A kid at her Jr. High school tried to pull a fast one on her by doing a really bad 3 card. Now she wants to learn it to blow him away. So the question is do I teach her a gaft 3 card or the origional with regular cards?

Well, if I was You then I would teach the monte with normal cards. And If you teach the normal card thing and whichever you chose to teach, tell her to practice it perfect!
Yours J0ma, Finland

I would say teach her one with regular cards...

If I were you I would teach it to her, but not to blow the kid away or show him/her up. If she does decide to go down the path to the dark side, make sure that she practices for years and has a group of shills there to back her up.

Teach her with regular cards. Teenagers are kinda "grabby". Even experienced performers can have difficulty keeping a curious 13 year old boy from grabbing at a card that is placed on a table. It would be embarassing for your daughter to get caught with gaft cards.
It'll take a lot more discipline to learn the real 3 card monte, but, I'd say its worth it.

If her object is to fool him, I wouldn't suggest an ungaffed monte because he knows the toss move, even if he doesn't perform it well. He'll know that she's using the move, even if she performs it well and he doesn't catch it every time, so he won't be fooled in the true sense of the word. If he doesn't know about gimmicked cards, I'd recommend a good gimmicked version like Michael Skinner's Ultimate 3 Card Monte (not good if the guy is the grabby type, though) or Gaeton Bloom's Escorial 3 Card Monte.

Larry

The point here is that the situation has been presented that your daughter essentially wants to take revenge on someone by using magic. Now it's a fairly harmless revenge, it's not cruel or violent, but it's a form of revenge none the less. I can tell you that it simply won't work, no matter how good she becomes at any sort of Monte. My reasoning follows thusly: 3 card monte requires a willing participation from another party. As soon as this kid realizes it's a challenge situation, he'll do something unexpected like, oh, grab the cards, push your daughter, etc. It's just not a good environment to attempt a magic trick in.

I guarantee you, if one wanted to stop any top magician in the world from fooling them, it'd be easy. A) walk away B) sucker punch them as they start the effect C) don't allow them to perform through other means, i.e. interupting, rudeness, etc. Why would one wish to stop a magician from fooling? Because the situation has turned into an "I can fool you" scenario. That is essentially what is being described here.

This is simply a bad idea.

Knowing what kids are like, why not try 'revenge' with a bit of tongue-in-cheek humour announcing in fine adolescent 'mine-is-bigger-than-yours' style, "A Three Card Monte With FOUR Cards..." Then practice either "BLEACHED" (Peter Duffie)or "VIRGINIA CITY SHUFFLE" (ETMCM Vol 5) Or both!!

But more importantly, both of them should then be ecouraged to practise the art together!

Just a thought.

Scafidi7 has a point. Also teach her because she's interested in pursuing magic, not just showing someone up. Just my opinion...

Pants

She has smaller hands.

How old is she?

Don't you read the title of a thread before viewing it?

:P

She is 13

I have 12 year old daughter. She has no skill with cards, but she and her pals are as sharp as razors. They can reengineer tricks faster than most. I truly think that kids of about this age are harder to fool than adults. So I think your daughter would have to be very good because she will have a tough bunch of spectators.

scafidi7 makes a good point but I do not see anything wrong in learning to be competitive. Revenge is another thing.

No revenge really. I guess she wants to Show him up.

Showing someone up is a form of revenge, at least in my books.

I don't think it's bad to teach your daughter magic, in fact I think it's a great idea. I just think it should be for the right reasons - the desire to entertain, the desire to mystify, the desire to inspire wonder, and so on. Not the desire to make someone else look foolish.

How about considering teaching her an alternate card effect, like the ambitious card?

After reading some of the posts here, I started thinking about this a little bit more...
I feel that the immediate question of should I teach her 3 Card Monte with gaffed cards or regular cards may be flawed.

If it is taught with gaffed cards and she gets caught, she'll look really bad in front of her peers, so I don't like that option.
However, she would have to be really good to pull off the effect with regular cards since her mark already has an idea of how to perform 3 Card Monte...he just does it poorly.

I think Scafidi7 and pants99 have made some very valid arguments and suggestions. I also like pacotrix and daeichler's suggestions of teaching her a different effect. With all that in mind, I withdraw my original suggestion of teaching her with regular cards.
I think the idea of taking the revenge and confrontation out of the equation and having her show him an alternate magic effect is excellent. It sounds like they have a mutual interest in magic...it would be great if they cultured that interest in a friendly way.

Teach her the original 3 card monte, ungaffed. I'm assuming her classmate just knows the hype move (a lot of my friends who don't know magic do), so just teach her to do double hypes, and hte Bent corner scam. Nothing wrong with learning it the right way and showing it off.

There are other options besides Three Card Monte. A good sucker trick, like the circus card trick, might do just as well. Be sure she knows to have him show the selection to other people so he can't lie at the end...

Andru