Practice review.

Chapter 6 is "Transfer Cuts". It has been a pretty smooth week for practice. Even though I skipped two nights of practice, I still feel like I have got the basics of the cuts down.

Maybe skipped is a bad choice of words. I left work pretty late Tuesday and went to dinner with my brother and his girlfriend Wednesday. After I worked on the transfer cuts Monday I felt pretty confident about them. So I gave extra time to work and family. Now onto the practice sessions.

I don't always feel like I have enough time for each chapter so I run everything once and come back to the moves that give me trouble. Here is a breakdown of my practice by chapter.

Chapter 1 of "Roberto Giobbi's Card College Volume 1". Almost everything starts in the dealing position. So I check my hand position once or twice as I run through the straddle position, back to dealing, then to elevated dealing position a few times. Then as I cut the deck and move the deck around in end grip I note where my fingers hit as I hold the deck in dealing position during the cut and after tabling the cards then picking them up. When I first restarted this book I was pushing the deck into my palm and my thumb was to far forward on the deck. I mentioned this back on August 27th. And each week it gets better. Still though I keep my eye on it. And I wish every chapter had the flow of this chapter. Each basic move leads into other basic moves pretty smooth in this chapter. Square ups, deck cuts, then we move onto spreading the cards. This is one I put a little extra effort into. The way its described you can see the smooth escalator like movement of the cards from left to right. Getting that look takes time though. Over the last few weeks I've been concentrating on making the movements even. So the cards are not messy as they slide from left to right. This really helps when you'r out jogging or in jogging the cards. So I've been working on a nice smooth flow, in the near future I will be working on increasing the distance between my hands. I can get about six inches between my hands and it looks sweet. Like the cards magically float from one hand to the other. But they get really messy by the time the hit my right hand. So working on clean and smooth comes first. Then I can work on distance. I run through and out jog the aces as I spread the cards and then I dribble the cards a few times. Once again this is a move I spend extra time on. It just looks so cool when well done and people love watching it almost as much as they like the magic routines. So I put extra effort into it. Then I deal cards onto a large piece of fabric. My goal is to consistently get each card to land exactly where I want it. So I deal a three high and five to seven card wide grid. After I get the grid I start over trying to deal cards on the cards I have already dealt. Then I do it again dealing the cards face up this time. I run through a couple swing cuts and start forming breaks. After I go through the breaks I practice the step a few times. My goal here is to have a nice small angle to the cards so you would need to be looking for the break to even know it's there. I quickly riffle the end of the deck a few times and move onto the ribbon spread. I spread the cards left to right and right to left over and over again. Here my goal is to have a nice consistent spread. The suit and number of each card should be visible whether I spread them left to right or in reverse. I do this until I start to think I am taking to much time on it. Then I move onto chapter two. I will talk about chapter two in my next post. I have overtime to do so its off to bed for me.

Before I go, I have got to point this out. Theory 11 has a great free video on the color change check it out.


Terry