How to Pre-Arrange the Cards for a Magic Trick

You can perform many magic card tricks and impress your friends by simply preparing the deck before hand. By pre-arranging the deck, and pretending to cut or shuffle the cards, the deck will be all set up to do what you want it to do.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Deck of cards

1. Put the cards in the order you want them to be for your card trick.

2. Place them on top of the deck face down in that order.

3. Slide the cards back into the deck and close the box to look like it is a fresh deck of cards.

4. Open the box when you are in front of your friend or audience and take the deck out of the box, telling your friend or audience that you have a magic trick you want to show them.

5. Do a fake cut, which is an illusion used to make it look like you have cut the cards when in actuality you haven't changed the order of the cards at all. Cut the cards and place the bottom half on the table and the top half on top of that. Moving these halves around makes it look like you have cut the cards and takes a little practice to pull off.

6. Perform your magic trick with your pre-arranged cards.

Tips & Warnings

• You can also do the "Hindu Shuffle" with the deck by splitting the deck in half and placing one half in each hand. Quickly take the cards off the top of the deck in your right hand (held between your thumb and fingers) with the fingers of your left hand and place them in the palm of your left hand, which is lower than the original deck. Keep the cards in your left hand close to the original deck as you do so, which makes it appear that you are shuffling the deck and you haven't changed the order of your pre-arranged cards.