Anyone know any? I’m cathing up with my ‘rellies’ this Christmas and I have some little cousins who are expecting me to improve on last years performance. So does anyone know any good ones?
Practice practice practice.
The more practice you do the more impressive tricks you can do.
The simplest is to know the bottom card of a deck (with practice you can seemingly shuffle indefinitely and even riffle the deck and still keep the card where you want it). Get them to pick a card and look at it. Then get them to place it on the table face down. Quickly place the deck on it, and then shuffle the deck.
Then you’ll go through it and magically find the card (which is next to your card on the bottom). A bit of showmanship will see you go past the card, slow down and umm to yourself and then go back etc… Improvise.
First one’s free… 
And off to IMHO we go…
I never really learned any card tricks, although there was this math one I vaguely remember which involved seperating the deck into piles, having the person tell you which pile the card was in, do this a couple of times, then count out a certain number of cards to find their card. I assume it was a math trick. Anyone heard of that one?
As for lame tricks, one of my friends had one of those trimmed decks that made the cards very slightly lopsided. Have the person draw any card, but turn the deck around when they slid it back in. You could just slide the card out of the deck. And my lamest trick, of personal invention when I was 8 I think, was to place the bottom card upside down, have them draw a card, flip the deck over and have them slide it back into the deck. I’d then wander away flipping through the deck until I found the upside down card.
Buy yourself a keystone (AKA “stripper”) deck of cards from any magic shop. One end of the deck is cut just slightly thinner than the other, not enough to see, but when you turn the chosen card around in the deck, so the wide end is now facing the narrow end of the rest of the deck, you can easily run your fingers across the sides of the deck and find the chosen card instantly by touch.
These decks usually come with some directions of a few tricks you can do with the deck, and if you go the a magic shop, they should also have videos showing you how to do tricks with a stripper deck. You can buy Bicycle cards cut to be a stripper deck or a pack of generic looking cards. A Bicycle deck is more expensive, since you’re paying for the name brand, but it’s a well-known brand of card so it’s more believable to your audience that you’re using a regualr deck of cards. People tend to get suspicious of a generic deck more quickly.
Easiest thing to do IMO is to take a trip to the nearest Barnes And Noble. A guy by the name of Bob Longe has authored several books of simple, almost self-working cards tricks. There are three or four volumes, the titles escape me but they all have something to do with “simple”, “easy”, “amazing”- followed by the words “card tricks”. There’s a lot of bullshit between the covers, but also several really killer routines that involve only above average presentational skills to perform effectively. There are also several titles available by mail from magic dealers, but I would heartily recommend “Effortless Card Magic” by Peter Duffy. Good stuff, not necessarily self-working, but if you are willing to put in some practice time you’ll develop several entertaining routines that don’t require advanced sleights or contorted finger positions. Good luck, and most importantly, have fun!
Here’s an easy one that looks very impressive:
Glance at the bottom card of a deck without letting your victim see you do it so you know what it is.
Fan the cards out on the table face down, so the card you know is at the far end, on the bottom.
Tell them you’re going to make them pick out a series of cards. Pretend to think of a card at random. Really it’s the card you already know is on the bottom. So if you know the ten of hearts is the one on the bottom, say, “Okay, I want you to pick out the… oh, ten of hearts”. Write down the cards you’re telling them to draw, because there will be a few of them. Have them push out one of the face down cards. You look at it, act impressed that they picked out the one you told them to.
Now let’s say the card they pointed to was the two of spades. Now you say, “Okay, now point to the… two of spades.” They point to another card, and you act like THAT one really is the two of spades. And so on. After you’ve had them ‘pick’ a few cards, you say, “Okay, now I’ll find the last one, the [whatever the last card was that they really did pick]”. And you take the one on the bottom, the card you already know. And now you have all the cards you told them to pick.
Have them read back the list of cards you told them to draw, and reveal them one at a time.
It’s not foolproof, though. If they actually pick the one on the bottom, you’re screwed!
- Dave
Slight presentation addition to my above trick: when you do pick your card, the one on the bottom, don’t go right for it; pretened to sift through the face-down cards, “looking for the right one”. If you go straight for the bottom card, it’ll be easier for them to figure out how you did it…
- Dave
[quoate]The simplest is to know the bottom card of a deck (with practice you can seemingly shuffle indefinitely and even riffle the deck and still keep the card where you want it).
[/quote]
If you know the bottom card, hold out the deck and have the other person slap the deck hard (for kids, use half a deck). If they don’t hit it hard enough, have them repeat until one card is left. That will be the bottom card. This works best if you hold out the deck, say “three of clubs” and have them slap the deck.
There’s also a neat version of “one ahead” that’s simple to learn. Hold up the deck of cards so you can see the bottom card. Put the deck behind your back and slip the bottom card to the top, facing out. Hold up the deck and call the name of the former bottom card. At the same time, note the new bottom card. Move the deck behind your back and slip that card around. Call the name of the card you just saw and make a note of the next card. Do this 8-10 times and quit before anyone catches on.
You know, if I were feeling generous, I could argue that this is just barely vaguely a General Question. But, I’m not feeling generous today, and what constitutes a “good” card trick is a matter of opinion, and this whole thread is rather pollish, so I’m moving it.
By the way:
The difference between good magicians and bad magicians is the ability to improvise. How is the best-case scenario “screwed”? You just end the trick right there.
Never, ever, tell your audience what trick you’re going to do before you do it.
Oh, by the way, MadHatter, don’t you think that there has to be an easier way to learn magic tricks than from a text-only message board? Learning live would be easiest, and even a library book would have pictures (crucial for explaining some tricks).
“Pick a card! Any card!”
let them take a card, memorize it, and return it wherever they wish in the desk.
shuffle
shuffle some more
Let them shuffle if they wish it.
pick a card at random from the deck–hold it up so that only you can see–glower over it—grin diabolically–and present the card to your audience
“Not only have I found your card, but I have also magically transformed it into the 4 of Clubs!”
(Or whichever card you happen to pick.)
I learned this at summer camp years ago, but only recently did I figure out how it works (which doesn’t say alot about me I know…)
You have to fix the deck beforehand of course. But that is easy to do. Set it up Ace through King, one suit after the other, just like if the deck was new and you pulled it out of the pack. Of course, don’t tell them it is set up this way. But even if they suspect it is fixed, they will have an “opportunity” to do something about it.
Ask your victim (if doing this for money) or audience (if doing this for fun) to cut the deck 13 times anywhere they wish. The key though is to make sure that everytime they cut the deck, they put it back together again before cutting again (i.e. at most there should only be 2 piles of cards - if they do 3, you are screwed). As a side note, I guarantee you that whoever is cutting the deck will do a cut of a single card only…
Then, take the deck back and make your “magic” speech - and visuals such as slaping the deck or something equally dramatic. Maybe give on more “magic” cut.
The deal the cards face down. Deal 13 cards, then deal a second card onto each in the same order. Same for the third card, and the fourth card. Ask your participant to turn over the first pile and WOW! all four cards are the same! Turning over the rest of the piles shows all cards of the same denomination together. And the order of the suits generally remains the same too.
Take your accolades. You are a card master!
Here’s one I thought of that you can do with a regular deck:
Peek at and memorize the bottom card. Have them pick a card. Have them place the card on top of the deck, then cut the deck. Their card is now next to the bottom card you peeked at. Start flipping the cards face up and laying them out in front of the person so he can see which cards you’re laying down. When you get to the card that was on the bottom of the deck, you know that the chosen card is the next card (from when you put that card on top and cut the deck). Continue past their card as if you hadn’t noticed. About 5 or so cards later, ask if they think the next card you flip over will be their card. When they say no, flip their card (the card after the one that was on the bottom of the deck before you did the cut) face down from the line of cards you have already laid out.
This’ll start you off for about a hundred good tricks: The Cross-Cut Force.
Shuffle the cards. Get a glance at the bottom card on your last shuffle. Ask your victim to cut the cards into two roughly-equal piles and set the cut portion beside the other. Talk about the trick you’ll be doing in order to distract him. Place the bottom half of the deck he just cut on top of the top half while you’re talking, but rotate it 90 degrees, so that the two cut portions look like a thick cross. When you’re done with your patter, ask him to lift up the top half and look at the card he cut to.
See, while you’re talking, he forgets which half is which. He thinks he’s looking at the card he cut to, but in fact he’s looking at the bottom card of the deck, and your stating that it’s the card he cut to reinforces his mistaken belief. From there, you can go many directions, with your victim thinking he had free choice in his card selection.
I agree in general, but that’s one of the problems of this particular trick. Because you’re ‘picking’ cards one behind what are actually getting picked, the trick relies on YOU getting that last one. You could just end it there and pretend like nothing went wrong, yes, but you’d have an extra card in your hand that you hadn’t named yet.
Okay, you’re right, ‘screwed’ is probably too strong of a word. A good magician (and that I never claimed to be! 
)could probably cover up for it. But it’s a decidely less impressive trick with that extra card.
Still, when it works (which is almost always; I’ve never had anyone take the bottom card), it’s fairly impressive.
- Dave
That math one mentioned before goes a little like this:
- Take 21 cards out of a deck, it doesn’t matter which.
- Deal out three piles of 7 cards and ask the person to pick one card from any pile.
- They tell you which pile and you put the three decks together without shuffling them. Make sure the deck with the chosen card is in the middle.
- Repeat step 2 and 4 two more times (i.e. total of three times)
- Count out 11 cards and that card is the magic card.
I’ve never had this not work so i’m guessing you shouldn’t look like a fool by screwing it up. No slight of hand or crazy tricks to learn beforehand, just know how to put the decks together.
This trick doesn’t work with Bicycles because of the design on the back, but if you can find a deck with a design on the back that looks different right-side up & up-side down, put them all facing the same way before you approach your audience (trust me, they won’t notice it). Then get them to take a card, when they are looking at it distract them and turn the deck around, and get them to put it back in…then it will be the only card with the design upside down. The only problem is if they unknowingly turn the card upside down, but you can always distract them more and turn the deck again. Also, you can shuffle the deck before & after they take the card as long as you make sure the cards still all face the same way before you start shuffling.
You can do this with a regular deck but you have to make a short deck, because only some cards look different upside down… you have to take out the face cards, most of the evens, most of the diamonds…you can figure it out i’m sure. but this is kind of harder.
Oh yes! My Dad used to do that when I was a kid. I thought he was totally, completely magic. Finally he showed me how to do it, and said it is based on matrix algebra. With his trick it was 3 rows of 5 cards.
Check out the bottom card. Memorise it. Then write the card and the suit on your arm (be sure to put on a long sleeved shirt afterwards) Then shuffle the bottom card to the top (this takes practise but once you’ve mastered this technique you’ve got it made). Once the card is at the top ask a volunteer to cut the deck roughly somewhere in the middle. Then take the cards he’s just cut and turn them upsidedown and place them on the rest of the deck. Now tell him to cut again but this time just a little deeper. Turn the cards over again and then get rid of all the cards which are facing up, the first card facing down will be his card. Now if you’ve done this right the first down facing card will ALWAYS be the one you shuffled to the top. Your volunteer will think it’s random because, after all, he’s the one who cut the deck, twice. Now tell him to look at the card without showing you and memorise it. Then tell him to place it back in the pack anywhere he likes and ask him to shuffle the pack for as long as he wants.
The rest is just presentation. Take back the deck and, seemingly at randon, remove a card that you know is not his. Ask him “Is this your card” obviously he will reply in the negative. Do this a couple more times, each time getting a little bit more exasperated. Finally, with one lavish gesture, lift up your sleeve and say triumphantly “is THIS your card”. He’ll be mystified for the rest of the day, I guarantee it!
Prep a deck by putting the four aces at the top of the deck. Set the deck on the table. Have a member of the audience cut the deck. Now there’s two piles. Have him cut each of the two piles. Now there are four piles, one of which has the four aces at the top of it. Now, you have to pay attention, because you are about to do a bit of improvising. Keep your eyes on the cards. Have the audience member move, say, two cards from the top of this pile to that pile, occasionally spreading the aces over to the tops of the four piles (I hope you can understand this.) You really have to pay attention, unless you memorize a routine of which cards to move. The more moves the better, it looks more mysterious.
Eventually, you’ll have your audience member move the aces so there’s one on each pile. Then move to the closer.
“How many piles are there?”
4
“How many aces are there in the deck?”
4
“Turn over the top card [pointing to a pile] of that pile” etc.
Very impressive looking trick–especially since you never touch the cards–and entirely self working.
Cordially,
Myron M. Meyer
The Man Who