week one

For years I have used the excuse that I deal left handed and it is tricky to transpose directions when learning card magic. This is a pretty lame excuse and really it just comes down to the fact that sometimes I am a bit lazy. So  to correct this I am going to spend the upcoming year with S. W. Erdnase and his Expert At The Card Table. If you are unfamiliar with the book it is considered to be one of the must have books in any card workers library and is aimed primarily at gambling slights.

I have spent some time trying to decide the best route for beginning this journey. EATCT is not a particularly long book but many of the moves that it teaches take an incredible amount of time to be able to preform undetected. Do I simply start at the beginning and once I am comfortable with a move continue on to the next one? That is what I would do if I thought that I would be able to execute the moves within a week or so but that is far from realistic. What I have decided to do is sit down and do an inital read through of the book. This will give me an understanding of where Erdnase is likely to lead me and help be focus on where I want to focus my attention first.

I also plan to learn to deal from a right handed perspective. It is just an exercise in muscle memory and certainly wont hurt to be able to do thing either left or right handed.

I am, and will always be, a book person so my main source for this project will be a paperback copy of EATCT. The current Dover edition to be exact. There is a mulit-disc dvd version that I have heard mixed reviews of that I may look at tracking down later on. I have however purchased a copy of Jason England’s Foundations Vol 1. to lend some extra visuals to a number of things taught by Erdnase. And I have grabbed a couple of decks of Bee’s as they are more suited to gambling slights.

So that is the game plan. The goals, having not yet read the book, are to be able to second deal and have a least two usable false shuffles at my disposal by the end of the year. There are also a number of books about Erdnase that I look forward to reading.