Magician's Cards
GAMES
Created by: Jasmina Solankee
Ever want to practice sleight of hand? Well now is your chance. Learn how to trick the best of the best with these cool card games!
Return to…
Let’s Play Magician’s Cards
Materials Needed
- 1 deck of cards
Where to Play
- Anywhere that’s comfortable!
Number of Players
- At least one person in the audience
Purpose
- Enjoy performing the card tricks!
#1: Mind-Reading Card Trick
How to perform the trick
- Prior to starting the trick and not in front of the audience, write down the name/types of one card that you want to “predict” and seal that paper in an envelope or plastic bag. Take your deck of cards and secretly place that chosen card at the top of your deck.
- Hand enveloped with your prediction to an audience member to keep safe and hidden from you – telling them that you have predicted the card they will have chosen.
- Fan the deck showing all cards mixed up, ask an audience member to shuffle. (It is okay that they get all rearranged!)
- Fan through the cards again showing all cards mixed up. But at the same time you will be looking for the card you want them to choose. As sneakily as you can, put the card back at the top of the deck as you close your “fan”.
- This is where you will work on getting the audience to choose your chosen card.
- Place the deck face down and ask someone from the audience to cut the deck in half and place the cards on the right.
- Pick up the original bottom half on the left and place it on top of the right stack but place them sideways so the two stacks lay on top of one another (one vertical and one stack horizontal)
- *Remember your card of choice is at the top of the bottom stack right now*
- Let a few moments pass so the audience forgets which half came from where:
- Do this by talking to your audience about how its just a regular deck and to remember everything has been shuffled. Remind the audience that they could have cut wherever they wanted and what is on the table is what they chose
- As you say “you chose to cut here”, pick up the sideways top half and then point to the top card of the bottom half (your card) and say “you selected this card”
- Have the volunteer turn over the card and then reveal that it matches the card that you predicted in the envelope!
#2: Whispering Queen Card Trick
How to perform the trick
- Have an audience member shuffle the deck and say “this is the Whispering Queen card trick. Which of the 4 queens should we use to be our whispering queen?” The member, as an example, will say queen of hearts
- Pick up the deck and, facing toward you, run through them looking for the queen of hearts. While doing this, make sure to look at what would have been the top card when the deck was facing down (or the bottom card when the cards are facing you)
- This is called a “peek” and is vital to setting up the trick
- Remember this card!
- Find and remove the queen of hearts (or whichever queen the audience member chose – we are choosing hearts as the example here)
- “We don’t want her to see what we are doing so I will put her face-down and keep her eyes closed”
- Cut the deck into thirds
- Set the deck face down and ask an audience member to cut off one third and place their cut section to the right of the two decks
- Force the middle packet
- This is the packer that has the card you took a peek at the top of the deck. You want to force the audience to pick this packet by creating the illusion that they chose it.
- Ask an audience member to point to one of the packets:
- If they pick the middle one, say take a look at the top card and show it to everyone, don’t show me.
- If they pick one of the left or right packets, say “we will eliminate that packet” and set it aside. Then ask the audience member to place an index finger on each of the remaining two packets. Ask them to lift one finger.
- If they lift the finger off the packet you want, say okay let’s go with this one. If it’s the packet you don’t want, say you will eliminat that one too.
- This is how you “force” the middle packet to be chosen – where you know what the top card is already
- At this point, you should have forced the middle packet to be chosen and had the audience pick the top card and memorize it.
- Ask the spectator to return the card to the deck and shuffle all the cards again. This is giving the audience time to forget what you did before to get them to pick a card. You are taking their attention away.
- Pick up the queen of hearts you had set aside and hold it up to your ear and pretend to listen to hear. Here is where you can use your acting skills and be as dramatic as you would like.
- “She is saying it’s a red card, is it a diamond – yes!”
- Say things that suggest it’s that card you peeked and the card the audience selected.