Bicycle Gaff Deck
The Bicycle Gaff Deck is a deck of specially designed playing cards for use - along with a standard deck of Bicycle brand cards - in the performance of illusion or sleight-of-hand effects. There are many different versions of the deck, made by different companies in the magic/illusion industry. The different versions have different sets of 'gaff' cards (see below for examples), which can be used to create different effects. The cards in a gaff deck have a normal back, but the cards are changed (visually) in some way. Some examples include:
- An ace of hearts with a broken heart pip in the middle
- Two 3½ of clubs, with three-and-a-half pips in the center (can be used to split a 7 of clubs into two 3½ of clubs)
- A 13 of diamonds - could be used to do a color change from a King of Diamonds into its numerical value in the deck, or as an addition of two other cards (e.g. a 7 of diamonds and a 6 of diamonds)
- A card which is blank on one side, and on the back side it has a 6 of spades printed on top of the bicycle back design.
These cards are usually used with a normal deck (with the same back). The magician chooses a few cards and usually has them handy (e.g. in his pocket) and performs other magic tricks with the normal deck of cards. Then, he uses one or more of the gaff cards to perform magic tricks which seem to be beyond what most people would expect from card magic tricks - an effect which is enhanced as the audience knows that the deck is a normal deck of cards with which the previous tricks were performed.