Book of Magic/Card Magic/False Counts

Elmsley and Jordan
Card mechanics come in various types, some complex, some simple. To learn them all would be almost impossible. As a magician you should strive to master those things which you do learn, practicing them until you can do them without looking at the cards. With every move, there are certain degrees of difficulty. Learning those moves that have a smaller degree of difficulty first will make it easier to learn the more complex moves later.

With this in mind, there are two very valuable utility moves that you can learn that with just a little practice can make you look like a professional magician. These are the Elmsley Count and the Jordan Count. Both moves are designed to allow the magician to show any number of cards as four cards, or to show four cards as all facing the same direction when one is inverted.

Elmsley
Lets look at the last method first, as it is the easiest to understand. The starting position of the cards would be two face down the third face up and the fourth face down in the left hand ( in mechanics grip.) the right hand takes the top card as you make the count (inferred or vocal.) The left hand pushes the top two cards as one; to the right (this would be the second card which is face down, and the third card which is face up.) As the right hand moves to take the two cards, it will redeposit the first card taken back to the bottom of the left hand as you count the second card. Now both hands should contain two cards. The right hand should contain from top to bottom, one face down card and one face up card. The left hand should contain two face down cards. The left hand pushes the top card over and the right hand takes it for the count of three. Finally the right hand takes the last card from the left hand for the count of four. The right hand now contains from top to bottom three face down cards and a face up card on bottom. This is the starting position of the Jordan Count which we will discuss in a moment.

The Elmsley Count can also be used to show several cards as four. For example let’s say you had six cards and you wanted to show that you only had four. You would start with the six cards in your left hand, and take the top card with your right hand. As you bring the hands back together to apparently get another card, you push off all of the cards except the bottom one with the left hand and at the same time you take the small packet with the right hand, you redeposit the card in the right hand to the bottom of the left hand. At this point you would have four cards in the right hand and two cards in the left hand. At this point you would be at a count of two. On the count of three, you would take the card from the top of the left hand. Taking the last card from the left hand to the right on the count of four. At this point you could count them again, or remove one leaving five cards and repeat to show that you still only have four cards. You can keep doing this until you only have three cards left and can still count them as four.

Pictures and or Video will be forthcoming.

Jordan
As with the Elmsley Count, the Jordan Count can hide the orientation or quantity of cards in the packet. The difference is in the starting position of the cards. With the Jordan Count, you start with 3 face down cards on top of a face up card. To do the count you first take one card from the left hand with the right hand, as you take the second card from the left hand you get a break between the two cards in the right hand. As you take the apparent third card from the left hand you actually take the remaining cards from the left hand while simultaneously redepositing the bottom card of the right hand back in to the left on the count of three. Then simply take the last card (this was originally the top card of the packet) with the right hand for the count of four.