A friend of mine did a great party trick with a forced card. He forces a card, say the 8 of spades, the person then is handed the deck to insert the card and shuffle well. Magician then announces that he will determine the card, not through magic or divination, but by watching your reaction to the cards that he shows. Staring intently at the subject, he flips over cards and watches for any reaction, after 5 cards or so, he announces that he’s sure it’s a black card. Another 5-10 cards, it’s a middle value card. Then he’s got it narrowed down to a spade, then he decides on which number it is, and declares it the 8 of spades. It’s especially nice if he’s already gone past it in turning over the cards.
I didn’t figure it out until the third time he did the trick, with the third 8 of spades being chosen. :smack:
I asked her to pick a number from 5-15, then count out that many cards. I then asked her to take the last card she counted out, and without looking at it, seal it in an envelope and initial the seal. Then I asked her to hide the envelope somewhere in her home where I couldn’t see it.
The next morning we took a shower together. When we got out, it looked as if someone had snuck in and written words on her steamed-up bathroom mirror with a finger. The writing said “Is this your card?”, and showed an ace of hearts.
The only card trick I liked enough to learn as a kid was the “three robbers” one, probably because it involved telling a story and using the cards as analogies.
I learned a cool card trick years ago that requires an accomplice.
Deal nine cards into three rows of three. Send your accomplice out of the room. Then ask a member of the audience to pick one of the nine cards. Tell them you will telepathically communicate the card choice to your accomplice.
Bring the accomplice back into the room. Point to the nine cards at random, asking the accomplice each time “Is this the card?” He or she will identify it.
This can go on, with the audience suggesting various ways that you’re tipping off the accomplice (“Turn the cards face-down.” Okay; makes no difference. “Don’t say anything to the accomplice; you’re somehow telling him when you ask the question.” Still doesn’t matter.)
The trick is to visualize the nine cards as one big single card. Each of the nine cards represents a point on the “big card” – the far left card in the top row represents the top left corner of the “big card”, the middle card in the top row represents the top and middle of the “big card”, etc. As you point to the cards, you touch them in various places, but when you get to the card selected by the audience, you touch it in the corresponding place on the “big card.” For example, if the audience chose the far left card in the top row, you’d touch that card in the top left corner. That would tell your accomplice it’s the correct card.
The magician exits the room, and everyone else agrees on a certain object in the room, let’s say a green vase. When the magician enters the room, the accomplice asks him if various objects are the chosen object.
“Is it the curtains?”
“No”
“Is it the dog?”
“No”
“Is it Aunt Mimi’s blouse?”
“No”
“Is it the vase?”
“Yes”
The trick being that the second to last question was an inquiry about something black, in this case, Aunt Mimi’s blouse. The magician says yes to the object named after the black one.
Here’s a fun one that works great on kids. (And is easy for kids to learn, as well.)
Deal out 25 cards, in 5 stacks of 5. Don’t deal out the stacks all at once, put the first card of each stack down, then the second card on each stack, etc. (Am I explaining that clearly?) Put the remaining cards aside.
Ask the mark to pick a stack. Show the cards to him without looking at them yourself. Ask him to choose a card but not point to it.
Pick up the stacks, making sure that the chosen stack is the 3rd one you pick up.
Deal them out again as in step 1.
Pick up a stack and show it to the mark. Ask him if his card is in it. If not, show hime the next stack. Repeat until he says yes.
Repeat steps 3-5.
Set the chosen stack of 5 down. Put the remainder of the deck from step one on the table, face down, so that it lays lengthwise. Lay the 1st card from the stack of 5 on top of the remainder deck, but offset it to the left by about an inch. Lay the 2nd card down, but offset it to the right. Continue with the remaining 3 cards, alternating left and right.
Put the remaining 20 cards on top, centered.
Pick up the assembled deck from the sides, and hold it with the three protruding cards downward, with the card faces facing the mark. Gently press it down on the table so that the protruding cards are flush with the rest of the deck.
Turn the deck upside down, and say some magic words.
My favorite card trick allows the person you’re doing the trick on to be the only person handling the cards. The cards don’t have to be arranged before hand; you can do it with a brand new deck of cards if you want.
Here’s what it looks like to a casual observer.
I ask a person to thoroughly shuffle a deck of cards, or arrange them however he wants, whatever he wants to do to ensure I don’t know the order of the cards. Then, I ask the person to split the cards into 3 roughly equal piles. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should be close. The person then looks at the top card of any of these piles, notes what card it is, and replaces it back where he found it. Then, the person turns that pile face up, places the pile on top of another pile, and puts the third pile on the very top. The piles in the stack now alternate, face down, face up, face down. Then, you ask the player to make 2 approximately equal stacks, and shuffle them together once. Then, ask the player to flip the stack over and fan out the cards. The cards are a jumbled mess, some face up, some face down, apparently impossible to find a pattern in, yet somehow I’m able to point directly at a face-down card, and sure enough when the player flips that card over, it’s the one he noted earlier!
The magician never has to touch the cards in the deck, which is what makes the trick so outstanding.
OK, this is going to venture off topic a little, but one of my favorite tricks along these lines was called “Snaps.” You and an accomplice explain to your audience how you’re such good friends, known each other forever, etc., that you can practically read each other’s minds (or whatever story is most appropriate and convincing in your situation.) You explain that you’re able to communicate the name of any famous person just with a shore series of finger snaps.
Accomplice exits the room. Somebody gives you the name of a famous person. Let’s say, for example, “Ronald Reagan.” Accomplice returns. If you want to, you could have them facing away from you to eliminate accusations of giving away the name by gesturing, but I actually find that misdirection helpful (people will be trying to figure out the trick, and most likely will think it has somethiing to do with body signals).
So here’s how it would start for the Reagan clue. You look your accomplice intently in the eye. “Ready?” He replies either vocally or by nodding or whatever. SNAP SNAP. pause SNAP. pause. Look at him quizically. Draw it out a bit, ham it up. Your accomplice may already know who you’re thinking of. If not, one more clue will help him. If he’s not getting it, look at him intently, somewhat frustrated, and ask “Got it?” At this point, he should reply “Ronald Reagan.”
The trick is simple. From the moment the accomplice enters the room, the first letter of anything you say is part of the name you are trying to transmit telepathically. With the snaps, it’s one snap for “A,” two for “E,” three for “I,” etc. Obviously, you can work out your own system, but that’s the most straightforward one. So, from the above, when I asked my partner whether they were ready (“Ready?”), there’s the R. With the next sequence of snaps we have REA. Many accomplices would conclude REAGAN is what we’re looking for, and might stop there.
Now, the key obviously is to non-intrusively and naturally sprinkle in bits of patter and have people look for the trick in anything but your vocalizations. Doing this well very much depends on good acting, but, done right, it’s quite an impressive party trick. I also have a variant “rule” where if I start a sentence with a vowel, it doesn’t count for the name. Or any sentence starting with a vowel, it’s the first letter of the second word that counts. If you get really good with your partner, you can devise a system in which you shift the letters up and down in your patter to make it less obvious. Really, your imagination is the limit here.
Using the basic rules (first letter of my sentence(s), simple one snap=A, two =E, etc.), I believe in one instance we performed the trick about 15-20 times in a row before anyone caught on what exactly was happening. It helps, also, to have practiced a bit beforehand, so you can find natural ways to insert problem letters into casual conversation. (Obviously, for a letter like “X,” unless your accomplice is fortuitously named “Xavier,” you’ll have to devise your own work-around.)
The variation I know of that trick involves the four jacks as burglars (easier to imagine as burglers than the number “4”) and a cop represented as a king. You do the story as you do, but at the end, you have the cop (king) show up on the scene and spot the burglar in the basement. He chases them around and around three times (cut the deck and replace three times) and he corrals them all (spread out the deck face up to show four jacks, together, chased by the king cop.)
Hi, I actually do magic as a side-job and it’s a really great gig… One of my favourites is actually a classic called the colour monte, in which the magician shows 3 cards, lets say for example a king of spades and 2 jokers. He then proceeds to change those 3 cards into 3 jokers, then into 3 kings of spade, then back to 3 jokers and as a kicker he changes the cards into a joker, a king and a queen. This description doesn’t really do it justice but I’ve developed my own twist so it becomes quite a funny story.
But probably the best magical effect that requires no set up is one that David Blaine did in his first show (iirc) in it he puts out a lit cigarette in the palm of his hand and transfers the heat and ashes into a spectators closed fist from 6 feet away. This is the effect that made my reputation and when done correctly it blows everyone away. I know it’s not a card trick but it’s just so freaky cool.
