The Clipshift

The Clipshift by Chad Nelson. Ridiculously hard to do right, and some would say not worth the effort. When it is performed correctly though, it is an utterly beautiful sleight of hand piece.

Once again, the internet and its forums have been plagued with children posting up crappy performances of this wonderful sleight. There ARE people who post up videos, though, that actually can do it. And everyone runs around praising these people, then the same praise giving runners post up videos of their performances, which in comparison to other people’s videos are dire. How can they not see that they simply cannot do the move?? They ask for feedback and tips to improve, which when occasionally are given, are not listened to.

The mind boggles.

BUT, if you are learning the Clipshift, try out some of the following tips. The following things are mentioned on the Surfaced DVD, but are often overlooked -- as with so many sleights.

Tip #1 - The position of the deck.
It is important the deck is held in the correct position before you even do anything. Do not hold the deck too far to the left. A good guide is to look at where your little finger lies. The corner of the pack should be resting at the middle phalange of the little finger. If it is too far to the left, you are going to have difficulties later.

Now lets take a look at the thumb. It should be at the end of the pack, holding it in the centre. I have found the sleight to be easier if the thumb holds the deck in the middle of the tip of the thumb. Not on the crease of the thumb, which is the way I originally learnt it, but to move it towards the tip of the thumb a little more. This will give you more movement to the deck when you try to shift the card around the corner, which means less strain in your hand.

Tip #2 - The index finger.
At no point in the whole sleight should the index finger put any pressure onto the top of the deck. At first, it is very tempting to do so when you have the card clipped between the middle and ring fingers. It is hard to clear the clipped card from the deck, let alone trying to shift it around the corner of the pack, so the temptation is to push the deck out of the way with the index finger.

This is, again, the way I learnt it incorrectly. After some personal, in the flesh, 1 on 1 teaching from Dave Buck (awesome?) he told me what I was doing wrong. If you have learnt the Clipshift using the index finger to push the deck out of the way, it is incorrect. It slows the sleight down. It still works, but not as well as doing it correctly.

Instead of pushing it with the index finger, you are going to need to really stretch your hand. You will feel the back of your hand straining quite hard to get the card to clear the pack. Just keep practising this part very slowly, and after a while the pain will go away, and you will be doing it with ease.

Tip #3 - Replacing the card.
At first, people seem to think this is easy to do. But getting the card to lie dead straight with the rest of the deck is very hard. Do not be afraid to use your ring and little fingers to pivot the card on your index finger. The index finger does not need to do all the work when replacing the card, get the other two involved by simply bringing them back to their original position on the top edge of the pack.

This will make for a faster replacement.

One last tip I can think of is to not have your hand tensed up. Hold the cards lightly! This doesn't just apply for the Clipshift, but for all sleight of hand. Just hold them lightly. They are flimsy pieces of card, no need to have some death metal grip on them the whole time.

A light touch when replacing the card will also reduce the friction between the card being replaced and the original top card of the deck. Too much friction, and the original top card will slide out and be left sticking out of the left side of the pack for all to see.