The Changing Card

Here is a feat so simple that you will not realize how much laughter it can evoke until you use it. Because the best way to learn a sleight is to do it, we urge you to perform this fine trick as often as you can.

1. Go to someone on your left and have him choose a card, show it to everyone (this is important if all are to enjoy the trick), and replace it in the pack. Control the card to the top by means of the Hindu shuffle .

2. Turn and walk to someone on your right. Spread the cards in a wide fan, saying, "Sir, I shall ask you to point to a card, and I promise you that whatever card you point to will be the card chosen by the gentleman across the room. Kindly make a careful choice."

3. When a card has been indicated, do not let the spectator draw it from the fan of cards, but remove it yourself, making sure that its face cannot be seen.

4. Return to the centre of the platform, holding the card in your right hand well away from the body, its back to the audience. Turn to the first spectator, saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, here is the card!"

Turn the card to show its face and glance from right to left, bowing a little as if to acknowledge applause but at the same time turning the card into a horizontal position on a level with the pack in the left hand.

5. Next turn to the spectator on your left; as you do so, bring the right hand to the left so that it overtakes the left hand, and make the top change . Immediately the change is made, hold the right hand motionless, with its card slanting downwards so that its face cannot be seen. Move the left hand, with the pack, on to the left in a gesture

toward the first spectator. "This is your card, sir?"

6. Someone (and usually several persons) will tell you that it is not. Turn to the right again, moving the right hand and the card away from the body with its back to the audience. Look at the card, then glance back at the spectator on your left. Now, for the first time, ask him the name of his card. He says, "The seven of diamonds" or whatever his card was. "Well, this is the seven of diamonds, isn't it?" you say, turning the card face outwards as you mention the name of the card.

Hold the card in this manner for about five seconds, and do not move until the laughter has subsided.

When you have performed this trick as we have described it you will understand the psychology of the top change better. You must not snatch the card in making the change–you do not need to make it with great speed. We have tried to emphasize that naturalness is the keynote of good conjuring, and this is especially true of the top change.

At first it may seem to you that everyone must see the exchange of cards, but a century of experience on the part of card conjurers is that, smoothly and easily performed, the exchange goes wholly unnoticed.