Here’s a tip for using a card index. This will help you retrieve cards faster, and it has no drawback nor does it need any extra practice.

The index that I‘ve used for the last decade is Daniel Madison’s Advocate. You only need a deck of cards to make one, it all fits in one pant pocket, and it only takes a couple of minutes at most to make.

Using it is actually quite easy. If you’re looking for it, you’ll now find an updated tutorial (called the masterclass) by Madison on his site that teaches you how to find the card with just one of your thumbs in your pocket. If you don’t want to look like a Michael Jackson backup dancer you can do the entire hand in pocket variation taught in the Ellusionist DVD.

The tutorial he made is 5 hours long, the Ellusionist DVD is maybe 30 minutes. The Ellusionist DVD is all you need to get started. The long magic DVDs/downloads start to become masturbatory. I don’t need to know three different presentations I won’t use, what you were eating when you came up with it, or whatever else you jerk off to. I will qualify all this by at least saying the depth that Daniel gets into within his updated masterclass is great.

Naturally in card indexes, there’s counting to do. Here’s what I do to save time counting. I never thought anything of it until another magician friend commented on it saying he’d never thought of it. So here it is.

I start counting up the index before they name any card.

I start counting to around the halfway mark, around the 5/6/7 area and remember where I am, keeping my place there.

If they name a number higher than the mark I’ve counted to, all I have to do is continue the count to arrive at their card. What I’ve done is cut down the time of searching for the card in half.

If they name any number lower than the mark I’ve counted, I simply let go of the place where I count and restart instantly. Effectively, this is a little gambit, where you can only win. If they name a high card you save time. If they don’t name a high card you just proceed as you normally would. Once you restart it is exactly the same as counting up the index normally. All I’ve done is count halfway up in case they name a high card. This doesn’t affect the speed of retrieving the card at all, since it only takes a millisecond for you to let go of your spot and start again.

Happy counting.