You all know the magic trick… “Pick a card, any card…”
You then take it, show everyone, and place it back in the deck. The dealer then shuffles, and before you know it, he/she reveals your card. How do they do it? Does anyone have the faintest idea?
There are hundreds of tricks like that, all different. If they did reveal it before you knew it, I bet it was the one where they led you into the next room first, right?
Ahhh no. I gave it back, he shuffled, then flipped through a few cards and revealed mine. No one else was in the room to signal him which was my card.
My dad used to pull this on me when I was little. In his version, he would hold the cards up in the air in between us so that only I could see the faces of the cards. He would then proceed to pick my card out of the deck without even seeing what the value or suit was… amazing! What I didn’t know for a long time was that he intentionally used a deck of cards with backs that were either upside down, or right side up (such as airline cards). Before the trick, he would have the cards arranged so that all of the card backs were right side up. After I selected the card, and while I was looking at it, he would turn the deck around for me to put the card back into the deck. He would then shuffle so that all of the card backs would maintain their orientation. He always let me cut the deck. Then as he was holding the cards up, all he had to do was look for the card back that had a different orientation than the rest. There’s my card.
On one side, all the card’s edged are slanted. If he turns the deck around before you put your card back in, he can feel with his hand that the card you had is the one whose edge is protruding.
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[_/ <—— that’s what one card looks like, but the edge is a very steep angle.
Like he (she?) said, there are a hundred ways to a) have someone take a card, b) place it back in the deck and shuffle, and c) reveal the card. I’ll give you a hint: It was probably something the magician did in #a, i.e. he forced a card on you, or #b, he didn’t really shuffle the deck, but cleverly kept track of your card. But there are tons of ways of doing each, plus lots of clever ways of revealing the card in #c as well.
If you’re really interested in learning card tricks, one of my favorite books is “The Royal Road to Card Magic” by Hugard and Braue. It was written in 1949, but someone on this board told me they were able to find it on Amazon. Or, of course, you could go into a magic shop, and buy a book or a trick deck to get started. Card tricks are a cool talent to have.
“Royal Road” is a great book, and it is available in a Dover edition for about $10. The book is “The Expert At The Card Table”, by S.W. Erdnase. (Erdnase is a pseudonym, by the way–the author was afraid he would be in some serious trouble if he used his real name.) It doesn’t have the best descriptions, and it isn’t as clear as “Royal Road”, but you’ll never be able to learn everything in there. It’s also available in a cheap Dover edition, although there’s a considerably more expensive version annotated by Darwin Oritz.
If you’re really serious, Michael Ammar’s “Easy To Master Card Miracles” series is fantastic. There are six videos, and they’re about $25 each, but they’re worth it if you’re obsessed like I am.
For more immediate gratification, there’s a web site called Card Trick Central you might look up. (And no, I’m not telling you the password to the hard stuff. 
)
Dr. J
Of course, one often wonders why a person wants to know how a card trick works. Magicians don’t keep secrets just because they’re afraid of losing their prestige. They do so because there are a lot of assholes out there who like to ruin the trick for everybody else – and they can do so without nearly the same hard won knowledge that the magician has, and in fact without any idea how the trick really works. So, they try to structure the learning of magic tricks so that the learner learns to appreciate the art, rather than depreciate it.
Agreeing with everyone on “The Royal Road to Card Magic.” It not only is a great way to start, but just about every single magician out there knows it, so if you get into card tricks and haven’t read it you’re gonna look foolish. Start there and then move onto other books. The main thing that you need to do once getting the book is PRACTICE. There are a few good self-working tricks in the book, but for the really spectacular stuff that makes people go “Whaddafuckwasthat?” you need to practive, practice, practice. I’ve actually bled trying to perfect a trick.
A magicians creedo about practicing their art that I’ve heard a few times before: “Devotion. Obsession. Self-denial.”
There was also a book called “Magic Tricks and Card Tricks,” though I don’t recall the author.
I do recall “Eight kings threatened to save ninety-six ladies for one sick knave,” which is one way to do the trick.
Its called a stripper deck. Its got one side larger than the other.
One of my favorites, when I was dabbling in magic, was to lay out four cards, face down, in front of the picker. He’d choose one, look at it, and then place it in an envelope, which he’d seal and hand back to be. I would burn the envelope in an ashtray, then ask him to choose on of four fruits in a bowl. He’d choose, let’s say, the orange. I’d get him to peel the orange, and there, coiled inside the previously unpeeled orange, was his card.
- Rick
The way I used to do this trick back in the second grade or so, is I would have the stiff put the card back on the bottom of the deck, having previously peeked at the bottom card. I’d then shuffle it in such a way as to keep those two cards together (the way most second-graders shuffle is just equivalent to a single cut, anyway), and then I’d look through the deck and pick the card that was right after the known card.
Another simple way: My uncle (a magician) has a deck which consists of 52 sevens of diamonds (or something). You pick a card, any card, and lo and behold, he can pull it out of the deck in a heartbeat! Bricker’s trick, as described, sounds like a variant on this method, but I don’t know how he got the card into the orange. I also suspect that he used some sleight-of-hand to prevent actually burning the card, so he doesn’t have to keep buying more decks.
I don’t feel guilty about revealing these, because there’s probably as many different ways to do this trick as there are magicians, and any professional magician who uses either of these methods is going to have a lot of other gimmiks to the trick.
I know how Bricker’s trick is done.
You get a genetically engineered orange tree, that grows oranges with a piece of cardboard having the seven of spades on it right beneath the orange peel.
You then place four of those oranges in a fruit bowl.
You place four seven of spades cards on the table. The mark picks a card, you burn it, ask him to open an orange, and there’s a seven of spades.
No mystery there.
Dammit! Now you’ve gone and exposed Genetically Engineered Orange Tree. Have you no respect for the art?
Dr. J
I can’t believe how cynical you people are! Did it ever occur to any of you that maybe it really is magic?
Actually, Dippy, I can tell you two separate ways that a TRULY talented card-handler can produce your trick. They both require that sort of devotion-obsession-self-denial thing that Tomcat was talking about, I’d imagine.
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They have a way of splitting the deck, shuffling the two halves into alternating fans like anyone would - but then: when pushing the two halves back together they don’t actually just make the deck whole again. Instead, they push the two halves THROUGH each other and retrieve them, intact, with the opposite hands. Done rapidly and repeated, it looks like a very efficient shuffle.
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Some have actually developed the control to perform a perfectly even alternating fan. One off the left pile, one off the right, etc. I’m told that if done enough times, this will eventually return all the cards to their original position in the deck (I don’t personally have the math for that). Flip the top over, or whatever, there’s your card again.
After 13 shuffles, the deck is in reverse order, and after 26, it’s back to the original. If you’re going to be obsessive enough to perfect the shuffling, it’d be no big deal to figure out where the mystery card would be after a different number, either. By the way, the restoration also relies on all of the shuffles starting with the same side.
BigGiantHead wrote
I’ve been pretty deep into card tricks in my life, and I can tell you that though each of these may be technically possible, they are both highly unlikely. There are many ways of controlling a card which are a) easier, b) more reliable, and c) just as impressive.
Actually, the first is not unlikely at all. I’ve seen footage of it being done, very professionally and rapidly (on the order of a cycle every second-and-a-half). Had I not been told by the narrator what was being done, I would have sworn it was a normal shuffle.