Explanation of the Four Ace Magic Card Trick

Video Transcript

" Hi everybody! Malik the Magic Guy for expertvillage.com. Now let’s learn the classic four ace assembly I just showed you. Now this is going to use peeling off and adding on, so if you haven’t watched that section of the video, you should do that. Now you want to start with three cards on top of the deck—held separated with the break just like I showed you, holding between the flesh here of the hand and the end of your fingers—and we’re going to have our four aces here. Now if you practice, you’ll find ways to get into this position after you’ve taken the four aces out of the deck, and some of the books I’m going to recommend later on, there’s other ways to do that. So we’re going to take the four aces, we’re going to put them on top of the deck, and then we’re going to pick up all 7 cards just like this, the four aces with three cards underneath. We’re going to hold those right about here, and we’re going to peel off the first one of these the hearts, the second one ace of spades, the third one the ace of diamonds and the ace of clubs, and the other 3 cards we’re just going to put on top of the deck. Now we’re going to flip the ace of clubs face down, and they think the next 3 cards are aces, but they’re not because of the 3 that we added on, so we’re going to put those down. Now they think these are aces; the 3 aces are actually here. Now we’re going to put the 3 cards on top of each ace—that’s what we’re saying, even though that’s not what we’re doing—we put the 3 cards on each pile, just like this, and what I like to do is go back and flip this card over the ace of clubs, just to kind of mark that pile so that they know. The rest of the deck we can put aside now, with any sort of magical flare or presentation that you want: you can snap your fingers, you can give the cards a shake, you can do a little magic dance if you want, you can make the first ace disappear. The second one will disappear the same way. They’re actually already gone; we’re just snapping our fingers or doing whatever we like. The aces are gone—make those into one pile—and then we can show, and it’s better if you show one at a time; the other three aces have assembled together just like that. That’s the classic four ace assembly."