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Magicians obsess over this trick.

Laypeople… not so much.

But it remains a splendid trick and, if performed well, it kills. So, let’s imagine you have a group of friends and you are all in someone’s living room—perhaps at a game night.

A card is selected randomly from a borrowed deck.

The magician does not see the card.

Then a random number is freely named: 17.

The magician asks for a second deck of cards, and the host retrieves another deck for the trick.

They count down the cards onto the table.

Every card is different.

They pause before number 17.

“For the first time, what card did you choose?”

“The eight of clubs.”

They turn over the next card.

The 17th card is the eight of clubs.

Your friends love you forever and ever.

—

Look, it turns out that there are only 52 outs for ACAAN, including every number and card combination. If you use the same stack (order) of playing cards, you can shift the bottom card to the top each time to create 52 decks of cards.

This means if the eight of clubs is in position 1 in deck A, then it will be in position 2 in deck B.