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The Hindu Shuffle

 Not really anything to say about the description here. It‘s fine. I guess one thing that might be of interest is to know that in Korea, where this shuffle is quite predominant, the handling of the cards is actually frequently quite violent, with a slapping of the two packets together just prior to the cards being dragged off (there‘s also a slight difference in grip, but that‘s not as noteworthy). Some of the card games there actually use cards that are the same size as those in our miniature decks, and the general Hindu Shuffle style of mechanic seems to suit them, and as such all decks of cards are shuffled in this manner. It‘s quite a contrast to the delicate and graceful way that magicians usually employ the Hindu Shuffle. I don‘t know if this holds true for all of Asia, but I wouldn‘t be surprised, with there being so much cultural influence between China, Korea and Japan.

Hindu Shuffle Control, Single Card

This is essentially the lift shuffle mechanics applied to the Hindu S huffle grip. Despite the fact that I like the Overhand Lift Shuffle so much, I‘m not terribly fond of this one. The reason is this  —  the illusion you wish to create with a lift shuffle is that they replace the card at a point, and

then you shuffle off on top of it. If you can do this well, the impression is simply that a shuffle is interrupted and then continued, with the card somewhere in the middle. This illusion is, in my opinion, killed if the two packets are made to align perfectly just after the card is replaced. With the Overhand Lift Shuffle, you‘re able to jam the packet into position, which leads to the

appearance of a rough, sloppy handling of the cards, which isn‘t a bad thing to have when Overhand Shuffling anyway. If you‘ve got the cover and angles down, you don‘t need perfect alignment to do the Lift Shuffle well. The problem is that in order to execute the packet steal for the Hindu Lift Shuffle, it‘s more difficult to do deceptively without having that pause at the moment of alignment, and to me, that kills the illusion. The fact that the Hindu Shuffle is a bit more open doesn‘t help much in concealing that alignment. So, perhaps my main reason for not liking this isn‘t that there‘s something wrong with the mechanic itself, but rather that it‘s difficult to make it look good — it‘s also difficult to make the pass look good, but it‘s possible.

Hindu Shuffle Control, Several Cards

Again, not easy to do without looking like you‘re handling the cards in a precious manner, and if you‘ve got several cards being returned, it‘s eas y to run out of cards and have to start the shuffle again in order to get the last of the cards returned to the deck —  not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, but if you‘re having multiple cards selected and returned, it helps if the process is  brisk (obviously without cost to its deceptiveness). So, if you‘re trying to make sure that you‘re

not forced to start a new shuffle, that means you‘ve got to be really careful in drawing off small  packets, and that makes the shuffle look a little too neat and tidy for my taste. In order to make

sure that you don‘t run out of cards, you‘ve essentially got to dictate where the car d is going to  be returned in the deck, and I hate that. Of course, when you give them the power to do that, you

run the risk of them waiting quite a while if they‘re trouble-makers. Overall, I would prefer to use something like a cull in order to get multiple cards to gather — it‘s fast, straightforward, easy to get into, and innocent-seeming.

There are a couple of multiple card controls using the Hindu Shuffle that are worth looking at. Dai Vernon in particular had two, a Multiple Shift which is well-known and highly regarded, and another one which involved milking the bottom cards that I think is a bit more difficult to do well, since it looks like you‘re changing up the tempo mid-shuffle which isn‘t really a great thing. The Multiple Shift has been published in many places, and both of these are on Daryl‘s Encyclopedia of Card Sleights.

Hindu Shuffle Force

Strangely enough, whereas I liked the Overhand Lift Shuffle as a control but not as a force, I dislike the Hindu Lift Shuffle as a control, but I don‘t mind it as a force. I don‘t know that it‘s repeatable, but if you‘re able to get that gesture down (saying ―Here, just take the top card‖ as you gesture with the packet that‘s going to drop off the packet) it‘s fairly disarming, I guess  because of the openness of the shuffle and the fact it‘s a natural-seeming aesthetic to point at the

top card with the other packet, something which looks a bit more closed with the Overhand version. Michael Ammar has a slightly different way of getting into this t ype of force that you might want to look into. I‘ve used this, and when it‘s well-executed, it‘s quite nice. If there is a  problem with using this style of force, it‘s that because you‘re asking them to take the card they

stopped at, that means they need to be near  by, and if they‘re nearby, why aren‘t you just offering from a spread? Not an insignificant thing, but I‘ve actually found I could get awa y with it just by saying I learned the trick in Korea, and by showing that this is how they shuffle there. It‘s not quite as natural, but it is theatrically motivated, and if the evidence leads them to buy that it‘s fair (convincers aid in this), that‘s often good enough.

Most of the time, people don‘t even bother going through the mechanics described in Royal Road and just end up flashing the bottom card in the right hand (assumes you‘re shuffling from the right hand into the left). It‘s a strange thing —  if people are paying close attention to the  proceedings, the discrepancy of this should jump out, but because people don‘t really know the

mechanics of shuffling, it flies all the time. There are plent y of ways to add touches to this, such as stripping out a middle block (reserving the force card at the bottom), and saying, ―If you said stop here, then this would be your card –‖ flashing the indifferent, and even applying a bit of  pressure from the index finger and riffling off that card onto the left hand‘s packet, and

continuing, ―–or if you said stop here, then this would be your card.‖ Afterwards, when you  begin the next shuffle, you draw out the packet from the bottom as per usual. One interesting

thing about this is that in order to do this explanation-section deceptively, you‘ve got to get those  packets to align again, but I‘ve learned through experience that this is a moment of low heat, and

if you can get agreement on the fairness of proceedings (despite the discrepanc y), that means you can be really clean about the moment you show them the selected card. What‘s more, this is

 probably a superior application of the Hindu Shuffle to force a card, since it‘s suitable for when the spectator selecting the card isn‘t close to you, whereas the previous handling needs them to  be close up.

Tyler Erickson has a bunch of touches that act as convincers for this force, and if you get the chance to study under him, you ought to ask him about his handling. It‘s a good sequence.

Hindu Shuffle Glimpse

Bold, and done at a time that I believe would be a moment of high heat. I wouldn‘t do it this way, if only because it‘s not difficult to get the necessary glimpse ahead of time for a Key Card, and it‘s way too close to being an intuitive solution for a regular pick -a-card trick, with an

obvious opportunity for applying that intuitive solution due to the openness of the shuffle.

The Step

The step is a decent technique, but I‘d recommend a dribbling action rather than a springing action, if only because the dribble is easier to do slowly. Quickly, the dribble flourish involves holding the cards in a pseudo-Biddle grip, with the thumb at the rear short end, and the fingertips at the front short end (you can do this with just your middle and ring finger), and with the index finger curled over the top and pressing down slightly to apply the necessary pressure. I‘m using the Dribble here in this video, only without the stepping action.

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I don‘t do it that much so don‘t use me as a model. Done well, it can be a very innocent and carefree way of handling the cards.

Natural Jog

This can look good if done well, and it adds a nice side benefit of allowing you to table the deck immediately afterwards with a carefree attitude. You‘ll want the final result to be a bit messy for two reasons — first, if you‘re going to table it, you‘ll need the cover, and second, it motivates you squaring up a bit in the hand, which covers getting the break. One tip from Tyler Erickson (I don‘t know if it‘s original with him) —  when the right thumb is coming in to do its dirty work, rather than having a lifting action on the top packet when you‘re getting the break, alter it so that you‘re making the lower packet drop. This is less conspicuous.

Twelve-down Riffle

This isn‘t bad. It‘s basically like a Le Paul Bluff Pass but with a little less bluff to it, and if

you‘re good at dribbling cards you can do that with the small packet remaining at the end, to help sell the illusion that the card is being returned to the middle of the deck (when doing the Le Paul Bluff Pass, people often have to align the deck momentarily in order to grab a bunch of cards to do the same convincer — here there‘s no such issue if you can dribble those cards well). Earlier on in the book there was talk about using the overhand shuffle to run cards onto a selection to put

it in the Nth spot, and this is a nice replacement for that. One thing Dai Vernon recommends for a slightly different instance but which I think could apply here, is making sure that rather than counting the twelve cards individually whilst spreading, to try to count them in chunks —  this will make the initial spread look a bit more natural, although it will run the risk that you

accidentally get more than twelve cards pushed over.

Again, it‘s not the most natural procedure for havin g a card selected, but it does make for a pretty clean replacement. I‘ve usually felt the need to motivate this sort of ―stabbing‖ process by saying that you want it to be truly random, and the fact that they get a truly free choice of where they insert their finger (along with the par allel implied condition that it‘s impossible to force from this) helps somewhat.

“All Change Here”

Hard to say how I feel about this trick. I do like the fact that, in the opening, it uses two different ways of getting the card into position, and they seem to cancel each other out. Still, I‘ve found that revelations of the card in this manner are generally pretty weak unless there‘s conviction that the card is lost, and it‘d also be nice to have them deal off the cards themselves. The segue into showing that all the cards are the selections is somewhat bold —  incidentally, if you were confused about my explanation of the ―flash‖ version of the Hindu Shuffle Force, this is

essentially what they‘re doing (and exposing to the audience) here. Since it‘s possible to get five minutes of show out of a single card force, I think there‘s more merit to using it furtively in that manner, rather than as a throw-away magical gag. Still, many people have used this sort of

strategy, including Tommy Wonder, who has some nice touches on it that are worth looking into in his version of ―Everywhere and Nowhere‖.

Speaking of which, one thing that I think is important to consider is that if you‘re reall y going to embrace the claim that all the cards are the same, you‘ve got to of fer some pretty high proof. Roberto Giobbi made the point that it‘s very difficult to do a satisfying Everywhere and  Nowhere effect without using duplicates — and that‘s just proving that several cards are the

same, not the whole deck. So, if you‘re going to show a bunch of cards are all different (such as in the first phase of this effect), you‘re going to ha ve a bit of an obstacle in showing that they‘re all now the same card, since you‘re only showing them one card at a time, really quickly. Now,  people have used the Hindu Shuffle flash sequence in the Ambitious Card (showing that the card

can apparently jump anywhere) and I think it fits there better because you‘ve already established some pretty good magic, and you‘re now expanding the nature of the eff ect, but still keeping short of a single, defined claim that would be difficult to prove.

I‘ve actually spent a great deal of time trying to come up with a suitable trick of this type that uses a regular deck. It‘s not been easy, but I‘ll get into that later in Chapter 20.

“Ewephindit”

I‘m guessing that they were running out of titles for tricks at this p oint. I dislike the idea of going from one shuffle into another for no reason. Yeah, it can give the impression that the cards are really being mixed up in a bunch of different ways (I switch shuffles in the middle of my

Multiple Selection routine) but for a single selection it strikes me as being more expedient to just do the whole thing using a single shuffle. Again (sorry for sounding like a broken record here) I‘m not so fond of revelations that occur within the deck unless the spectator can shuffle. The sliding key card is great, but there are better ways to use it, including one described in the next chapter.

General Thoughts on This Chapter

Some decent controls here, but the tricks don‘t rock my world. I‘m a bit surprised that they  passed over one obvious function —  that of using the Hindu Shuffle to place a key card. Very

quickly, you know the bottom card, begin the Hindu Shuffle and say ―Say ‗Stop‘ at any time.‖ When they say stop, have them put the card back, and immediately dump the rest of the cards on top of it, setting the Key Card. If you take this into account, the Hindu Shuffle is one of those great versatile techniques that can be used to control (assuming you can make that lift shuffle look good), to force, or to set a key card.

There are some sneaky things one can do through this shuffle. Aside from the previousl y mentioned techniques from Dai Vernon, Lennart Green managed to come up with ―The Circulation Shuffle‖ which is a full-deck false shuffle from the Hindu Shuffle grip (not my favourite thing of his, but perhaps others might like it), and it‘s also possible to take packets off the bottom of the deck (rather than the top) and still make it look good —  one could apply this strategy to the setting of the key card, so that it looks like you‘re shuffling fairly both before and after the replacement, or else even use it as a false shuffle to preserve a stack or possibly a full- deck (probably unnecessarily bold, given other methods out there). It‘s also my preferred cover for a top card palm —  palm off the card in the action of taking the deck and rotating it into  position to begin a Hindu Shuffle.