Royal Road to Card Magic The

request the spectator to touch any card. Remove the card and turn it face upwards. Whatever its value, gather up the remainder of the deck and deal beside it, face downwards and in an orderly pile, cards to correspond in number. For example, if the card is an eight-spot, deal eight cards. If the card is a picture card, announce that you will count all such cards as tens and treat them as such. Thus, you have a seven-spot at the bottom of this pile.
    3. Repeat the same overhand shuffle, retaining one of the other two sevens on the bottom and bringing the other one to the top of the pack. The position now is that you have a seven on the top and the fourth seven on the bottom.
    4. Spread the cards on the table again and request another spectator to touch a card. Remove it, turn it face upwards, gather up the remaining cards and deal beside it, as before, the number of cards to correspond with its value.
    5. Shuffle the cards once more, this time simply bringing the bottom card (the fourth seven) to the top. 'You will notice' you say, 'that your choice of cards is entirely fair. Neither you nor I can know the value of the cards you will select.'
    6. Have a third spectator touch still another card after you have spread the deck on the table, and proceed in exactly the same way as before. There will then be three piles of cards on the table, and at the bottom of each of them, unknown to the spectators, there is a seven-spot.
    7. Now turn to the spectator whose hand still rests on the seven-spot that you forced on him at the start of the feat. 'Will you, turn up your card and show it to all of us?'
    He does so and it is seen to be a seven-spot.
    'The vagaries of chance are inexplicable,' you observe thoughtfully, 'for here we have four cards selected by four different people in the fairest possible way. The probability of each selecting a card of the same value is so remote as to be practically impossible. And yet [slowly turn each of the packets face upwards and show, at their faces, the three remaining sevens!] that is exactly what has happened.'
    The student will be gratified, upon performing this feat, to notice the astonishment that it arouses. This is caused largely because the spectators were not told beforehand just what you proposed to do and for this reason did not scrutinise your preliminary actions so closely as they might have had they known your objective.
    This is one of the psychological advantages all good card conjurors keeps to themselves. The audience does know what is about to happen. If they did, their vigilance would be aroused and they would study what the conjuror does to determine how it is done. Since they do not know the purpose, however, they are not alerted and later, when they attempt to reconstruct what has been done, their memory fails them.
    This should also make clear why the expert card conjuror rarely if ever repeats a trick for an audience, no matter how great their importunity.
    To reiterate two of the key rules of conjuring:
    1. Never tell your audience the effect of a feat until all the preliminary actions which make it possible have been completed.
    2. Do not repeat a trick unless you can produce the same effect by a different method.
    Obliging Aces
    'I wouldn't want to play cards with you!' is a statement inevitably addressed to a good conjuror at some time or other. A good trick to use after someone has made this remark is the following easy feat, which has all the appearance of great skill.
    Before you start, secretly place any nine-spot at the ninth position from the top, with the four aces immediately following it. To do this while openly toying with the cards and carrying on your part in the general conversation, spread the cards with the faces towards you. Spot an ace and cut the pack to bring it to the top. Then run through the cards and slip each of the other three aces to the top in turn.
    Next find any nine-spot and slip that to the top. Turn the deck face downwards and shuffle overhand thus. Undercut about two-thirds of the deck, run four cards, injog the next card and shuffle off. Undercut to the jog and throw on top. Repeat the same shuffle, and you will have placed eight cards on top of the nine-spot and the aces will lie in the tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth positions as required for the trick.
    Now we are ready for the feat itself.
    1. Presuming that the conversation has been about gamblers and poker playing, offer to give a little demonstration, under very