Yes! Finally!

I’ve been trying to learn to cull cards for almost two decades. Within the first three minutes of this DVD, I had learned a critical bit of information that finally put this move within my grasp.

This is very exciting for me. I spent almost every waking hour of my teenage years with a deck of cards in my hand. I had more methods for the double-lift than I had t-shirts. But two moves always eluded me: the pass and the cull. I really didn’t care about the pass since I had plenty of alternate methods that, to my mind, were superior. But it always seemed like there were wonderful routines floating around that required the cull.

Now, if only I could remember where I read them…

After going over the basic mechanics of the Hofzinser Spread Cull, they jump right into “Common Mistakes.” This was a brilliant idea. In fact, I think this should become a standard for every effect on every DVD that’s published from this day forward. In fact, it was one of these common mistakes that kept me from grokking this move.

These “common mistakes” are so important that they reiterate them later in the DVD under chapter “Mistakes – Part 2”.

The DVD goes into more advanced culling techniques including replacement of culled cards, multi-card culls and culling from awkward positions (i.e. culled card near the top of the deck).

The next few chapters cover cull applications, including controlling, forcing, stacking switching. I particularly enjoyed David Solomon’s finesse on the force.

The Effects are mostly standard plots reworked using the cull. In most cases, I found using the cull provided a more direct, less “movey” presentation. Regardless of whether or not you do any of the effects, they’re all worth learning just for practice doing the cull and learning all of the various ways in which it can be used.