3 In a Row


The effect of the trick: The magician is able to discover a card chosen at random purely by card counting.

Before you begin the trick:

Take twelve cards from the pack, making sure you don't have four of the same value then arrange them into three piles of four cards. Make sure there are not two cards of the same kind in any one pile. Also, each pile needs to be put into numerical order with the lowest card is on top.

Method:
The magician asks a
volunteer to select one of the 3 piles which he then fans in order that the volunteer can then select a card. They are not to reveal the identity of the card to the magician, but to remember also a number from 1-4, depending on the position of the card in its pile ie. 1 would be top card, 4 the bottom card. The magician then puts the piles on top of each other, with the selected pile on top and proceeds to deal the cards, from left to right, into three piles of 4 each. When done, he puts the pile on the left side on top of the middle pile, and then those on top of the pile on the right.

After dealing and stacking the cards three times in this manner, the magician reverses the order of the cards by dealing them into a single pile then he asks the spectator for the 1-4 position of their selected card and deals down to that number off the top of the pile and reveals the chosen card!



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