How Long To Perfect False Deals?

[Scodischarge]

Hi guys,
I know this is a controversial topic with no ultimate right answer, because it differs from person to person, depending on several factors, the most obvious being, of course, how much time you spend practicing it. However, I'd be interested in what time you think one needs to perfect his or her false deals. It would be great if you could give different time spans for seconds, bottoms etc.
Again, I'm not looking for the "right" answer, but I'd be interested in any rule of thumb or guidelines you have found to be accurate.

I'm pretty sure that Jason England will be quoted in his thread. I am aware of his rule of thumb: "Two years if you do 1000 bottoms a day; if you do 200 bottoms a day ~8 years." (To be found in another thread on the forum.)
However, I have seen amazing bottoms from people with far less than two years of practice, and incredibly obvious bottoms by people with years and years, sometimes decades, of practice.
I'm sure there's a lot of truth in his statement, but I'd be interested in your opinions as well, as well as your personal experience.

To make things easier, let's talk about the practice time from the moment you found "your" false dealing method onward, not counting the weeks or months of trying out different methods.

Looking forward to your answers!

 

[B. Nikolay]

Hi guys,
I know this is a controversial topic with no ultimate right answer, because it differs from person to person, depending on several factors, the most obvious being, of course, how much time you spend practicing it. However, I'd be interested in what time you think one needs to perfect his or her false deals. It would be great if you could give different time spans for seconds, bottoms etc.
Again, I'm not looking for the "right" answer, but I'd be interested in any rule of thumb or guidelines you have found to be accurate.

I'm pretty sure that Jason England will be quoted in his thread. I am aware of his rule of thumb: "Two years if you do 1000 bottoms a day; if you do 200 bottoms a day ~8 years." (To be found in another thread on the forum.)
However, I have seen amazing bottoms from people with far less than two years of practice, and incredibly obvious bottoms by people with years and years, sometimes decades, of practice.
I'm sure there's a lot of truth in his statement, but I'd be interested in your opinions as well, as well as your personal experience.

To make things easier, let's talk about the practice time from the moment you found "your" false dealing method onward, not counting the weeks or months of trying out different methods.

Looking forward to your answers!

Well.. I’m actually a big fan of Mr. England’s work.
He mentioned once that you can get a good workable 2nd deal in about 6 month (it would not be perfect for sure.. You will need years, for second deal mastery).
And it’s about three years for bottom deal perfection.

From my own experience is pretty much true..
For bottoms, that I’m happy with, I probably spend less time. Practicing with cards 8-14 hour daily for some hard period of time.
Greek deal if you have right attitude to the technic and have good bottom already, would’t be a problem.

 

[RalphB2]

Your can not rush deception. I would say 10 years no matter what. The first year would be learning how to hold the deck properly and get the form down. Then you would do the deal slow making it look good and everything is right. You can practice a lot but if you practice wrong then it hurts you. You have to get the fundamentals down first then go to doing it 1000 times a day. And yet still then it will take you ten years. Now a days everyone wants to get the perfect bottom deal in one day or one week. But you have to go through the hard work and BE patient. Yes it sounds like a lot but it’s true. Trust the process.

 

[Mr_ARPY]

It’s a really debatable topic. For instance, when it comes to something like the bottom deal, it takes more time to really understand the move and all the nuances like the grip, pressure points, rhythm, etc, specially in a push off, but something like a strike second deal has a much simpler context and not much technique and tips, but in my opinion, to do a great strike second that is consistent and surefire every time you wanna deal cards, something like the level of walter scott or martin nash, it takes years of practice.
As I have discussed it with you previously, in my opinion to learn a second deal(specially strike) takes just maybe 2 or 3 months, 6 months to get it consistent and natural enough to probably fool a layman with it. But it takes at least 10 years (or the way martin nash says in one of his books 3000 - 5000 hours of practice) to really master the move. But you can get a good enough bottom deal for laymen in maybe 6-7 months or so, and if you practice daily everyday, you might be able to get an almost perfect bottom deal in just a few years.
But as you know, it really depends on both the person and the deal. For instance Jerry Camaro and Marlo were famous for their false deals, yet their deals didn’t look really all that good. Whereas, someone like Joey Moriarty who probably hasn’t practiced half the amount that Marlo did, has an almost completely perfect bottom deal.
It also really depends on the grip and the time it takes to find the correct grip. I’ve spent probably a year and a half on this move and experimented with different grips, and I think I found the best grip for my hands and cards maybe 2 months ago. And the other 1 year and 4 months are kinda wasted on techniques I won’t use. Same thing... same journey could be said for all other false deals as well.

 

[Gabriel Z.]

Well, we can all agree that false deals are difficult. I have found in my little experience that false deals or card handling in general is like playing a musical instrument , the more you do it the better you will be... Unfortunately most of us have jobs, chores etc. And we can't quite devote the amount of time we would like to card magic. I'm not saying that I'm an exception(far from it). However since I was diagnosed with schizophrenia I have found time to practice my card magic mostly because I don't work..... Case in point you have to make time ... If it's important to you to have a sexy bottom deal or second deal you have to make time throughout the day to practice. I particularly spend most of my time with my Up The Ladder Cuts ... However you may be different and find a different area of card manipulation more important..

 

[MohanaMisra]

how much time you spend practicing it.

how much time you spend practising it correctly*.

It takes no more effort to do a sleight correctly than it takes to do it wrong.

Other than that, I think its a work in progress. Like most other sleights, right? You might never achieve the 'perfection' you're looking for, but don't let that stop you from performing. Until and unless I was caught while doing the turnover pass, I had no idea how to do the sleight the best.

Because practice teaches you which angles to cover.

Performance teaches you when to cover these angles, which I think, is as important, if not more.

PS:- Oh and, perform to a rhythm. Get those headphones, play music, and do false deals with the beats. Pop music btw, works amazing for this. Try Alan Walker even

 

[Mr_ARPY]

Try Alan Walker even

I second Allan Walker. specially faded. But the best songs are post modern classical era songs as well as some of the older classical hip hop beats.

 

[MohanaMisra]

I second Allan Walker. specially faded.

Even Darkside...

Anyways, BASICALLY, in case we went off topic XD

Practice to beats. Helps with timing issues.

 

[Scodischarge]

Hey, I personally don't have anything against this becoming a music thread!

Anyway, thank you all for your responses! I agree with a lot of it, disagree with some; just a few things I wanted to say myself as well:

a great strike second that is consistent and surefire every time you wanna deal cards, something like the level of martin nash

I won't argue here, Martin Nash has an amazing strike second. The problem is, he has this "dead thumb"; he hardly moves his thumb when dealing seconds. Is this a problem? It seems to me that there are two camps that will probably never reconcile.There are those who say you should make the brief as small as humanly possible. It surely looks amazing (to be honest, I think that only those of us who actually practice second dealing can truly appreciate it) and is great for demonstrations. But then there's the other camp (which I'm part of) who say that it simply looks unnatural, that while it's amazing on all levels something just looks wrong.
Anyway, what I was getting to: Is it really necessary to achieve this level of "perfection" (if this is even what perfection is)?

how much time you spend practising it correctly.

Thank you for the complement; I meant to write that, but it seems I forgot. I of course fully agree, to quote Richard Turner: "Perfect practice makes perfect. You can practice something wrong and in the end it's perfectly wrong."

Oh and, perform to a rhythm. Get those headphones, play music, and do false deals with the beats. Pop music btw, works amazing for this. Try Alan Walker even

Tried that out already. Though I don't really like modern Pop; I'm more into Progressive Metal. Pro-tip: Do not, I repeat do NOT try dealing smoothly to a 19/16 rhythm; it's pretty much impossible. But yeah, a great tip and fun to do, too.


Again, thank you all for your comments, I really appreciate the time you took!

 

[Mr_ARPY]

Is it really necessary to achieve this level of "perfection" (if this is even what perfection is)?

If you ask my inner move-monkey, and if your goal is demonstration, YES. If you intend to just use it, wether in a magic context or an actual game, NOT AT ALL.
According to many of the good second dealers out there, a good second deal is more about rhythm and accuracy than it is about the size of a brief. Most of the top notch (practical) second dealers out there actually don’t have a minuscule brief at all. And it’s not that they can’t, it’s just that they don’t want to, as it is not a natural action. Jason England has one of the smallest briefs and one of the most accurate strike seconds out there, and in his strike second 1on1, he actually says that he doesn’t use that small brief in an actual performance or in an exposé for laymen, it’s mainly to show off to magicians. I hope that answered that question.

19/16 rhythm

Wait what? How’s that even possible, at least on a piano, even imagining the possiblity of a notesheet with this “sends shivers down my spine #queen”.

 

[Scodischarge]

If you ask my inner move-monkey, and if your goal is demonstration, YES. If you intend to just use it, wether in a magic context or an actual game, NOT AT ALL.
According to many of the good second dealers out there, a good second deal is more about rhythm and accuracy than it is about the size of a brief. Most of the top notch (practical) second dealers out there actually don’t have a minuscule brief at all. And it’s not that they can’t, it’s just that they don’t want to, as it is not a natural action. Jason England has one of the smallest briefs and one of the most accurate strike seconds out there, and in his strike second 1on1, he actually says that he doesn’t use that small brief in an actual performance or in an exposé for laymen, it’s mainly to show off to magicians. I hope that answered that question.

It does, thank you. Do you think that for strike second mastery you need to be able to deal it with such a tiny brief, at least in theory?

Wait what? How’s that even possible, at least on a piano, even imagining the possiblity of a notesheet with this “sends shivers down my spine #queen”.

Yep. I'm sending you a PM with a link to a song, but I can tell you: It's a tremendous pain to learn, but incredibly fun to play.

 

[Mr_ARPY]

It does, thank you. Do you think that for strike second mastery you need to be able to deal it with such a tiny brief, at least in theory?

The move monkey part of me wants to have that ability, but I don’t think it’s necessary even in theory, unless you wanna show off, of course. Still, someone who has the skill, to deal accurately from such a small brief can easily get the correct rhythm and hand motions to have a really deceptive deal by modifying his brief a bit.

 

[Houston Curtis]

I started when I was very young....so my answer might be coming from a slightly different vantage point. Having said that...I am of the opinion that you never truly learn how to false deal under fire until you are actually under fire. I did my first bottom deal around 14...and by 15 I was implementing it in penny, nickel dime games with friends who wouldn't have known what I was doing even if I told them. In a way, it was a safe environment to test myself. It was 3 years later before I played with fast company for any real amount of money. My advice is this...if you wanna be safe...practice for at least a year (no less than 5 hours a day) then spend a couple years false dealing with family and friends....beating your mom in the home rummy game, or hustling your little brother out of a game of Uno. Keep practicing and playing safe games and eventually you will know when its time to take your skills to the next level. The "safe" games are kind of like a gamblers version of performing magic tricks in front of a friend or family member you trust. if you screw up...you won't get fired and you won't get whacked...you'll just get a little bit wiser. Hope this helps. Feel free to visit me on KardSharp if you are serious about being a mechanic.

 

[Scodischarge]

Thank you very much for your answer, Mr Curtis! It is very helpful, though I think more so for somebody with a different objective than myself. Your advice is for somebody who actually wants to use the deals in a game for money. I practice the moves because they're fun; I don't really have any practical use for them.
However, as I am quite a perfectionist I want to, in theory, be able to deal false under fire, so your tips are valuable to me nevertheless.

By the way, I plan on uploading a few videos here of false dealing, shuffling etc. so I can get some pointers on what to practice especially. It would be great if I could count on some constructive criticism from your side as well!

 

[WitchDocIsIn]

hustling your little brother out of a game of Uno.

Swap "brother" for "neighbor's granddaughter" (who was my age) and that's actually exactly how I got started learning deceptive card techniques.

 

[Houston Curtis]

Thank you very much for your answer, Mr Curtis! It is very helpful, though I think more so for somebody with a different objective than myself. Your advice is for somebody who actually wants to use the deals in a game for money. I practice the moves because they're fun; I don't really have any practical use for them.
However, as I am quite a perfectionist I want to, in theory, be able to deal false under fire, so your tips are valuable to me nevertheless.

By the way, I plan on uploading a few videos here of false dealing, shuffling etc. so I can get some pointers on what to practice especially. It would be great if I could count on some constructive criticism from your side as well!

 

[Houston Curtis]

You are quite welcome my friend. And I would be more than happy to critic anything you like. Being a perfectionist is what it’s all about...whether you are playing for money or performing for an audience.

 

[Scodischarge]

Thank you very much, I appreciate your helpfulness very much!