The royal road to card magic
by Jean Hugard · first published 1949
5mentions
3recommended by
5HN commenters
2015–2019first – last mentioned
60% recommend40% neutral
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Card College by Roberto Giobbi is pricey but provides excellent instruction. If you don't mind reading older, more formal language (though not as old as Erdnase!), The Royal Road to Card Magic by Hugard and Braue, and its sequel Expert Card Technique, cover more material than Giobbi at a fraction of the cost, albeit with slightly less attention to the subtleties of finger position.
on “The Expert at the Card Table: The Classic Treatise on Card Manipulation” ↗Card College is the gold standard for card magic. Several volumes. Very clear illustrations. Pricey. There is also a DVD with the book's text and videos. The Royal Road to Card Magic is much shorter, much cheaper, and also a classic.
on “Ask HN: Books on Magic Tricks?” ↗I started learning myself in late November 2017. You can get a LOT of mileage off a $10ish book too (eg “expert card technique” or “royal road to card magic”[1]) But yes, I follow a few YouTube channels that have taught me a lot: Xavier Spade, Alex Pandrea, PigCake and a few others. There are some excellent ones, but I noticed that you do have to be careful,…
on “A Magician Explains Why We See What’s Not There” ↗As a note, too, R. Paul Wilson did a rather decent DVD series of The Royal Road to Card Magic, which you can get for ~$60. The book is a useful reference, but actually -seeing- the sleights can be amazingly useful. And as others have mentioned, if you do go to Erdnase (or get sufficiently hooked…
on “The Expert at the Card Table: The Classic Treatise on Card Manipulation” ↗…the second time. And, once you get into the details of how the sausage is made, it’s technical, time-consuming and probably not worth it for most people who just enjoy the effect. There’s a book “The Royal Road to Card Magic” and there’s a line there which says (paraphrasing) “there is much joy in being the deceiver as there is in being deceived” - perhaps that’s where the joy is to be found, as at the other side of that…
on “Where Has the Magic Gone?” ↗