SAN ANTONIO -- Richard Turner, 65, is the world’s greatest card mechanic, and he’s been a household name for nearly six decades.

• Featured in several films and spent 60 years in martial arts
• Both he and his sister went blind because of Scarlett Fever

He was 7 years old when he first picked up a deck of cards, starting his journey of how to control the outcome of a card game, a.k.a card mechanics.

“Yeah, I started watching James Garner in the movie Maverick,” Turner said. “And he was a cool gambler. The hustlers would come into town and they would try to hustle him and he would out-hustle the hustlers.”

Two years after, he learned the art of card tricks and he started to lose his vision.

“At first I was in shock. My sister and I both caught Scarlett Fever - which back then was a very dangerous illness - and she also lost her sight,” Turner said. “And she became a very successful business woman.“

Turner himself has accomplished many extraordinary things: he was featured in films, spent 60 years in martial arts, and is an honorary member of the U.S. Air Force.

“I hold a sixth-degree blackbelt, so it depends on which one it is. My wife has a second-degree blackbelt in three different karate systems,” Turner said standing in front of his certificates. “But they are just certificates over my 50 years in the martial arts.”

A photo of a young Turner throwing a high kick, wearing a martial arts gee often gets mistaken for Chuck Norris. He often jokes that it’s one of the best celebrities to be mistaken for, and when Turner headlines events he is sometimes introduced as “the real-life Daredevil.”

Turner was interviewed for two Harvard projects and one of the neuroscientists was impressed by his sense of touch.

“He said I had one of the most developed tactical neural networks of anybody on planet earth,” Turner said. “Which is kind of weird but it’s at the same time kind of cool--I’m very pleased and I’m very blessed.”

His home is like a museum--pictures of him with celebrities, signed memorabilia and trophies of his accomplishments--but his guests get a kick out of his closet filled with 6,000 boxes of cards.

Turner said one of his pet peeves is when folks put an asterisk by his skills

“They say well that’s pretty good for a blind guy. No, I want that pretty good, period,” Turner said. “I didn’t want it to be put in a category. I didn’t want to be categorized if you would.”

The 65-year-old created his own game called Texas Showdown.

“So you put those three things together: 21, Monopoly and Poker, and they had a baby you would come out with Texas Showdown or Shark Showdown,” Turner said.

Turner does many speaking engagements all over the world where he encourages not only blind people, but people in general.

“So I was able to take something that people would have considered as a disability and I turned it into my greatest asset,” Turner said.

To learn more about Turner’s story, his critically acclaimed documentary “Dealt” is available on iTunes, Hulu and other video platforms.