Learn Card Tricks

Card magic is a type of close-up magic that often uses sleight of hand techniques with playing cards. However, there are also self-working card tricks that require no sleight of hand and gimmicked decks of cards that do the work for you. There are many ways you can learn card tricks, and this page will help you get started.

What You Need To Learn Card Tricks.

So, you want to learn magic tricks? Good news! You’re in exactly the right place. This page is a resource for you to start learning card magic and sleight of hand.

All you need is a deck of cards.

Lady reacting to a card trick

You see, one of the best things about leaning close-up magic with cards is that’s all you need. Some playing cards. Regular, ordinary playing cards. Almost every house in the world has one. And they’re cheap to buy if you don’t have any. Sure, you can spend a lot of money on decks of cards - in fact we have a whole site devoted to nothing but playing cards, but you don’t need to spend big when you start. Just pop down to your local drug store and grab any old deck you like and get started.

How To Get Started Learning Card Magic

We’ll teach you some easy card tricks with regular playing cards, but also go into a bit more detail on the right way to learn card tricks. So you can count yourself amongst the skilled magicians out there, you’ll need to practice and read the right magic books, but we go into all that in the resource pages you’ll find linked below. Theres also sections on sleight of hand because if you want to take card magic seriously, you’re going to want to get into that sooner rather than later.

Everyone Loves Card Tricks

There’s something universal about card magic. Skilled magicians using sleight of hand is something everyone in the world enjoys seeing. Within the Vanishing Inc. team, we’ve probably performed card tricks in almost every single country in the world. It defies boundries of language or religion. It transcends race, creed, wealth or status. Everyone loves card tricks. Apart from my mother, but she had three brothers who all practised on her before they were good, so you can't really blame her!

Two ladies reacting to a card trick

The Rules For Learning Card Magic

  1. Practice. Even an easy card trick, one with no skill, no sleight of hand needs to be practiced. You have to be able to do the procedure you must follow without thinking about it. No umms. No errs. This will make your magic trick look so much better.

  2. Don’t repeat a trick. When you’re starting to learn card magic, you won’t know that many card magic tricks. Your friends and family will ask to see the trick again, or ask for more. What if you don’t have more? You are a nice human. You don’t want to disappoint them. But you’re going to have to. Just tell them that’s all you have for now. Otherwise the element of surprise is gone from the trick. It turns your hard word practising into a mere puzzle rather than a marvellous magic trick.

  3. Don’t tell anyone how it works. This will be tempting. Your friends and family will ask you how you did it. Never tell them. Especially when you’re starting as the secrets are going to be pretty easy. The will feel silly they didn’t spot it and it will ruin the magic for them. Let’s try and keep the magic alive and you do that by not explaining how the card tricks work. You're trying to create illusions, and you won't do that if they know the secrets.


Learning Card Magic - The Next Level

When you’re done with the beginner card tricks we link to on this page, there are two main ways you can learn card magic. One is to find a good video and the other is to find a good book. At Vanishing Inc. we love books. We publish many best-selling magic books ourselves - such is our belief that it’s the best way to learn. However, some people do seem to prefer learning from a magic video so we have DVDs and magic video downloads that you can learn from too.

Card Magic Tricks