I want to tell you a handy ruse that will get you a key card under intense heat. It’s motivated, and seems to serve the purpose of making the demonstration even more fair. I came up with it on the spot when I was under pressure. Before we get into the ruse itself, here’s the background.
Within the last couple years, I was brought on a trip to Las Vegas by a longtime family friend. I’d known this family friend throughout my entire childhood, he was like a father to me. Our families would have weekly dinners where we would play cards. Those dinners took place before I started magic. When I became a magician, I took advantage of those card nights and tried to show him something every single week. It got to the point where he would look forward more to the card trick than the actual dinner. He wasn’t just a nice spectator, though. He would call you out the moment he caught something. If he said he was fooled, he was truly fooled.
Let’s call this family friend Selleck. Selleck loved card tricks. He would appreciate all the traditionally “boring” card trick plots that we would avoid. For example, during an ACAAN performance, he would stare intently as each card was dealt. For math tricks that would typically make you forget why you even exist he would play along wholeheartedly. He’s the type of guy that would lose sleep over a card trick you’d show him. He’d shrug off his wife attempting to continue the evening with words like “but the fucker didn’t touch the cards…”
He promised he’d take me to Vegas to see Penn and Teller on my 19th birthday. When that birthday finally rolled around, he never mentioned anything, and I didn’t bring it up. Fast forward to my 25th birthday. He came up to me and says “Hey, we’re making that Vegas thing happen.” It was a fantastic surprise. This story took place at the airport, waiting for the first flight out from [DREW’S LOCATION HERE].
As usual, he requested to see a trick. He took my deck, gave it a quick overhand, and then I turned away. While I was turned away, I instructed him to take a card out of the middle of the deck and keep it to his chest. I told him to have a tiny peek of the card that was on his chest and slap it onto the deck. Once he did so, I told him to cut the cards and shuffle the deck.
He did just that.
To recap, he took the deck, shuffled it, pulled a card out for himself, cut it back and shuffled the deck once more. To his mind, everything was completely above board, and to some of your minds as well perhaps if you haven’t been reading carefully.
He looked straight in my eyes and said: “Just tell me the card right now.” He wasn’t messing around this time.
“It’s a red card,” I said to him stone-faced.
“I hate you.”
I went through the deck and put the card he picked face up on the armrest and he flipped out. He sat there speechless for a good thirty seconds.
He started to shuffle again, but insisted I not look while he shuffled. Uh-oh.
I waited for him to stop shuffling, and before he could pick out his own card I turned back to him and asked him: “Be honest, Selleck. Do you think that there is at least a one percent chance that these cards are marked?”
“…Yes.”
“I want you to be sure that there are no markings. I’ll let you in on a secret. It’s called ‘taking the deck to the movies.’ You flick through the cards and look at the backs, and if you see the backs of the cards ‘dancing’ like in an animation you know they’re marked.” While I was explaining this, I was showing him what to do.
He did so. I repeated the trick exactly the way I did before.
“I’m scared of you.”
“Vegas, baby!”
So how did I do that? Some of you may have caught it while reading. You probably already know how I did the first phase, it’s some of the first stuff you learn in card magic. Read on!
He flashed the face of the deck after he finished shuffling, and I turned away right after. He cut the cards first, putting my impromptu key card next to his card. They stuck together during his overhand shuffles, and I pulled the color out of my ass. Ta-da. But when he demanded a repeat performance with my back turned while he was still shuffling, I was scrambling for something to do. Then, by the time he finished shuffling, it came to me.
All that this is, is a peek when you do that riffle check. You can just take the cards briefly to demonstrate how this is done. All the attention is on the backs of the cards, so people don’t realize you’re openly looking at the face of a card! See the pictures below. The example peek is for the 9 of diamonds, which “just so happened” to be on the bottom of the deck.
This can be handy for those sticky situations where you need to openly get your key card. When I first pulled this off, not only did it burn the bridge for a potential method, it also allowed me to do the same trick with a different choreography. Magicians who care about motivation and choreography know how hard it can sometimes be to do something simple like look at the bottom of the deck.
Vegas, baby!