The best and most believable control will always, always be dependant on the effect. What's best for one effect may not be for another. It is never safe to make absolutes. In one effect, the pass may be best, in another, a side steal may be ideal. To my mind, sleights are only a means to an end. Theatre is what I'm looking for. Everythign else is secondary.

Though.... I've fooled my local magic shop owner (who is a calm, considerably knowledgable guy) with a very simple control that alot of people have overlooked. He then had me show it to every customer that came in for the next two weeks, and no one knew what had hit them....

Cheers
Ted

MARLO'S DRIBBLE CONTROL. OMG IT ROCKS


I'll make a vid tomorrow.

A well executed pass followed by palming off the top card, or a good sidesteal instead. Then, hand the deck to the spectator for shuffling.

I often just do a Hermann Pass and palm off, before handing out the deck to be shuffled.

Another technique that I often use is to do a Turnover Peek. I riffle the indexes and have a spectator stop me. He remembers the card and I do the peek while asking the spectator a question. I then hand the deck out to be shuffled. When I get the deck back I often just name it in an offhanded way. I can also cull the selection at this point. I often find that the selection is shuffled to the bottom or the top, so I can palm off and produce the selection from my wallet or pocket. To findout if the card is on top, I often use a bubble peek.

THE pass and spread cull

The best possible controls are:


a palm (palm out the card and have the spectator shuffle)

or

a force (the spectator can shuffle all they want to and it wont matter)


in general its really hard to say what the best controls are, it truly matters in what type of routine and why and where you need to control the card.

...and that's exactly why you should master more than one control !

the control im using is the invisible pass
you do it like this you go from vertical to horizontal i hope you understand that

just my thoughts on the bluff pass...i think it's a rather good control when executed well. It really fools the audience to make them believe that the card actually was put in the middle.

Many other controls work just as well too...the pass and its variations, spread control, convincing control, to name a few.

Ackermans convincing control is great. To show a card still poking half way out of the deck is a great convincer. The only issue is the card is now on the bottom. Tudor has some great ones in his Genx dvd, was surprised actually.

where should i start?

- turnover pass (completely invisible from almost all angles)
- top card cover pass (it shows no signs of any control what so ever)
- bow to stern control/high rise/blind square (perfect for one or two spectators)
- diagonal palm shift (one of the few things that constantly fool me)
and one i don't know the name of but i learnt it from Chris Mayhew from the trick 'Casino royale with Cheese', if you look up his performance, you will see what i mean.

Well... most of those except for the DPS are passes. What are you wanting to "do" first? Control a packet of cards(pass) or an individual card? Then you have to ask....where do I want the card? Right palm, left Palm, top of the deck, bottom of the deck, a specific location within the deck(ie 6th card from the top) ect. There are certain moves which basically do the same thing, just in a different manner. Ie. standard DL, Pushoff DL, Diving Board DL, Knock-out DL, and there are all sorts of passes as well, Spread pass, classic pass, Hermann pass, ect. But before you can get ther you kind of need to answer the first question. What do you want to do?