Ever
seen a magician spring cards from hand to hand? It's a a great magical flourish! Sure you have! They
did it on Friends (but Rachel was using a trick deck). And you always
see pictures of magicians doing this. But when you try, they all seem
to fall to the ground. There are some subtle secrets to doing this right.
Ready to learn?

Here's
how you can impress your friends. Ready to learn how to spring cards from hand to hand? Here we go.

Secret:

Hold
the deck in your right hand and bend the cards so that they bow inward
to your hand. Let them slide and spring off your thumb. It will sound
like you flipped through the deck really quick. Your hand will go from
the shape of a "c" to the shape of a swan (if you are making
shadow puppets on the wall) by the time you are done.

This
trick does take a lot of practice, but here's how you need to learn
it:

Start
off by just springing the cards. Try to keep it nice and even. Just
work on this for awhile until you can kind of control where the cards
are going. At first, the playing cards will just jump in small groups, after a little practice you'll be able to get more of a steady stream of cards. If you're having bad luck with it, you can always try a newer deck, they're more springy!

Next,
spring them into your left hand. But do this really close together.
Practice with your left hand up against your chest as a backdrop as
the cards shoot into it.

Now
this is the cool part that most people don't know. Use your pinky
of your left hand as a stopper. Your left hand will look like you are
waving to someone, but the pinky will be pointing straight toward the
cards. This works great! No one really even notices this when you do
it, and it just works perfectly.

[When I was a kid, for years I could never figure out how anyone was actually catching the cards, and then as I was experiementing, I found this method. Of course, it's well documented now in many magic publications.]

Now
slowly move away from your chest with the cards.

As
you get better, bring your hands further and further apart.

This is key to the springing cards trick:

When
you are springing the cards, start with your hands close together, move
them apart, and then at the end bring them back together. This will give the illusion that you shot the card far from a distance the whole time, your audience won't realize you start close, move far, and then move close.

The second benefit to starting close, moving far, and then finishing with your hands close together is that you can square up some of the cards at the end, because your hands will be close together. It also allows you to go right into a shuffle or other card move fairly quickly, or even repeat it a few times.

Beleive me, you will really impress people with this stunt! Take the time to learn it and you'll have a great card skill for life!

This
is a fun trick, but the sound WILL get annoying while you practice to
any family members, roommates, co-workers, or cellmates. This shouldn't
be too much of a problem, but if you really DO have cellmates, I wouldn't
suggest doing this trick. Instead, learn how to cheat at card games. Plenty of examples of that throughout this site!