I am 13 and am new to cardistry. Am I at a disadvantage because of my smaller hands?

I found when I started magic a few years ago that I did have difficulty getting flourishes to work for me, because of my small hands, so it is possible that it may be a bit harder. Cardistry does require more manipulating, but I also think that smaller hands aren't an excuse. It all comes down to practice, and if you practice enough the size of your hands won't matter.

I'll just leave you with the quote. "I got tired of all the magicians saying they're hands are too small. So I did the one handed riffle shuffle longtidually" - Richard Turner. And he's *** right. You can do most of the stuff when you're 13, in 2 to 3 years, you won't have any problems. There are no small hands, there is just lack of practice

Well put Googoomafint11 and dapo24. Practice is the key. everything else is an excuse to not practice.

Here is something I wrote in another thread about small hands:


I also have very small hands and when I started out with cardistry/flourishing I wasn´t able to do a thumb cut...so many things did seem impossible with my small hands.
And I thought I should give up on cardistry because my hands are too small.

But...it all comes down to pracitce...improve dexterity....work your way around difficulties.

There are very skilled childs out there, Lee Asher has very small hands and then there´s Mahdi Gilbert,
he doesn´t even have hands, performs card magic and fooled Penn and Teller!


And...i advice against using bridge sized cards. I also thought I would have to use them....but gladly I sticked to poker sized cards.

Here is a video by Aaron Fisher about small hands and why not to use bridge sized cards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re2G6XWzBTA

Many great card experts has small hands. No worries.

Honestly, I don't think that bridge sized cards are generally a bad thing. You see, here in Switzerland, nobody except magicians uses poker sized cards. Our national card game, "Jass" (no, not "Jazz") is played with a 36 card deck, all available decks are bridge sized. 52 cards decks are often used for solitaire (we call it "patience", pronounced like the French do it) - again, bridge sized cards (or smaller!) are used. Thus, if you do a trick with a borrowed deck, where I live, it will always be a bridge sized deck.

There are three main advantages of poker sized cards, in my opinion:
1) It is easier to find high quality poker sized cards.
2) Most gaff cards only exist in poker size.
3) Flourishes look (even) better.

The main advantage of bridge sized cards: somehow, they just feel better in my hands. Poker sized cards feel like a foreign object, bridge sized cards feel familiar. This is, of course, very personal.