Do Your First Card Trick
Always wanted to be a magician? Here's a fun, beginner's card trick that is surprisingly easy to learn and perform.
Contents
Steps
- Get prepared for your show, where no one can see, by sorting the cards to setup the first ten in your deck so they are in the following order: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, A. The suit (color and kind) does not matter. Put them on the deck face down and back into their pack. (This would be called "stacking the deck", and it would be cheating, if you were actually playing cards off the deck as you fixed it up, without shuffling them, but this is a trick...)
- Step before your audience holding your seemingly ordinary pack of cards. (Someone can introduce your act, telling them that you are going to amaze them with this magic.) Carefully remove the cards from the pack. (This is just Do the Flipping Picked Card Trick easy card tricks on wikiHow.)
- Drawing from the top ("without" shuffling the deck), place the cards, one-by-one, "face down" on a table in order, beginning on your right and adding them toward your left, then they will be: A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, with the A on the left end, and 10 on the right, but only you know that.
- Explain to a trusted volunteer from your audience that you would like him/her to move one or more cards, one by one, from the left end of the row to the right end of the row, without scrambling, flipping them or looking at them. Explain it again. Turn away from your volunteer, so that you can't see which or how many cards have been moved.
- Turn back again once your volunteer tells you that s/he has completed this movement.
- Look at the first card on the right end of the row without letting anyone see it; this tells you the number of cards the volunteer moved.
- Say aloud, "You moved ___ cards (fill the number)", and bow to hear the applause.
Tips
- Be confident and don't pause.
- When the audience, helper or family member asks how it's done never say it. Tell them, "That is a secret for only the magician to know!" and "Get your own magic. I can't ever tell anyone." Then stick to it.
- Before performing the trick in front of anyone, practice it a few times. Then perform before a completely trusted person, swearing them to respect your need and right to total secrecy.
- Make sure you say the instructions clearly so they know what to do.
- This is so quick that you need more than just this one trick, or people may feel let down.
- Look just above the heads of the audience or at a trusted person, or you may get distracted.
- Make sure before you start the trick, you are confident with it.
- Make sure you are not constantly looking at the cards or that you are not completely focused on the cards.
Warnings
- If the volunteer does not follow instructions, this will not work!
