Barry's Guide to Trick Decks (What Each One Actually Does)

Nine gimmicked decks, most of them under a tenner, several of them older than your grandmother, and at least one that will outperform anything else you own.

There is a hierarchy in card magic and gimmicked decks sit at the bottom of it. This is the received wisdom. Sleight of hand at the top, subtleties and stacks in the middle, and somewhere down near the floor, next to the plastic thumb tips and the folding coins, sits the trick deck. Bought by children. Sold in seaside gift shops. Beneath contempt.

I would like to point out that the Invisible Deck, which costs six pounds fifty and requires no skill whatsoever, is carried by more working professionals than any other single item in magic. Not most trick decks. Most items. Full stop. The people at the top of the hierarchy are the ones with a gimmicked deck in the left jacket pocket, and they have been quietly relying on it for their entire careers while telling students to learn the pass.

So here is what each of the classics actually does, what it cannot do, and which one you should buy. I have tried to be useful rather than reverent. Most of these decks are older than commercial radio and they all still work, which tells you something about how little audiences have changed and how much magicians would like to believe otherwise.

Invisible Deck (Bicycle Rider Back)

A spectator names any card in the pack. Any card, no force, no fishing, no restriction. You take out a deck that has been sitting in view the whole time, spread it, and one card is face down among the others. It is theirs. That is the effect, it has been the effect since the middle of the last century, and there is still no method a layman can construct that accounts for what they just saw.

The reason professionals carry it is not the trick, though. It is the insurance. When a routine collapses, and it will, an Invisible Deck lets you finish on something stronger than the thing that just failed. Ask any working magician about the worst gig they ever survived and there is a decent chance this deck is in the story. It cannot be handed out, it cannot be dealt through, and it is roughed so it will eventually wear out. Six pounds fifty. Buy two, put one in the bag you always take.

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Sure Split (Red) Invisible Deck by Murphy's Magic

Here is the thing nobody warns you about with a standard Invisible Deck: the split does not always happen where you want it to. Dry hands, cold room, a deck that has been in a jacket pocket for six months, and suddenly you are riffling at a pack in front of an expectant stranger while your confidence drains out through your shoes. It is the single most common failure in an effect that is otherwise impossible to get wrong.

Sure Split uses a different roughing configuration specifically to solve that, and it does. The deck separates where it should, consistently, without the pinch and pray. Thirteen pounds instead of six fifty, which is double the price of the classic and roughly one twentieth of what you would pay in dignity for fumbling it once at a wedding. If you have dry hands, arthritis, or a history of this effect letting you down, buy this version and stop punishing yourself.

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Right. That is the important one dealt with. Everything below is where most people actually start, usually at about age nine, usually with the next deck on the list.

Svengali Deck (Bicycle Rider Back)

Half the cards are a fraction shorter than the other half, and every short card is the same card. Riffle in one direction and you see a normal mixed deck. Riffle in the other and you only ever see the force card. The spectator stops you wherever they like and lands on it every time, because they were never going to land on anything else. Then you riffle again and the entire deck has changed into their card.

This has been sold on high streets since the 1890s and it has fooled several generations of people who went on to become quite senior. It is genuinely the fastest route from owning nothing to fooling somebody. It also cannot be dealt through, cannot be spread face up, and cannot be handed over, so build the routine so the deck disappears before anyone asks. Illustrated instructions from Daryl are included, which is more teaching than a six pound fifty deck has any right to come with. If you are buying for a child, or you are a child, this is where it starts. Our magic tricks for kids guide covers where it should go next.

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Mirage Deck (Bicycle Rider Back)

Everything a Svengali does, plus one thing it cannot: the Mirage can be fanned to show all fifty two cards different. That sounds like a small addition. It is not. The one moment of doubt in the entire Svengali routine is when a spectator half wonders whether all the cards are the same, and being able to open the deck into a fan and show them they are not removes that thought before they have finished having it.

Six pounds forty nine, which is a penny less than the Svengali, for a deck that does strictly more. I have no explanation for the pricing and I have stopped asking. If you are choosing between the two, choose this one, and let the Svengali keep its reputation as the famous one while the Mirage quietly does the job better.

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Brainwave Deck (Bicycle Rider Back)

You say you made a prediction before leaving the house. The spectator names any card, genuinely freely. You spread the deck and one card is face down with a completely different coloured back. It is theirs. The odd back is the part that does the work, because a reversed card can be dismissed as a lucky guess or a clever move, whereas a card with the wrong colour back has to have been decided in advance.

It is the Invisible Deck plot with a better punchline and a worse handling, and which of the two you prefer says quite a lot about you. Also roughed, so the same wear and tear rules apply. Box colour is random, which nobody has ever cared about, and which I am mentioning only so you do not email us about it.

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Stripper Deck (Bicycle Rider Back)

Every card is very slightly tapered, so a card returned the other way round can be found by feel alone. Hand the deck out, let them shuffle properly, take a card, turn it round without anyone noticing, lose it in the pack, and then locate it whenever you like. It is the only deck on this list that survives a genuine spectator shuffle, which makes it the most flexible thing here by a distance.

It is also the most misused. The taper is not subtle to a magician's hands and the temptation is to keep doing the same discovery over and over until somebody notices that you find cards a bit too easily. Do one revelation, do it well, and move on. Daryl's instructions cover four aces productions, top of the deck revelations and control work, and it will happily do all of that. It just should not do all of that in one sitting.

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Mental Photography Deck

A deck with no faces and no backs, shown completely blank. One card develops a face, then a back, then the whole deck is suddenly printed. One cut and everything is blank again. This is the most visual thing on the list and the only one where the audience does not need to know anything about playing cards to understand what just happened, which is a genuine advantage in a room where nobody can name the four suits.

The handling is easy, the reset is instant, and the effect is entirely visual, so it works at a distance where a card revelation would die. It is also, and there is no gentle way to say this, quite obviously a trick deck if anyone gets hold of it. Nobody will. They are watching cards appear out of nothing and they have stopped thinking about the pack as an object.

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My Coloring Deck (Red) by Jordan Victoria

The colouring book trick, rebuilt for a deck of cards and for close-up rather than a stage full of six year olds. Blank deck, wave your hand, outlines appear. Wave again and the colours arrive. Spread it out at the end and it is an ordinary printed deck. Three distinct beats instead of one, which gives you something to talk over rather than a single change and an awkward silence.

Crucially it uses no roughing, no extra gimmicks and no court card restrictions, which means it does not have the shelf life problem the older blank deck effects do, and it does not fall apart in a humid marquee in July. Designed to work seated at a table or standing up, and structured so you can display the cards at any point in the routine rather than at three carefully rehearsed moments. Eight pounds forty nine. It is the better buy of the two blank deck effects here, but the Mental Photography Deck is more visual, so it depends whether you want the moment or the routine.

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Mind Power Deck by John Kennedy Magic

Spread the deck face up. Somebody merely looks at a card. They do not touch it, take it, name it or point at it. You then tell them what it was. Then you do it again. Then you do it with three people at once, all looking at different cards, and you get all three. There is no memory work, no system, no stack, and the deck can be handled by a spectator without anything feeling wrong.

Thirty four fifty is a lot next to a six pound fifty Svengali, and what you are paying for is the absence of a method the audience can even begin to look for. Nothing is chosen, so nothing can have been forced. Nothing is touched, so nothing can have been marked or switched. If you are working in mentalism and want something that does not read as a card trick at all, this is it. Printed by the US Playing Card Company on casino quality stock, which matters because a deck this expensive that felt cheap would be unforgivable.

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If you want to see how far this category can be pushed, the Ultimate Invisible Deck by Sway Liu and JT Magic at fifty nine ninety nine ends with a genuinely blank deck appearing inside a paper bag containing exactly one real card, which is the named one. It is an absurd amount of engineering applied to an effect that already worked perfectly well for six pounds fifty, and I am aware that describing it that way makes it sound like I disapprove. I do. I also want one.

The honest summary is this. Buy the Invisible Deck because you will use it forever. Buy the Mirage instead of the Svengali because it does more for less. Buy the Stripper if you want something that survives a real shuffle. Then go and learn some actual card handling, because a drawer full of gimmicked decks and no double lift is a recognisable condition and there is no cure for it that arrives in the post. Our guide to the best card magic tricks to learn is the antidote, and the self working tricks guide is the middle ground for people who want to be fooled into practising.