with a swing golly Decker right out of this world
Yeah, I remember on on Nicola Capo's lecture England live lecture
He talks about he has a whole bunch of material with the Svengali deck
That he does a whole bunch to like disprove that it's a Svengali deck
he talks about how he made the trick just so he could fool other magicians with us figure out like
Which and it's it's a it does a lot of this you see they go, okay
You can see how if you use that against somebody that would be really good. Yeah
Yeah, there's but but you can do things like you can do a false second deal where you're just dealing the car
You show that like the ace of spades on the top of the deck
Good night
legitimately deal ten cards and then show the v8 spades on the top of the deck still and then you and
and say that it's your second deal or
Just like that with the many tackle deck that you can do
Oh, yeah
Obviously you have that same you know right there so you can make it look like you're dealing centers or second sir bottoms
But I love that type of stuff for it you're doing pseudo
Yeah, or there's also the
Applications for like any car to any number
Or um, yeah, there's just a whole bunch of different things. You can do it actually
where I'm a eldest Bengali deck
Just like I wrapped it up and just mailed it to the place
I was performing and then just basically just you know
If the Svengali deck forces the five of hearts then I just forced the five of Hearts when I get there, right?
I said I've mailed this deck can now name any any number between 152, you know
And because it's made to show that they're all different and it's not here
It's not there just this one spot, you know, that's why it's so strong. Yeah, it's great
Well, I think that that about covers it. Those are ten of the best
trick decks out there as I think it was Penn & Teller who said
And they may have stolen it from somebody else but the idea of a regular ordinary deck of trick cards. That's right
Those are those are some of our some of my favorites and a few that
Nate Kranz, Oh has a whole bunch of information on that. You can purchase at penguin magic. You can also check out
Many many lectures and the many many lectures that we referred to here in this video go check those out
I'd like to say thank you to Macon Kranz Oh for joining us. It was fun to talk about it
Yeah, I dig up a Svengali deck
Yeah, for sure. You'll work on your dribbles
Thanks for joining us guys
Thanks guys
