Wow.

I don't want to play bridge with him. Unless hes my partner, then maybe

Pretty good actor in Boogie Nights and Prestige.

*wildwestshow

Wow. I love how he doesn't say anything, just looks knowingly at you...

He looked knowingly at you? He looked at me with those 'come hither let me mentally rape you' eyes. I'm not sure we were looking at the same video.

he does have a vaguely sinister presence. I didn't get what the trick was for like the first half of the video because he was scaring me.

nonetheless, tres cool.

I saw a show featuring Ricky Jay a long time ago...he can throw cards that have been clocked at 90mph. He can hit a watermelon across the room with a card with such power that the card penetrates and stick into the rind.

Very cool. Nice ending there too in a "You think that's smart? Watch this!" kind of way.

It's unfortunately difficult to find decent quality Ricky Jay footage. This is also not his usual persona. He's usually very outgoing, witty and funny. I prefer his usual to this.

That's absolutely brilliant.

I can't begin to imagine how he would pull that off! The damned cards are shuffled!

uh. the cards he laid down on the spread deck at the beginning are just laid on top. Very easy to control where the cards go after that.

spectacular

how many hours practice do you think it took to get that good?

also, the whole deck is shaped unevenly. That way, any cards he wants to pull up later he merely turns 180degrees and because of the slope he can pull them out with one swipe of the hand. You can do all kinds of amazing tricks with a shaped deck.

Ricky Jay does not use shaped or any other type of trick decks. He's got an exceptional knowledge of the mathematics of shuffling and he's one of the best slight-of-hand magicians around.

If you doubt, watch one of his specials.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Ricky-Jay-Card-Control

He talks about it very briefly in this clip.

Holy moly... I only know him as an actor, I had NO idea he was this fricken' brilliant with a deck of cards

It's a...wait a minute...he didn't just...how the...what the fudge???

WHAT?!

for those who say "its easy!" sure. its easy IF youve practiced for hours on end and IF you have a background already so you know what your doing and IF you have the skill. which by the very definition preceding, means that it is in fact not easy by any stretch. if a regular joe can sit down and do this after maybe a day of practice, sure but no way in hell. should be noted ricky has been "playing" with cards since he was a kid. and he's in no way young now.

Thank you. It's not about tricks or gimmicks. It's about years of practice and being able to cut to an exact card every time and having an incredible memory to know exactly where every card is. Of course for a routine like this he probably has a set pattern of moves to get to where he wants to be going, but that doesn't make his skill any less amazing.

when I was younger and had a lot more time I used to practice with cards. I could cut a deck 3 ways and not change the order. However it looked like I was shuffling the cards. It's not that difficult to do.

misdirection at -0.27

Are the cards in order too? I can't tell because of the vid quality.

Ricky Jay is one of the, if not THE, best card magicians who ever lived.

If you have the DVD of Boogie Nights, there's an out-take showing John C. Reilly doing a magic trick in front of Ricky and it's cracking Ricky up with the improv that Reilly is doing.

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Wednesday, October 17th, 2007 2:40pm PDT - promote requested by Zifnab.

>> ^Chaucer:
uh. the cards he laid down on the spread deck at the beginning are just laid on top. Very easy to control where the cards go after that.


lets see you do it

I've watched a lot of his videos and I'm convinced he's the devil...Well him and that Criss Angel guy but more emo.

I'm convinced the cards were on the top the whole time, and he found creative ways to bring them to the middle to throw out, bring back to the top etc.

For example, at times he splits the back three times to take the top card that would've been at the top anyway. Just variations of split, bring to middle, bring back to top, etc.

I know he shuffles, but he has the skill to bring all the cards in order through 4 shuffles (just rearranging the suits).

*magic

Adding video to channels (Magic) - requested by E_Nygma.

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Monday, September 29th, 2008 4:18pm PDT - promote requested by NordlichReiter.

tada!