Card tricks

Step 1: You will need·         A deck of cards·         Some ladsStep 2: The card trick

If you're as magical as David Zanthor, you'll have a crowd around you. If not, you'll need to find two people for this card trick. Tell them both to pick a card from the deck. Tell them to look at it and show it to their mate and the camera. They may find this confusing. But persevere. It'll be worth it, that's a David Zanthor promise. Tell the lads to dump the cards on the top of the deck, and now perform some flashy shuffles. Now the cards have been shuffled and slammed into the middle of next week, it's time to perform some M.A.G.I.C. illusions! With razor-like fingers, cut the deck in half and give one half to a lad. Take half of the other half (that's a quarter of the whole deck for any maths fans out there) - and fan it out, face up. Now smoosh the face up cards into the other quarter deck thus mixing face up and face down cards. Hand this mess of cards to a lad and take the other half of the deck, again, fan out half of this deck and smoosh it face up into the other cards. Take the mess back off the other lad, and bang all the cards together, truly mucking them up. With the cards all mixed together, cut and turn the deck, and ask a lad to tap the deck with his young fingers. This is when the magic happens. Now go through the deck to reveal that not only are all the cards magically returned to order but that the two cards they chose stand alone face-up in the deck.Step 3: How it's done

Other magicians have exiled David from the magic circle and various internet forums for exposing his tricks but that's not going to stop him from revealing all, to you, our Videojug audience. Just remember to thank him, if you ever meet him. You'll know it's him because he only has one suit. Once you've found some lads, tell them to pick a card each. You do not need to know what these cards are for this card trick to work.  Tell the lads to put their chosen cards on top of the deck. We are going to use two blue cards here so you can follow them through the card trick. Now you make what magicians call false cuts. These are used to confuse the lads with movement, making them think the deck is being shuffled without actually changing the order of the cards. Here's how it's done. As you can see no cards change position at all, but when performed at speed, it appears as though they are mixed. Now peel off the top two cards with your thumb as you begin to shuffle and keep them at the bottom of the deck while misdirecting the lads with a question like "can you remember your cards?". Flip the bottom two cards upside down, so they are now face up. When you break the deck, surreptitiously pull off one card from the bottom, so that you are left with two half decks both with one chosen card face up on the bottom. Now you give one half to a lad to hold. Cut your deck in half and when you fan the cards flip the other deck over so that the bottom card is now the top card. When you smooch the cards together you are only mixing face-up cards except for the chosen card. Now all the cards are face up except the chosen card. But the audience doesn't know this, and that is the crucial deception. Do the same with the other deck. And mix both decks together, all the cards are face up except the two chosen cards, cut and turn the deck. Now go through the deck and reveal to the audience what you already know - all the cards are face down except for the two chosen cards. Asking someone to tap the deck implies that the magic happens at that moment, but we know it happened a long time ago. And there's how to do a gerat card trick.