Variations on the 21 Magic Card Trick

Video Transcript

" Hi! I’m Malik the magic guy for expertvillage.com. Now I am going to teach you some variations, some different ways to present the 21 card trick. The first one I want to teach you is a different way to present the ending. So we are in the position where they have seen their card 3 times. We know that it is the 11th card down from the top. We are still going to use the 7 of Spades and one of the ways I like to do this is I’m counting 1, 2, 3, 4. I’m going to put 1 aside, that’s 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. I’m going to put their card aside, so basically I am going to look like I’m kind of deciding and I’m going to narrow it down to 3 cards. I’m going to use a basic version of something called the magician’s choice and I am going to make them pick their own card. So Mr. Hand, what I want you to do is point to 2 of these cards. Now I want this to be one of the ones that he is going to end up with, so I am going to pull this one away and push one towards me. Excellent and that leaves you, I am going to take this one away; that leaves you with this one. Now let’s say he had done it a little differently. Mr. Hand point to the 2 end cards. Okay, now we are going to take these away leaving it with this one. We don’t tell him ahead of time whether or not we are going to eliminate. So if he picks these 2, I take this one away and I say push one towards me and he pushes this one, then I am taking this one away. So that is a basic version of the magician’s choice and you can end of having them select their own card. If you like, when I first learned this trick out of a magic book as a kid, it used some magic words simsalabin from the famous magician, Dante and that is because it is spelled with ten letters; simsalabin. So if you are a magic word type of person which is your decision to make, you can say okay we’ll say some magic words simsalabin or anything else that is spelled with 10 letters, there’s your card. That’s some other ideas on how to present the 21 card trick. "