Saturday Night Contest - Fall In Love

[CaseyRudd]

Hey guys, hope everyone is having a great start to the weekend! Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and that means there was all kinds of love in the air. This week's contest has to do with love, but not the kind of love you're thinking about. Let me further elaborate.

For this week's contest, we want you to share with us the moment that you fell in love with cards, puzzles, magic, or cardistry. What was it that you saw, learned, or experienced that got you hooked with either genre? Was it a trick/flourish that you saw performed? Was it putting together a puzzle with your family? Was it learning a new sleight or cardistry move that gave you the spark? Did you attend a convention or meet up with other magicians/cardists? Whatever the moment was, we want you to share it with us. What made you fall in love with these hobbies?

Post your responses in THIS forum thread by no later than 11:00pm EST tomorrow, Sunday, February 16th. Once time is up, we will select TWO responses at random, each receiving 500 Elite Member Points and 3 Decks of Love Me Playing Cards, shipped on the house, anywhere in the world.

We are extremely excited to read your responses. We hope everyone had a happy Valentines Day!

 

[Justin.Morris]

I visited my wife (then girlfriend) at her office. We had that past weekend attended a casual work party where I had seen a deck of cards. I had picked up a few card tricks in my life, so I grabbed it and started to show some of the tricks that I knew.
When I came to the office, everyone came out and began to rave about how much they had enjoyed the card tricks and how they had to have another get together so they could see more. That was when I realized the effect magic could have on people.
I knew one magician and asked where I could learn more (because I had showed everything I knew). He pointed me to Penguin and I saw Oz do Jokers wild and do things with cards I never imagined were possible.
$5 later I had jumped down the rabbit hole.

 

[JoshuaC11274]

I got into magic when I bought the Omega magic trick on a whim and my wife and kids had the most amazing reaction when I did the trick with them.

 

[ST. Alex]

I fell in love with magic when i was a kid and one day coming home from school i saw David Blaine in TV doing street magic, i imediately tryed to convince my mom to buy me a deck of cards.

 

[yeti8726]

I fell in love with cards and magic when I was about 6 or so. I remember when my grandfathers friend from Florida came to visit, (his name was Jack Boat). He show me a trick called Lions, Tigers and Bears. It used the Kings , Queens, and Jacks and the story went that the Lions Tigers and Bears all escaped the zoo. Then he proceeded to stack all the King, Queen, and Jack of each suit on top of each other. He then ask me to cut and complete the cards as many times as I wanted. He then said the zoo keeper came and collected and the animals and dealt them in 3 piles, all the Kings (Lions) all the Queens (Tigers) Jacks (Bears) wear all separated.

 

[JamesonA]

I’ve always loved magic, but the moment I fell in love with it was at Magifest 2024, when I got to jam with Dynamo. His dedication and appreciation of the art was infectious, and I’m still on that creative high.

 

[DustinC4]

I blame the Youtube rabbit hole, especially late at night. You never know what you might stumble across. One thing leads to another. Just one more video...one more video...one more...what do you mean its 3am?!

 

[neilvinzon]

The moment I fell in love with magic was around 2011. A new student in our class started showing our classmates magic tricks, and I was instantly fascinated. I also realized I had a bit of an innate knack for figuring out how tricks were done, even though I was completely new to it. Every day, I’d ask him to teach me anything.

That curiosity led me to explore on my own, browsing the web, and that’s when I discovered Andrei Jikh’s videos and The Virts. That’s also when I learned about cardistry for the first time. From that point on, I was hooked.

 

[OriF]

The moment I fell in love with cards and magic is when it was summer after 4th grade, in the scouts. A boy I knew was playing "War" with a blue Bicycle deck, and it intrigued me. The moment I came back from that scouts trip, I looked up these cards, and what came up was magic.
From this moment on I was completely into magic, learning it myself from YouTube videos and later even collecting decks.

 

[Procliton]

I fell in love with magic when I reaad a Marlo sleight of hand movement. It was so clever that I knew I couldn't stop.

 

[Furrukh]

for me it was seeing David Copperfield perform the Grandpa Aces routine, I had already seen some of his shows, but most of his tricks were big illusions and as a kid I thought this is something on does with the help of devils and jinns, you know how some people think abt magicians from a conservative family background. It was this aces routine I began to think, he is just doing it with cards, there has to be some way, for months I worked on myself coming with ways to perform that trick, then I fell into the Youtube rabbit hole and then found abt websites like P3, T11 and E and never looked back

 

[Bobacus13]

My love for cardistry started when I was looking for a new playing card deck to play poker with. I started watching a bunch of YouTube reviews of different cards and brands, eventually leading me to old 2010’s cardistry and slight of hand videos

 

[Youru]

I think it all started around 2019-2020, when I suddenly several videos on YouTube appeared to me, about custom poker decks. I fell in love with the design of several of them: Tavern on the Green, Flea Circus and Notorious Gambling Frog. While I was researching how to get these decks in my country, I slowly discovered the world of collectible decks, and little by little I wanted to have more.

 

[Nikolay Karagyozov]

I have got two first loves with magic. The first one was when I experienced it for the first time. A friend of mine did a mind reading routine on me with a forced card and I was dazzled. I felt in love with the feeling and started practicing like crazy - reading books, watching dvds and so on.

I have always been a bit shy so it took me more than 5 years to actually get the courage to perform. Once I did and saw the reactions on the people's faces I thought to myself : are they feeling like I did the first time a saw magic? If that's so it must be sooo good for them. And I felt in love and inspired once again with magic.

 

[StephaneH3]

I always loved cards, ever since I was a wee lad and my mum taught me to play Cribbage to have someone to play with he, but it kinda was it.
What really kickstarted my love for beautiful cards was when I stumbled across the Avengers deck from T11. I bought two of them, one for playing with, the other to keep under wraps. Then you guys started to churn out collabs with franchises that I love, and here I am, collecting them like crazy.
I recently aquired a super fancy Poker table for poker nights and I can't wait to whip out a James Bond deck for the occasion!

 

[kappmen]

I saw a guy in a video on YouTube spinning cards beautifully

 

[theSunnyG]

It was 1996, which makes me feel old writing this. I still remember the first time I saw a magician make a card disappear right in front of me—I was completely stunned. I couldn’t figure out where it went, and that mystery stayed with me. But when I finally learned the secret, it wasn’t just about the trick—it was about the feeling it gave me, like something unlocked about the world. Long story short, that was the moment I knew I wanted to create that same sense of wonder for others.

 

[Goku52]

What happened with me was that I used to watch Dynamo the magician impossible! I loved that show and always thought that there must be actors there must be something or the other. I remember his coin trick with muscle pass I used to try that with big magnets 😂 stuck to my hands but always failed, then I bought a deck of cards and tried to learn hi famous dynamo shuffle ! This was the moment I fell in love with cards , magic ✨

 

[Sleck]

Breaking the Magician's Code by the Masked Magician, Val Valentino!

 

[Momento]

The moment when I fell in love with magic was when one of my football teammate showed me a magic trick, and I was so blown away, I asked him to show me the same trick again and again. Finally convincing him to reveal the secret. Hello left magic a couple months ago, and here I am in love with magic for the past 8 years