I don’t have a clue how this card trick is done. Anyone out there want to give their thoughts, ideas, explanations?
Go here to see it:
http://www.santoalt.com/videos/card_trick.php
It’s neat though!
Art
Wow,
That’s impressive, but he was telling the truth. There were only four cards displayed there.
Are you implying that it was more of a video editing trick, and not a card trick? Or that it was magic =)
That’s all sleight of hand. Don’t play poker with this guy (or at least, don’t let him deal).
Can you verify this? I mean, if I were to slow the video down and go frame by frame, would I be able to see either palming or pulling a card from the bottom etc?
I didn’t see him palm anything. I think it was all bottom-dealing and the like. He’s pretty smooth, though, so I wouldn’t expect that video would contain enough information to pick it out.
For those of us who can’t get the linked page to work, what’s he doing?
He’s got 4 cards (2 Hearts, 10 Spades, King Diamonds, King Clubs). He does a bunch of stuff where he flips over each one, and it’s always the 2. He runs through this sort of thing a couple times, then he says something about how we think they’re all 2s, right? No, he says, actually they’re all 10s, and he flips over each one again. Then he shows that they’re really kings.
Here is a shortcut to the video: http://media.santoalt.com/101/041305/card_trick.wmv
I’m glad you asked because I rewatched the video to find out. He takes four cards and turns them into… four cards (always shown one at a time). At first all four cards are the 2 of Hearts, then all four cards are the 10 of spades, then there are two King Diamonds and two King Clubs. When I first watched it I assumed all the Kings he showed at the end were different suits, but they’re not. He just alternates red and black to confuse you (since you just stared at hearts and spades earlier).
I agree with Gorsnak, don’t play cards with this guy, period. Seems pretty good at it to me, but I have no frame of reference.
I wonder if he has some way of making the cards stick together, so when he flips over the “top” card, he’s really flipping over the top two or three cards. The whole routine seems to be based on grabbing the top two or three cards so smoothly, that the audience thinks it’s only one card.
That is an outstanding trick. I bet that would even impress the best prestidigitators out there.
When he shows that they’re all 10’s, it’s pretty clear he isn’t simply flipping 2 or 3 at a time, they all seeeeem to be 10’s as he passes them from one hand to the next. That’s the most confusing part of the video, as it shows him holding the cards in the other hand. Although… it’s obvious his cards are (if there are truly only 4):
King of Diamonds
King of Clubs
10 of Spades
2 of Hearts
I guess he’s just really damn good.
I just watched it in slow motion… and yeah he is just really good. The card he is showing is almost always the third card in the deck. It isn’t hard to pull off a flip because he only has one anchor card (the bottom one). When he flips the fourth “10”, he’s actually flipping the third card… watch that part in slow motion and pay attention. Neat trick… I wonder if I can learn it.
I have seen two close up magicians, one at a kid’s party (Fingers DeMain the best close up magician in Australia) and the other at a business conference (he was entertaining participants during tea and meal breaks). Even though I have read books about magic, knew how the tricks were done and had the opportunity to watch from different angles it is nearly impossible to see what is being done.
And this guy is also very good.
That guy’s an asshole.
The 2nd part of where he shows all the 10’s is fairly transparent, he’s showing you the ten on the bottom, then drawing off the top cards one at a time. It’s all sleight of hand, and he is good at it. I had a magician friend, he could do pretty amazing things with a deck.
Did we adress the fact that each card is a different suit? When he shows all kings… it of each suit.
But of course its ““magic”” its billed as that, and with that comes Seight of hand and what not.
We “know” there is stuff going on we can’t (or shouldn’t be able to) see. But then, where is the fun?
Games have rules that we can break.
Actors have lines that they don’t have to say.
My dad did a trick that is similar, with yellow and blue cubes in a sleeve. My Mom has yet to teach me the trick (She said when I was older… Im 22 now!) but she has admitted that for the cube trick, it has to do with hand/palm placement.
Out of respect for the craft Please put the secret in a spoiler box. At the very least.
[my not-too-swift brother-in-law mode]
Hey, that’s a trick!
[/n-t-s bil mode]
Magician chiming in here.
Without going into details, by my count he is using 5 different sleights to achieve the effect you are seeing. Some sleights are, as was mentioned earlier, grabbing 2 cards as one. Some are in the way he is counting the cards. There are many variations on the routine he is doing and I’ve seen most of them.
Technically he is pretty good, but he doesn’t impress me and he probably wouldn’t impress a whole lot of magicians either. The reason for that is because there are litterally thousands of magicians that can do the same thing to the same degree of proficiency, but all of them never go above or beyond to really entertain their audience. Did you notice that this guy’s words are only explaining what is happening. In magic we call this, “Process patter”, and it is what magicians say when they really have nothing useful to say during thier performance (Example: "Hey, I have these 4 cards and lets watch what happens to them.)
Also, and I’m not trying to be expecially critical here, but he is too fast in presenting his routine. The speaks way too fast and he doesn’t allow enough time inbetween the phases of his routine to let the situation sink in for the spectators.
To summarize: Technically he is good, but his presentation is grossly lacking.
Well, it was pointed out earlier that there are only two different suits on the Kings there (diamonds, clubs). The other two cards he has are the two and the ten.