Front Hand Production. No. 2

For this production the cards must be palmed with their faces inward, that is next to your palm.

With about a dozen cards palmed in this manner you bend the fingers inward until you are able to pull down the top end of the outermost card as in Fig. 1. Your arm is bent so that the hand is about six inches away from the body.

You release the card by straightening the thumb and the card will fly out from the rest, at the same moment you jerk your arm forward and catch the card by its inner end at the tips of the thumb and fingers. (Fig. 2). With practice it will be found that the cards can be caught at their extreme ends so that practically the whole card is in view at the finger tips. Success in this sleight is mainly a matter of timing the release of the card and the forward jerk of the arm.

The sleight can be done very rapidly and it is one of the few moves which gain in effect by being done quickly. Some performers beginning the action with about twenty cards palmed, catch a dozen or so at the finger tips singly, and then suddenly produce all the others fanned out. (Fig. 3). It is well to begin with not more than eight or ten cards.

This sleight can be used to good advantage in the production of the full pack as a preliminary to a series of flourishes. You have the rest of the pack in a clip on your hip, or in your lower vest pocket. After producing say, five or six cards, you turn a little more to the left, reach out with your right hand as far as possible and produce the last of the palmed cards in a fan. At the same moment with your left hand grip the rest of the pack from the clip or pocket, adding them to the cards already in your left hand.

Turn now to face the audience, place the cards just caught on top of the pack, and, as you do so, push a good load of cards from the back of the pack with your left forefinger into the right palm. Riffle the cards in the left hand and produce the palmed cards from the left knee fanned out to fullest extent. Add these cards to the others in your left hand and proceed to your flourishes such as The Arm Spreads....