What Is the One Ahead Method?

The one ahead method is one of the most important in magic. It's usually learned by people getting into card magic, but it's also widespread in parlour and stage magic.

It's a very versatile method. Most magicians, though, learn it and then forget it over time, thinking it was only useful for their first easy card tricks.

That's not the case.

This method is as fundamental as staples of magic such as the key card, dual reality, and multiple outs. Knowing it will let you always stay one step ahead — for real!

And what better place to learn it than here? At One Ahead, our goal is to give magicians the advice they need to improve their creativity and their skills. We've been doing it for years, for thousands of magicians around the world.

One ahead is one of the oldest methods in magic. The earliest source dates back to 1593, in Horatio Galasso's “Giochi di carte bellissimi di regola e di memoria”.

On Conjuring Credits, we read that the method Galasso explained was known at the time for revealing the cards on top of three small piles.

Seventy years later, the principle appeared in another text, this one from Germany. From the 1700s onward, it spread among magicians as one of the fundamental principles of close-up magic.

On Conjuring Archive, we see that the first English-language entries arrive over the course of the 1800s.

The one ahead principle has the performer secretly one step ahead of the audience in a series of choices made by the audience.

A classic example is the situation where the spectator freely chooses some items from a set, and the performer secretly knows the identity of one of the items that will be chosen.

This lets the performer stay one step ahead of the audience. They can then use that advantage to make a very clean revelation, or to help with other methods involved in the trick.

As we'll see, the one ahead method almost always works in combination with other methods that make its execution possible. For this reason too, we can define it as a principle — one in service of the other methods the performer uses.

Among the methods usually paired with the one ahead principle are forcing and peeking.

In its simplest form, the one ahead principle is learned by magicians in the context of a card trick.

You can find several examples of card tricks for beginners using this very method.

In most of these routines, the spectator selects three cards, one after another, and the performer is able to impossibly reveal the identity of those three cards.

The use of three cards is a recurring element of these routines — as we've seen, going right back to the 1500s.

The secret lies in the fact that one of these three cards is already known to the performer, while the other two choices are free.

Here's an example method for a standard card trick that uses the one ahead principle and a cross-cut force.

The spectator shuffles the deck.

The performer takes the deck back and shows that the cards are all mixed up. As they do, they peek at the card on top. It's the Nine of Hearts.

The spectator lifts half of the deck and removes the card they cut to. The performer touches the back of the card, and - without looking at it - says it's the Nine of Hearts. Then they look at its face, to check that their prediction is correct, and as they do they actually see what card it is. Let's say it's the Four of Spades. They place it on the table face-down.

The spectator cuts to another card. This time, the performer says it's the Four of Spades, then looks at it and remembers the identity of that card. In our example, it's the Jack of Clubs.

For the last cut, the performer does a cross-cut force on the Nine of Hearts that has stayed on top of the deck the whole time. This time, they announce that the card is the Jack of Clubs. Then they place the Nine of Hearts on top of the other two chosen cards.

Now all that's left is to reveal that the three cards match the ones the performer named. To do this, though, the performer needs to reverse their order, so that it matches the order in which the cards were actually selected. This is normally achieved with sleight of hand or misdirection.

This is a fairly basic structure for how a card trick with the one ahead principle works. Instead of the cross-cut force, you can use any force you prefer: we recommend reading our list of the best easy forcing techniques.

Also, instead of explicitly looking at the identity of the cards as part of the effect, you can use any peeking technique to do it secretly.

You can find similar card tricks in many card magic books for beginners. We also recommend studying every part carefully to perform it at your best — starting with how you introduce the deck of cards.

Once you've learned the principle in the context of a card trick, you should explore and go further.

Many magicians associate the principles they learn through their first card tricks with something simple. So they stop using those methods, thinking they can't be used in more advanced ways.

To improve your creativity as a magician, though, we recommend experimenting with this method using other objects and in other contexts.

Magic with everyday objects is excellent: we recommend trying this principle with objects other than playing cards.

You can ask spectators to write words on slips of paper and reveal those. In this case, you can force the final word using pre-show.

You can use the objects on the table and rely on an equivoque force to guide the final choice.

You can use a packet of M&Ms and reveal the colours chosen at random by the spectators. (In that case, you might find it useful to pair one ahead with the low-odds convincers method, for an even stronger effect.)

We also recommend not being bound to the three-object rule. You can use only two, or even more. Ideally, you can even let them choose more items until they choose the one that matches your starting item, to then rearrange their order for the revelation.

A piece of advice we always give is to explore how to make your magic fit any room size.

With the one ahead principle, you don't have to limit yourself to close-up.

Using this method in stage and parlour settings will open the doors to more props and more presentations.

Not only that: more space also gives you more freedom with your methods.

In close-up, the audience stares at your hands when, at the end of the effect, you have to reverse the order of the three cards to reveal. On a stage, you can create very favourable conditions to easily reverse the order of the objects.

The same goes for peeking and for forces. Stage magic also opens up the possibility of using advanced methods like pre-show and dual reality.

At One Ahead, you’ll find a detailed explanation of a trick for parlour or stage settings involving the one ahead principle.

Despite its simplicity, the one ahead principle remains one of the most devastating in magic.

As we've seen, the first way to use it is to combine it with other methods, so you can exploit the fact that the performer is one step ahead of the audience in more ruthless ways.

This principle works even better when the performer doesn't set themselves up as a challenge. It's a temptation many magicians have, especially in this kind of routine based on mentalism-style revelations.

Instead, we recommend exploring the ways you can present your magic as if it were a game with the audience. The best magicians play with their audiences all the time, and it works really well.

If one of the three revelations is wrong — or slightly wrong, in a way that suggests the performer needed a few tries to reach a perfect revelation — the effect will feel more real.

We recommend building some mistakes into your revelations, and avoiding the most common mistake magicians make with predictions: the urge to pack as many revelations as possible into a single effect.

Finally, you should dig into all the elements of psychology that make this method even more invisible and fooling: how to create false memories, how to stay present during any performance, how to engage all of the spectator's senses and, finally, how to use emotional misdirection. You'll discover gold.

Two more aspects to consider.

The first is the use of a pseudo-method. Too few magicians use pseudo-methods to their fullest.

A pseudo-method is a false method towards which the performer directs the audience's attention, to draw it away from the real method.

It's a fundamental element to use in any effect, and one that top names in magic always rely on. We've created a guide that lets you learn everything about pseudo-methods.

The second piece of advice might upset some magicians. For some, it's even a taboo…

We recommend trying a confederate.

If a confederate in the audience names or chooses the item you want to force among the three choices of the one ahead method, you'll have an incredible effect for the rest of the audience.

If you think that real magicians should never use confederates, maybe you should read the deep dive on stooges written by Rory Adams, founder of One Ahead, on this topic. It's taken from his book, Magic for the Rest of Us, and it might change the way you think about confederates in magic.