Why Do Some Sleights Get Forgotten?

Magicians use various tools to perform the tricks you all know and love. One of these is sleight of hand - the ability to manipulate an object, such as a deck of cards or a coin, to help you achieve a specific magical effect. We call these skills that magicians learn and practice “sleight of hand techniques” or “sleights.”

For example, one of the most popular sleights you might know of is palming. Palming is the act of secretly holding out a card in your hand while the audience perceives your hand to be empty.

A magic trick is often the combination of multiple different sleights. In magic, just as in any other industry, there are performers and creators. Creators come up with new sleights or tricks, which they then publish in various magazines or, more recently, websites, and performers pick them up and then use them in their shows.

Since “The Discoverie of Witchcraft,” the first-ever ‘manual’ of magic, was published in 1584, thousands of sleight-of-hand techniques have been published. Some have survived and evolved throughout time, while others have been forgotten between the brown pages of old books.

I’ve always wondered why some sleight-of-hand techniques get left behind while others prosper and are never forgotten. So, after quite a few years of merely asking myself this, I’ve recently taken the time to hide myself inside books and find out the answer! To answer the question, I took a ride through 145 years of card magic and observed how and why one single move has managed to survive the test of time. I decided that focusing on just one special move would be more fruitful and quick.

I’ve chosen The Top Change as my subject because, even though it’s such an easy move to execute, many avoid it or perform it poorly, making you wonder, “What is this move, and why are magicians so afraid of using it?” This move is also perfect for the question this article seeks to answer, as it is still used today by magicians (courageous ones).

What is a Card Change?

To achieve specific magical effects, magicians use various sleight-of-hand techniques. Sleights, as they are sometimes referred to, like palming and switching, might be seen in Hollywood movies such as Now You See Me or Ant-Man.

Magicpedia, a sort of Wikipedia for magic, defines color changes as “a generic term for any card sleight in which one card is apparently (and often visually) changed into another." To achieve one such transformation, magicians often use other techniques such as palming, switching, or shifting to help them accomplish this visual feat.

Andrew Galloway, a Scottish magician, put it quite poetically in his 1980 book “Diverting Card Magic” when talking about color changes:

Changing a card’s identity from a 3 to a Jack is called a ‘colour change’. If you change a card into a coin, though, that’s called a ‘transformation.’ “Color change” refers to an object changing its color - be it a card, a coin, silk, or anything else.

So, what exactly is The Top Change?

The term Top Change is usually understood to mean the exchange of a card with the top card of the deck. It is an easy sleight to learn, as its method is pretty straightforward.

Magic Christian, an Austrian magician, historian, and master of the top change, writes the above in his famous book on the very subject of the top change.

Sounds relatively easy. Still, it is one of those sleights that are easy to pick up but hard to master. Similar to Kendama or card throwing. Many magic books feature magicians complaining about the sleight poorly done by others.

Interestingly, it isn’t quite the move per se that gets executed the wrong way, but rather how the movement is covered so that the spectator doesn’t catch it. Magic Christian writes about this in his 2007 book, The Top Change:

As you can imagine, cover means everything in magic. Hiding the secret is the key behind every magical effect out there. As such, many times, magicians will spend an equal amount of time deciding how to mask a move as on how to perform it. Roberto Giobbi, a Swiss magician of great renown, explains why this is important in his book “Card College” Vol. 1, p. 236:

This is why even if you perform a move perfectly if you fail at providing proper cover for it, the spectator will see everything, and you will have failed your card trick. This is why cover plays an essential factor in determining a move’s quality and longevity.

Reason 1 - The Cover

It was in the 1870s when France declared war on Prussia and invaded Germany. The United States ordered all Native Americans to move into reservations. And in 1876, Professor Louis Hoffman published “Modern Magic”, the first attempt at recording magic in an encyclopaedic fashion. In this book, we will find the first English description of The Top Change. Here, Prof. Hoffman also writes about how one should cover the sleight through “a half-turn of the body to the left or right”, making this the official go-to cover for the move.

Once you’ve trained a sleight enough as a performer, you want to put it into application. The Top Change is one of those sleights that needs misdirection to fly by. Other sleights, like the pass, can work with or without misdirection with practice. With the Top Change, one must either direct the spectator’s gaze to something else or cover the move entirely with the use of their body. But, even when all the requirements for good cover are met, magicians don’t always do an excellent job at misdirecting their audience.

Ken Brooke, an English magician, consultant and magic dealer, talks about this phenomenon in his book “The Unique Years” from 1980:

Even if we know the wisdom and get told to find our own misdirection, it sometimes doesn’t come to us. It would take almost 100 years since the Top Change’s first publication in English for very detailed cover actions to start appearing in specialty books, offering students of magic specific instructions of what exactly to do to make the move invisible. I believe this delay in explanations was due to the philosophy carried over the years regarding this topic which I have found through my studies. Jean Hugard’s tips in “Royal Road to Card Magic” (1948) sum this up perfectly:

A snap, a tap, or a wave doesn’t always fit seamlessly with the performer’s character or the card trick he presents. And even if students are asked to come up with their own ideas, not everyone is so creative. As such, in reply to the demand for more ideas for covering the sleight, almost 100 years later, these started appearing in publications.

It’s the 1960s. France tests its first atomic bomb. Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human in space. And Dai Vernon publishes his “Further Inner Secrets of Card Magic.” where we will encounter the most famous cover for the top change even to this day. In this work, Mr Vernon teaches how to use a matchbox to distract from the execution of the top change. I believe this, along with the new wave of magic Dai Vernon and others started, inspired magicians to share their own ‘personal’ misdirection techniques.

I’ve found a funny one, still from Mr. Vernon, where the performer accidentally drops a card on the floor and performs the top change as the spectator picks the card up (“Magic with Faucett Ross” 1975). Such misdirection gives the performer plenty of time to execute the move.

From this point on, we start encountering more and more specific covers tailored to fit together with the card trick being taught. In Roberto Giobbi’s “Card College” Vol.1 from 1995, there is even an entire chapter dedicated to different covers one can utilize.

It wasn’t that the old philosophy was forgotten— I would say it was being put into application independently by each creator who would find a suitable top-change-cover for the trick he was teaching and then offer it to everyone else to learn. This sort of situation is more common nowadays when teaching sleight-of-hand techniques. As long as the move is not intended to be visual but somewhat hidden, most of the time, sleights are covered by specific actions - a square up of the deck, a shuffle or cut, a spread, a tap, or even a fan.

We can now understand why the top change can be such a hot topic for practitioners of card magic. Seeing how the move is done under the spectator’s noses, magicians can always debate about the right way to cover the move. Ultimately, the performer’s character and act will define which method to mask the sleight is chosen since the cover is undefined. New ideas to cover the move will always pop up as time goes on, and new magicians with unique personalities pick the move up and perform it ‘under fire’. These things guarantee that “The Top Change” will not be forgotten in the sands of time.

Reason 2 - Method and Potential

While everyone was busy finding the right cover for their routine, one magician, in particular, devised a method that nullified the need for any misdirection. Professor Hofzinser, an Austrian-Hungarian magician, coined “the father of card magic”, devised in 1910 a top change that one could perform underneath the wrathful gaze of the spectator. The action would happen swiftly as the left thumb would stroke the card held by the right hand. The sleight would happen so fast that the spectator’s eyes couldn’t follow it even when done gently. In doing so, Prof. Hofzinser changed the method behind the sleight, creating what is now known as “The Hofzinser Top Change.” This is a fine example of how a cover (or, in this case, the absence of one) can inspire the creation of a move.

So many of us learn something, use it for a while, and then begin altering it to shape our personality and style. Just as we like doing things our way, magicians like experimenting with what they learn. If a magician finds that a certain sleight or trick feels better or is more invisible when they perform it differently, they will do it that way and then share what they’ve discovered with their peers.

Joshua Jay, a worldwide renowned American magician, put it best in his book How Magicians Think:

One of the first aspects that magicians start modifying after learning something is the method itself. When it came down to the correct way of performing The Top Change, many magicians had split opinions. I find it fascinating how every single part of the move, by the end of this sleight’s journey, was altered and discussed; from which fingers should hold the card, to which hand should move and which should stay, which fingers should do the exchange and how should magicians hold the deck.

Interestingly, the first English description from 1876 differs very slightly from the modern way of performing the sleight. Still, when it comes to executing a sleight-of-hand technique, small changes mean a lot, and it’s because of this that magicians continue tweaking moves even after they appear to be complete.

The Top Change has inspired many new techniques and card tricks due to this. A quick search of “The Top Change” on The Conjuring Archive, an index for magic publications, gives you 354 mentions of the sleight being used or credited in various books. Some well-worth-mentioning variations that have branched from the classic method of performing the top change are a one-handed version (by Fred Braue/Bert Allerton), a deckless version (by Guy Hollingworth), and changing the card with the 2nd, 3rd, or further cards from the deck (by Magic Christian).

Only a few techniques in history have undergone such treatment, and most of the time, these are moves that present the user with a specific challenge. The move is difficult to master, hard to cover, and/or requires a certain finesse to execute naturally. Because of this, magicians take pride in having conquered one such sleight and are eager to showcase their progress to their peers. The Top Change also fits in this category by presenting the performer with the challenge of adequately covering the sleight.

And while magicians try taking the move to perfection as a by-product of this, they also continue trying to develop new ways of executing it or putting it into application. This quality shows the sleight’s potential to inspire new ideas and contribute significantly to its lifespan. Techniques such as the double lift, the push through shuffle or the top change have so many variations that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to know all of them. And these variations have helped make a move more well-known, similar to how song remixes reach new audiences.

Reason 3 - Its Usefulness

But it’s not just how challenging or playful a move is that guarantees its longevity. One much more important aspect is its usefulness. Professional magicians must earn a living, and when choosing a sleight to incorporate into their performance, they weigh its value based on what they can achieve with it. Does it make controlling a card easier? More invisible? Does it look natural in the eyes of the audience?

Based on such criteria, techniques such as the classic palm, the push-off double lift, or The Zarrow Shuffle have earned their spot in the Sleight Of Hand Hall of Fame. And for a move to earn its spot on that list, it must pass through the hands of many performers that test the move in different scenarios.

As we’ve learned, The Top Change allows one to switch a playing card held in the right hand with the top card of the deck. Once a magician has grasped the technique, they will start experimenting to discover what other things they could do with the sleight. Can the card be switched with the second one? How about the third and fourth? Can it be switched with a card from the bottom or middle of the deck? Can the same technique be applied to switching multiple cards?

Magicians always ask themselves such questions, and by answering them, they’ve created new ideas, which then they’ve shared with the community. Here’s an example of how a small change can lead to a new idea. The “Talazac Switch”, named after a 19th-century French magician by the name of Jean-Jacques-Maurice Talazac, is a move used to switch four cards which are held in the right hand with four cards from the top of the deck. On the first view, you’d say it’s got nothing to do with the top change, but the move evolved from changing the finger positioning on the cards (from pinching them between your right 1st and 2nd finger to holding the cards by the short ends). Suppose a change to the original sleight is made that is considered substantial enough to acknowledge. In that case, magicians begin the whole process again, start playing around with the new move, experiment to see what other possibilities it opens, and try to find a suitable cover for the sleight.

If a sleight is ‘cool’ but not very useful, it will be tossed away like an old toy favoring a new one. What is much more important to a magician is just how much they can achieve with that sleight or one of its variations. If the sleight continuously proves itself to be useful, either by resisting the test of time or through one of its variations, then the move will not be shelved, and magicians will keep using it.

Final Reason - Habit and History

When someone wants to start learning card magic, you’ll always be able to find a couple of moves that are present in each beginner’s list. Some of these are (in no particular order) “The Erdnase Change”, “The Riffle Force”, “The Diagonal Palm Steal” and “The Top Change”. Some of these moves have been around for so long that they’ve sedimented their place and have become ‘classic sleights’.

Magicians are very generous with one another, but they’re also quite unmerciful when it comes to revealing secrets to the general public. Still, when it comes to classic moves, I have noticed that teaching them to lay audiences is not frowned upon. Nobody will be upset if you teach a palm change, a cross-cut force or a false overhand shuffle.

These two things make sure that whoever picks up magic will end up knowing about these sleights. These classic moves are now part of sleight of hand’s history, so it’s hard to imagine a day when magicians will not be talking about them or using some sort of variation of the original move.

Conclusion

That was quite the trip. We can see just how many factors play into a sleight’s longevity. If we want our sleight to be still used and talked about hundreds of years from now, we should make it easy enough to teach in under a minute, challenging to execute ‘under fire,’ and make sure it has the potential to be remixed and played around with. Besides all the reasons that we’ve talked about, there are surely many invisible factors that play their part (such as luck, name, etc.) when it comes to making a move appealing to magicians in the present and those to come.

Ultimately, the Top Change is a move I now recommend much more often to magicians. After having gone through all its steps of evolution and seen its many variations, I have grown fond of it and can better see its charm. I suppose this happens when you spend a lot of time with a sleight - you get invested in it. In an attempt to end this long train conversation between the two of us, I would propose a question to you and every creator out there: “Does your idea make others become invested in it?”