Mia
So you like card tricks, but you think it’s only professional magicians that can perform impressive card tricks? Well, you too can learn some card tricks, and they will be good enough to thrill your friends and family during your gatherings.
Card tricks are the most known form of magic tricks; anybody can do them. This is understandable since a deck of cards is easy to get, and it’s cheap too. Plus, there are so many card tricks you can do to impress your audience.
What are the card tricks you can learn to impress your friends?
- #1 Card Trick: Also known as the ‘Heartbeat’.
The trick: you shuffle the deck and tell your spectators to select a card, but they won’t tell you. Then you ask them to put the card back in the deck, shuffle again before spreading the deck on a table face up.
Now you hold the spectator’s hand over the cards facing up and single the one card your spectator selected initially. Be dramatic to make it more impressive and leave your spectator wowed.
Explanation: start by shuffling the deck, and peek at the bottom card to know it, but do this discreetly.
Now, spread the cards on the table for your spectator to choose one and memorize it. As the spectator takes the card out, you will then split the deck in equal half (or close to equal halves) at the same position your spectator took their card.
Then, let them put the card they chose back in the deck. You should let them put their card on the original top half from when you split the deck initially. With their card on the top half, place the bottom half on their card. What you have now is the card you memorized on top of the spectator’s card. Shuffle the cards carefully so you don’t separate the one you memorized from your spectator’s card.
Then, spread the card on the table facing up so that every card is visible.
Tell them you are going to find their card using their impulse, so hold their hand. While holding your spectator’s hand, move it over the cards a few times like you are trying to pinpoint their card using their impulse.
What happens: you look for the card you peeked at when you started the trick, so you know the card that follows is your spectator’s card.
You may not always get the card your spectator chose correctly. This may happen if you over-shuffled and separated the card you peeked at from your spectator’s card.
However, it gets better when you start using marked cards.
- Use Marked Playing Cards
Marked playing cards are marked decks of cards. They use a special marking system on the back of each card. That way, a magician or a trickster can know the suit and value of any card without turning the card to see its face. The suit and value of a card can be embedded in coded or reader systems.
A magician can either buy commercially produced marked playing cards or simply mark their cards by themselves. Both use special markings that spectators won’t detect, e.g., a card can be self-marked with a fingernail or a poker ring.
A marked deck of cards will make things easier for you as a magician, whether you are a beginner or not. A chosen card that would have been lost in the shuffled deck of cards will now be easier for you to spot.
Visit popular online stores or any offline magic items shop near to get a deck of marked playing cards.
- #2 Card Trick: Psychic
The trick: you tell your spectator to pick the card on top of the deck and memorize it before putting it back in the deck.
Then, hold the deck of cards like you want it to pass a psychic message to you. As your spectator concentrates on their card, you say it as if the deck told you.
Explanation: let your spectator shuffle the cards, then you spread them on the table, face up. Make sure you see the top card and memorize it.
Then tell your spectator to divide the deck into three piles. You should have your eyes on the top card of the deck. Then rearrange the piles so that the first cut pile is in the middle of the other two piles. That is, the top of the deck should be in between the other piles.
Have your spectator take the card on top of the middle pile and memorize it. Then they should put it back in one of the piles. Put the three piles of cards back together then shuffle.
Let your spectators focus on the color of their card before you say what color it is. Also, let them focus on the suit before you say it. Finally, let your spectators concentrate on the number before you tell them.
What happens: you start by knowing the card of the top of the deck, which your spectator cuts into three. You then put the first cut “the one that has the card you already saw” in between the other two piles. When you tell them to take the card on top of the middle pile, it is the card that you memorized initially. No matter how many times you shuffle the card, you can always tell them the card they picked.
The card they picked is the one you made them pick, plus you already know it. Just be as dramatic as you can be with the whole psychic message from cards to make this trick so impressive.
These card tricks are some of the simplest to learn, yet they are good and quite impressive. You can even find more card tricks on Youtube or other video sources to get the hang of it.
Before you know it, you will be performing impressive card tricks at family hangouts, night-outs with your friends, and so on. All you need is some practice to master the tricks, how to sleight your hands, and switch cards on your shuffled decks undetected. While marked playing cards don’t require sleight of hands, it would take some practice for you to be able to read the markings.
