The trick: One of your spectators is also a card sharp but they don’t know it yet. You ask him/her to cut the deck into four packets, then mixes the cards around a little and you ask them to turn over the top cards of each pile. The cards on top are all aces! How they did it, they have absolutely no idea, or at least if you practice this they won’t and who knows perhaps you will appear in a modern version of Caravaggio’s the Card Sharp!

The explanation: This trick is so simple is hurts, but it is still very impressive. Before the trick begins you place the four aces (or any four of a kind on top). Place the deck on the table, and ask for a volunteer. It doesn’t matter who comes up, “I bet you’re really a card sharp.”

A little spectator control helps here, but not a lot. You ask the spectator to cut the deck in half (point to the right). You now have two piles, point to the right pile and ask to cut it in half again (point to the right where you want it placed. Now point to the left pile and ask to cut it, (point to the left where you want it placed). This process cuts the pack into four piles, with your aces on your far right.

Now for the mixing of the cards, it is one move, repeated four times (with each pile of cards): The process is said as such “Pick up this pile (point to left pile). Take the top card to the bottom, and the next to the bottom, and finally another to the bottom. Now place one card on this pile (point to a on left), and now one on this pile, (point to next pile), and finally on the last pile (point to last pile). This is done for every pile.

Now all you have to do is turn the top card of every pile, dramatically, and the spectator has performed a miracle.

This trick comes to you from our friend, Andrew J Speirs: Magician, hypnotist, con-man, and all round boring guy, but great at partys. More at http://www.andrewjspeirs.co.uk