How to Setup the 8 King Deck for Magicians

The 8 Kings setup is used for many card tricks. It looks like a random order, but actually it is very specific and repeats throughout the deck, so the magician always knows the order of the cards.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Deck of playing cards

Setting Up

1. Memorize this mnemonic: "8 kings threaten to save 95 ladies for 1 sick knave."

2. Memorize mnemonic for the order of suits: CHaSeD ("clubs, hearts, spades and diamonds").

3. Order the cards as follows, using the mnemonic and chase order: 8 of clubs, king of hearts, 3 of spades (threat-), 10 of diamonds (-ten), 2 of clubs (to), 7 of hearts (save), 9 of spades, 5 of diamonds, queen of clubs, 4 of hearts (for), ace of spades (one), 6 of diamonds (sick) and jack of clubs (knave--another word for jack).

4. Begin again with the 8 of hearts and continue in the same manner for the rest of the deck.

Tricks

5. Ask someone to cut the deck into 2 piles. Pick up the pile that was the top half of the deck and ask the person (or another person) to take the top card from the other (bottom) pile. As you recombine the pile, peek at the bottom card of the top pile and you will know what card was chosen.

6. Fan out the cards face-down and ask someone to take a card, look at it and put it back into the fanned-out deck. Spread the cards face-up on the table; the card that is out of order is the one that was chosen.

7. Allow someone to shuffle the deck using an overhand (not riffle) shuffle and perform the same trick as in Step 1. Since the overhand shuffle keeps groups of cards together, peeking at the bottom card of the top pile will almost always allow you to know which card was at the top of the bottom pile.

Tips & Warnings

• To make the trick more effective, add flourishes such as turning your back while the deck is cut or rubbing your temple as if using telepathy to determine which card was chosen.