The Card That Isn't There
Six cards. Memorise one of them, keep it to yourself, and I'll take it out of the deck.
Six cards, all of them face up. Choose one and fix it in your mind. Say it to yourself twice — people forget their own card more often than you'd think, and then blame me.
I won't ask you which one it is. I don't need to. When you're ready, I'll take your card out and show you the five that are left.
If you went back and checked, you've already got it, and I'd rather you had it than felt cheated. The five cards in front of you are not five of the six you started with. They never were.
That's a small piece of a much larger idea: people remember the one thing they were asked to remember and let everything else blur. I build most of my close-up work on it. It plays much better in a room than it does on a screen.
How it works
All six cards are replaced. The second set shares nothing with the first, so whichever card you memorised is missing — and so are the other five, but you were never watching those. The cards are usually similar enough in value and suit that a quick glance reads as 'same cards, one short'. Your attention did the hard part. Deal it to a friend and watch where their eyes go.
- Props
- Six cards on screen, nothing to hold
- Difficulty
- Easy to learn
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Close-up magic, mentalism and stage shows for corporate events, parties, churches and theatres.
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Based in Milwaukee · performing across Wisconsin · travelling nationwide