Card Control

Card Control

Card Control contains a huge amount of astonishing card magic, all cultivated and curated by the master sleight-of-hand artist himself, Arthur Buckley. It presents maneuvers that have left theater audiences amazed and that card-playing professionals have used to great advantage.

This is not a book for beginners, but it will help those with basic card expertise reach new levels of performance in their art. Among the moves included are shifts, palms, glides, false shuffles, cuts, fans and steals. Throughout the pages, you'll learn how to do the false table riffle shuffle, how to deal from the bottom, how to know an opponent's hole card, how to "warm up a cold deck" and much more. In addition, the author presents 40 dazzling deceptions guaranteed to amaze your audience: Confusion, Birds of a Feather, The Ambitious Card, A Brilliant Climax, Your Favorite Ace, A Quickie, The Obtrusive Queens and many more. There are also 302 illustrations that show the practitioner's exact hand positions during each critical move.

Australian-born Arthur H. Buckley became well known in America for the magic he worked with cards on the major vaudeville circuits of the 1920s. Schooled by the great sleight-of-hand artists he met in the entertainment business and by professional gamblers he met in his early years touring Australia, his absolute mastery of the most artful and demanding card-handling routines was legendary. In 1946, he wrote this practical guide revealing in detailed the secrets of his art. Any magician or card conjurer who aspires to the utmost proficiency in card manipulation will want to have this indispensable reference in their library.

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Contents of Card Control

Chapter One - Sleights

  • The Strip
  • A Blind Riffle Shuffle
  • "The Force that Couldn't Be"
  • Domico Double Lift
  • The Exchange
  • Greek Shift
  • Greek Shift - Buckley's Method
  • Hindu Shift
  • Vernon's Multiple Shift
  • Multiple Shift - Buckley's Method
  • Buckley's Slap Shift
  • Buckley's Single Card Shift
  • Shifting a Card from the Bottom of the Pack
  • Improved Dovetail Stock Shuffle to Keep the Top Stock
  • Improved Dovetail Stock Shuffle to Keep the Bottom Stock
  • Buckley's Out of This World False Shuffle and Cut
  • Buckley's Method of Secretly Placing a Bridge
  • Sighting or Glimpsing the Top Card
  • Sighting the Top Card - Second Method
  • Sighting the Top Card - Third Method
  • Sighting the Top Card - Fourth Method
  • Improved Peek
  • Sighting After the Peek
  • Turnover Sight Location
  • Stepping After the Peek
  • Other Locations After the Peek
  • The Slide
  • The Invisible Location
  • Buckley's Reverse
  • Sighting While Cutting the Pack
  • The Glide
  • The Glide - Second Method
  • The Glide Location
  • Buckley's Method of Sighting While Fanning the Cards
  • Glimpsing the Bottom Card
  • Buckley's Diagonal Location
  • The Break Shuffle
  • Buckley's Method for Dealing Seconds
  • Domico Location
  • Cardini's Location
  • The Count
  • False Count for More
  • False Count for Less
  • The Side Steal Palm
  • The Side Steal Palm - Buckley's Method
  • Original Methods of Palming Cards from the Bottom of the Pack
  • Palming from the Bottom After the Riffle Shuffle
  • The Perfect Card Palm
  • The Replacement
  • Buckley's Multiple Card Palm Steal
  • Overhand Shuffle and Multiple Shift
  • Buckley's Double Peek Location Shuffle and Palm
  • Buckley's Top Palm Slide Off
  • Berg's Top Palm
  • The Allerton Top Palm
  • One Hand Top Palm - Judson Cole
  • Palm off the Second Top Card While Top Card is Visibly Drawn Onto the Pack
  • To Palm Off the Top Card of the Pack an Exact Number of Cards Up to Ten
  • To Palm One or Several Cards
  • The Fan Location
  • The Fan Location Amplified
  • A Novel Palm
  • Changing a Card in the Act of Turning the Card Over
  • The Throw Change
  • Buckley's Method of Double Cutting Cards to the Top of the Pack
  • John Brown Cook's Transfer of a Card
  • Hindu Shuffle and Cut Location
  • The "Pass"
  • False Shuffle Par Excellence
  • Another Method of Reversing a Card
  • Extraordinary Queens
  • A Different Top Change (mass hypnotism)
  • An Amazing Location
  • One Hand Crimp
  • The Count (Second Method)
  • The Palm Unsurpassed (Original)
  • Bottom Palm of a Single Card (Original)
  • The Top Palm (Improved Method)
  • The Glide Shift

Chapter Two - Conjuring at the Card Table

  • Foreword
  • False Table Riffle Shuffle
  • False Table Riffle Shuffle and Cut
  • The Push Through Simplified
  • Cut, Riffle Shuffle and Retain the Top Stock
  • The Shift and Shuffle
  • Bottom Stock Blind Riffle
  • Retaining the Stock
  • The Switch at Draw Poker
  • The Cut and Use of the Bridge
  • Dealing from the Bottom
  • Restoring the Cut
  • Restoring the Cut (Second Method - The Drop)
  • Restoring the Cut (Third Method)
  • Restoring the Cut (Bottom Stock Shift)
  • Restoring the Cut (My Pet Method)
  • A Cute False Cut
  • Running Up Two Hands
  • The Hold Out and Pick Up Builds
  • Demonstration Build of Four Aces Using the Buckley Double Cuts
  • A Cold Deck Warmed Up
  • The Practical Sharpers
  • Knowing Your Opponent's hole Card
  • The Spread
  • A Strike (Method of Dealing Seconds)
  • Second Dealing (Black Jack Method)
  • Dealing Seconds (Double Push-Off One Hand)
  • An Original Method of Restoring the Cut (Fourth Method)

Chapter Three - Manipulations

  • A Vanish of a Card from the Top of the Pack
  • The Bent Fingers Back Palm and Recovery
  • A Back Palm with Open Fingers
  • Production from the Palm
  • A Card Vanishes
  • Push Down Vanish
  • A Card Vanishes and Reappears at the Very Tips of the First and Second Fingers
  • The Change Over
  • The Thumb Palm Move
  • The Slide Up Vanish
  • Fan Vanish
  • A Fan of Cards Disappears
  • A Very Pretty and Deceptive Piece of Card Manipulation
  • The Steal
  • Reverse Palming Without Swinging the Arm and Also Without Using the Thumb
  • "Back Palm" a Pack of Fifty-Two Cards and Produce Them in a Series of Fans at the Fingertips
  • Paul le Paul Reversal
  • Lighting
  • Music

Chapter Four - Experiments with Cards

  • Transposition
  • Confusion
  • Do You See Red?
  • Matching Pairs
  • The Lost Aces
  • The Convexed Aces
  • Charlier Location and Speller Effect
  • Card Through the Case
  • Unexpected Ending
  • Birds of a Feather
  • Simplicity
  • Next to Yours
  • Four Chances - A Novel Card Location
  • Naming the Top Card
  • A Gambler's Aid
  • A Card Gets Out of Hand
  • Difficult Routine
  • Lost and Found
  • Mysterious Marker
  • Black Jacks
  • The Ladies and the Deuces
  • Another Transposition
  • The Ambitious Card
  • The Mix-Up
  • Wishful Thinking
  • Color Memory
  • Think of a Number
  • A Brilliant Climax
  • An Ace Introduction
  • The Aces and the Chosen Card
  • Quintuplets
  • The Slop Over Card Location
  • Card and Pocket Mystery
  • Your Favorite Ace
  • The Double Surprise
  • Chivalrous Kings and the Four Ladies
  • A Quickie
  • Four Aces Par Excellence
  • The Obtrusive Queens
  • The Illusive Transfer
This book is written by and featuring the work of Arthur H. Buckley. It includes illustrations by Arthur H. Buckley too. Mine is a paperback copy published in 1946 by Dover Publications, printed in 1993 with a total of 219 pages. This copy is an unabridged republication of the privately published book (circa 1946) by Buckley titled 'Card Control: A Post Graduate Course on Practical Method; Supplemented by Forty Original Card Experiments'

ISBN: 978-0-486-27757-8