Transcript
My name is Ben Nemzer and I’m a magician. One of my specialties is Close-Up magic which is magic with ordinary objects. Decks of card, ropes, rubber bands. And, I do that all over New York City.
I’m going to teach you some of the basics of magic that you guys can start performing right away.
This is the Four Ace Card Trick. You start off with four aces and you place them in four different spots. Then you take three cards and you place them on top of each ace.
Then this entire pile goes onto this pile, which goes onto this pile, which goes onto this pile.
Now, if we examine the order of the cards you’ll see that it’s one, two, three random cards. And, then an ace. One, two, three, ace. Once, two, three, ace. One, two, three and an ace.
So, have a look. One, two, three, ace. Which card is that? Now, I haven’t done anything yet. It’s an ace. One, two, three, ace. One, two, three, ace. One, two, three and ace.
We’ll get rid of these piles because we don’t need them. And, we’re just going to focus on the ace pile and this pile of random cards. Have a look. Now, these cards, rather random cards. And those are the aces.
Now for the explanation. Here’s how it works. This trick is great because there’s no setup you need to do before the trick starts. You can literally take out the four aces and begin.
So, you take out the four aces and then, you put three cards on top of each pile. You can even have your assistant or your spectator place three cards on top of each pile.
Then, just like you see, you take this entire pile. Goes on top of that entire pile. Which goes on top of this entire pile. Which goes on top of this entire pile.
Now, I haven’t done anything yet. But, this part is very important. You show the order of the cards. Which should be one, two, three random cards and then an ace. Then you get into this rhythm and people are going to remember it.
One, two, three, ace. One, two, three, ace. One, two, three, ace. Then you place the cards on the table in the same way you just counted them. One, two, three, ace.
Now, here’s the secret move. Watch carefully. You take the top card and you use it almost as a pointer. And you say, “Which card is this?” And when you bring this card back to the deck, instead of placing it on top where you took it from, you bring it back onto the bottom.
And, it’s not a tricky move. It’s not a move that you need to worry about people seeing. It’s all about your attitude. And, as long as you’re casual, nobody’s going to be noticing that you’re saying, “Which card is this?” And putting the card back on the bottom.
Because all the attention is then drawn to that card. Which is, actually in fact, an ace. Now, because you put this random card onto the bottom, it displaces all the cards just by one.
So, right now, we still have the ace here and three random cards. Then you continue the pattern. One, two, three.
Now, because of the move we did earlier, this is actually an ace. But they don’t know it. Ace. Which is not actually an ace, but they think it is.
One, two, three, ace. One, two, three, ace. And then, you say you’re going to get rid of these two piles because you don’t need them. Which is also the truth.
So now, we’re left with these two piles. Now, the audience thinks that we have an entire pile of aces here. An entire pile of random cards. But, because what we did earlier, these are actually three random cards and this ones the ace.
And, over here, we have one random card and the three aces. You take a card from the ace pile and a card from the random card pile, and you switch them.
And, this is where the magic moment happens. All the dirty work is done. So, you get to have some fun. You pretend like you’re moving the cards. You do something magical, which actually does nothing.
And, then you show that these have turned into three random cards. And these have turned into four aces.
And that’s how you do the Four Ace Trick.
