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“Before the show, I set a prediction.”

Okay.

“I turned one card in this deck of cards opposite to the rest.”

I’m sorry, what?!

“I turned one card face down in this de—”

Whaaaaat are you on about?! All these lights, a stage, we’ve all paid to watch this, and your idea of setting a prediction is turning a card face down in a deck? Did your props get lost on the way to the venue? Did you not think to just remove the card? Why put the card back in the deck at all? Is it because you need to do some kind of sleight of hand?

How bizarre.

—

People perform The Invisible Deck in unusual ways. They opt for presentations that not only make no logical sense but also out themselves as someone who doesn’t really care much about their performance.

Y’all ever wonder why it’s called The Invisible Deck?

The original presentation expertly manoeuvres around the necessary outcome for the prediction. You hand the spectator an invisible deck and then take them out of the box, shuffle them up, remove one card, look at it, and place it back in the deck the wrong way around before handing the deck to the magician. Suddenly, the invisible deck becomes visible and, inside, you find, impossibly, the correct reversed card.

All of this original invisible deck presentation is carefully in place to justify the method—and it works. All the fun, disarming procedure puts the audience at ease and, of course, leads to it making sense that there’s a card reversed in the deck. By the time you get to the reveal, you not only expect a card to be reversed, but you want it to be.