The Cascade Card Trick

Video Transcript

" I’m Joe Marshall with expertvillage.com, and today we’re going to discuss flourishes. This is a fancy spread that you can use just to impress people. You want to spread out the cards. Just let them cascade over and pick it up. That’s basically what the technique looks like. The way to actually do it is to deliver the cards one at a time from the finger. The actual grip you get into is just like most of them. Ring finger and middle finger on top, thumb in the back, first finger over here. You’re going to spread this way. As you do, you’re going only let one card at a time come out from your first finger. It’s a little more difficult than it sounds, so practice it slow. When you are practicing it, just make sure that you’re just trying to get the knack down of spreading all the cards even. Once you get this down, it’s just a matter of picking up the last card on the corner here and turning them all over like this, letting them fall, and come back around. I’ll show you a way to get past that point where you’re having trouble picking up the end. Normally, what most magicians would do is they’ll spread out the cards, they’ll pick up the last one and scoop it, and let it all fall, comes back down, and they collect them all up. The reason why they use that last card, as you just saw. Sometimes depending on the surface you’re working on, it’s hard to pick up that card, so to scoop it up with one to give it that push is essential. Also, the table that you’re using is important. If it doesn’t have a cloth on it, you’re not doing this on carpet or something that has a foam mat, you’re not going to be able to do this. The cards are just going to slip out from each other. You let it fall over, your hand’s there to catch it. You drop this card here, and then your hand just pushes them and scoops them up, makes them tumble over into the hand. That’s just a fancy ribbon spread. Give it a shot. "