6's and 9's

by Jake Keratianos
(Australia)

THE EFFECT: The deck is dealt into four piles, the spectator picks a pile then picks a card from that pile. Putting the card back in, the deck is then shuffled. You deal out four cards onto the table showing the spectator and asking if it is their card, each time it is not. Finally you flip up the cards on the table to find that one of those cards has magically changed into the spectators card!


THE SECRET: This is a great trick, it's so easy to do and leaves people baffled. The reason this trick is called 6's and 9's is actually the secret, so you don't want to tell the spectator the name!


Before you start get all the 6's and 9's from the deck and place the 9's on top and the 6's at the bottom. Deal the deck out into four piles as though you were dealing out a hand in cards, but make sure that the bottom and top cards stay the same don't get them mixed up!


After the cards are dealt allow the spectator to pick a deck. Then fan out the cards face down so neither of you can see them and ask the spectator to pick a card and memorize it. (Hopefully the spectator will not choose the top or bottom card but that isn't usually a problem).


Now ask them to put the card on top of their pile and place the four piles on top of each other in any order they want. Turn the deck face up and fan through the cards so that the spectator see's that their card is still there and you see their card as well. Throughout the deck the 6's and 9's will be together except in one case in which they will be separated by one card that is the spectators card as seen in the picture above.


You can end the trick there if you want or you can finish it the way I was taught. Go through the deck (find any reason to do this but don't make it too suspicious) and secretly put their card 3rd from the top. Hold the deck face up, on end so your hand grips round the bottom face. Your spectator should be able to see the face of the bottom card but the cards have to be a few cm up so the audience can't see the very bottom of the deck.


Slide the top card up half way so the spectator can see the card, ask if it is their card, it will not be so push the card down back to where it started and deal it out normally face down. Do the same for the second card. When you get to their card (the third one down) do it a little differently. This time slide their card down a little bit (so the spectator doesn't see it) and lift up the second card for the spectator to see, that's obviously not their card, now slide the second card back down and the top card back up and casually deal it out like the other two (put it on the right of the other two).


Now fan out the deck in your hand (face down) and tell the spectator to pick a card. When they pick a card and it's not their card put it face up on the table (on the left of the other three) and say "If this isn't your card (point to the face up card) this isn't your card (flip up the card second from the left) and this isn't your card (flip over the third card) then what is this card doing here? (flip over the last card which will be their card!)


TIP: This is a great trick to do after a couple of tricks have already been done. It's not a very good opener as it takes a bit of time to deal out all of the cards.