Reversed Location

It is a wise magician who varies his methods for obtaining his secret objectives, and it is a still wiser magician who sets apart certain methods for certain objectives for use in set tricks. For example, it is not good policy to use the same method for controlling a card twice in one routine. By allocating a certain method to a certain trick and always using that same method in that trick, not only is there less chance of the onlookers detecting your secret operations but your work will be so much the easier and smoother for you than if you made up your mind on the spur of the moment as to which method you would use.

The location by means of a reversed card is excellent for use as a variation of method, but it should not be used more than once in the same routine. The action is simplicity itself:

1. Secretly reverse the bottom card. There is no need to glimpse it first.

2. A card having been chosen and noted by a spectator, and the cards having been shuffled by you while retaining the reversed card at the bottom, use the key undercut method to place the reversed card above the spectator's card when it is replaced in the pack. Slope the packets downwards so that the reversed card cannot be seen.

3. Square the pack very openly, and the onlookers must be convinced that the chosen card is lost, buried among the other cards.

4. To obtain control of the chosen card, turn half left and begin an overhand shuffle . As the middle of the deck is reached, run the cards singly until you see the reversed card, which will be facing you. Immediately thumb it off the deck, letting it fall to the floor. Stop the shuffle, drop the cards in your right hand on top of those in your left

hand; apologizing for your clumsiness, stoop and pick up the fallen card. Push this card into the deck and you have the chosen card at your disposal on the top of the deck.

In connection with this affected clumsiness: There are two classes of card conjurers. One class takes every opportunity of parading dexterity by using flashy flourishes and showy shuffles throughout their performance, whereas the other class handles the cards just as any card player would–indeed, sometimes affecting a little clumsiness by dropping a card or the like. In the first case the reaction of the onlookers is that they are not surprised by the results of the tricks, since the "quickness" of the performer's hands has literally been thrown at them. His work is dismissed with the remark, "He's clever with his hands," and forgotten almost at once. In the second case, when the spectators see the cards handled with perfect fairness and without sleight-of-hand, as they think, then the results simply seem to happen of their own accord. The magician's feats thereafter make a lasting impression on the minds of the onlookers and will be seen by them with pleasure over and over again.