A "Hands-Off" Stage Magic Trick

I’ve become quite interested in coming up with hands-off, almost self-working, magic and mentalism effects. It began by solving the problem of knowing what someone has drawn without any peeking or impressions.

Since then, it’s been hard not to look at any magic effect without wondering if there’s an easier, hands-off method available.

The Trick

The performer takes a deck of playing cards, and, after showing the cards are all different, they wrap a rubber band around them and toss them into the audience.

Six different people in different parts of the audience stand and open the pack at a random positions and make a mental note of the card they see.

The six people stay standing.

Okay, so far, nothing groundbreaking for magicians.

A final spectator gets selected from the audience — someone confident at shuffling cards. This “hero” spectator brings the deck back up onto the stage.

The performer clears some space, removes the rubber band from deck of cards and asks the hero spectator to hold the deck of cards behind their back.

The hero spectator is asked to mix the cards behind their back.

The performer holds a mic close enough to hear the cards getting mixed.

Then, the hero spectator is asked to continue mixing the cards, but flip some of the cards in such a way that some end up face up and others end up face down.

Finally, the cards are taken back out into full view.

This is where things get interesting.

The cards are spread through by the spectator or the performer, and the hero spectator is instructed to count the number of face up cards.

There are only six face up cards in the deck.

But wait, there are six spectators standing up in the audience…

The magician calls out the values of all six face up cards, verified by the spectator on stage (and a camera, too, if there is one).

The spectators in the audience are asked to take a seat if their card was one of the face up cards…

All six spectators take their seat.

The Method

There are really three central plot directions to magic. Either you, the performer, is doing the magic, and the direction flows from you to the audience. Or, the audience is responsible for the magic. The third option, coincidence.

This presentation can fall into either of the last two options. Present it as a coincidence effect, or as though the hero spectator is given magical powers. Coincidence or intuition will likely need to be your pseudo-methods here, as the cards are shuffled behind their backs (they don’t have to be).

The first part of the method — the way that you know which cards the six spectators in the audience choose — is the easy part. This is the “tossed-out deck” effect and there are plenty of marketed reliable methods.

Usually, the magician reads the minds of the spectators and simply recalls out loud the identities of the random chosen cards. The change here is that it is a hero spectator revealing the cards’ identities.

What is nice about this variation is that both ends of the effect feel equally as random and process driven. I often find the bizarreness of a selection process can be balanced out by an equally bizarre reveal process. If it takes several steps to force a choice upon the spectator, then perhaps your reveal should have the same number of steps, too.

Okay then — how does the hero spectator only turn over the correct six cards. First, it’s important you find someone who is comfortable shuffling — not because they need to do a fancy shuffle, but because you don’t want to deal with the mess of someone dropping the cards.

I like that they mix the cards behind their back, but this is not necessary. If you begin the process by flipping half the deck upside down and shuffling them together, even with a simple overhand, then you can do the shuffling process in open view.