Typically when someone learns that you do magic they ask to see a card trick; after all every magician knows a card trick right? This is actually a true scenario in most magicians life, people link magic to card tricks almost immediately. Therefore it is important for even clowns who perform magic to have one or two card tricks up your sleeve. Today we are going to show you a very simple method of a card prediction that you can learn quickly and perform with ease.
The key card: A key card is a method in which the magician uses one specific playing card to locate the spectators chosen card, here’s how it works.
Phase I:
You can openly show the deck to be a normal deck of cards, the spectator may even shuffle the deck before they select a card.
1. With the cards face down, push cards from the left hand to the right asking the spectator to choose a card. This is easy, while pulling the first few cards with the right thumb, begin pushing more cards over with the left.
Step 1.
2. Allow the spectator to choose the card at will and show it to the audience, yet you do not look at the card.
Step 2.
Chosen card
3 a. You cut the pack and ask the spectator to return the card to the deck.
Step 3 a.
3 b. When you cut the pack, secretly peek at the card on the bottom of the stack of cards you lift away, this now is your key card.
Step 3 b.
*For this method you can not shuffle the cards as you will loose the placement of your key card.
4. Turn the deck face up and spread the cards across the table left to right.
Step 4.
7. Look for the key card, the spectators card is the one immediately to the right of the key card. Yes it is just that simple.
8. You now find the spectators card with your magic senses.
Step 8.
*Remember to play it up when searching for the card, add in some drama. Finding the card too quickly would not seem as magical.
Phase II:
A similar method is to put a small mark on the back of a card to use as a key card. This does require you to to a simple control of the deck, let’s see how that works.
Marking the card.
1. Have your marked card on the top of the deck and continue with the card selection as in Phase I. For this demonstration we will use a red card as the marked card for easier viewing.
2. After the card has been shown, have it replaced into the cut deck. Here is the control move. Lower the hand that has the marked card packet so that the spectator places their card on top of your key card. Continue by placing the other packet on top of the first.
Step 2.
3. Again without shuffling the cards, spread them across the table left to right this time face down. This makes it seem more impossible to locate the card.
Step 3.
4. Look for the marked card and as before the spectators card is to the right of the key card.
Step 4.
Remember, take time to build the suspense of finding the card as this is where the real meat of the routine lies. Once the spectators card is revealed, the crowd will give you applause well deserved.
Make sure to practice the moves until you can do them smoothly and entertain your audience with some good patter.