Free Magic Trick: “Two Card Transposition”

July 22, 2008 · Filed Under tricks 

Readers of the olde blogge might recognize that I’ve written this one up before. As I think it’s still a good trick and it fits the mandate for the series, I’m bringing it back, but with a few extra thoughts. As before, all roman numerals represent sections in the Royal Road to Card Magic, so (for example) II.1 would be the riffle shuffle, maintaining a card at the top.

2 Card Transposition: a trick to practice the VII (from the Royal Road to Card Magic)

Introduction: Here’s a fun Two Card Transposition. I’ve not seen it in print but I can only assume that somebody else came up with it first, since the handling is so ridiculously bare-bones. If somebody can confirm a previous source I’ll be sure to credit it appropriately, but honestly, I believe this belongs with Rapid Transit and Do As I Do in the realm of tricks that shouldn’t belong to anybody at this point, simply because all the knowledge needed to accomplish this trick is already in the public domain anyway.

The deck can be a borrowed one (you can use that to point out the lack of duplicates) and it’s a great way to practice using a VII, because of the massive built-in misdirection. If VII’s are intimidating to you, this sort of trick should help you attain some of the necessary confidence, as the conditions are pretty much ideal.

Effect: The spectator shuffles the deck, and hands it to the magician. The top card is looked at. It’s the King of Spades. The magician takes the King of Spades and places it in his pocket. The next card is looked at. It’s the Five of Diamonds. That card is given to the spectator to hold. The magician snaps his fingers, and tells the spectator to look at their card, and it’s now the King of Spades. The magician reaches into his pocket, and pulls out the Five of Diamonds.

Explanation: Two XIs and then a VII. That’s pretty much it. In more detail…

The performer hands the deck out for shuffling, before taking it back. The performer does a XI to show the top[?] card, and makes sure the identity of the card is burned into the audience’s memory. We’ll assume it’s the 4 of Clubs. He turns it face-down, saying, “Now this is my card. I hope you remember it, because that’s the last we’re going to see of the 4 of Clubs until the magic is done.” He takes the top face-down card openly off the deck and places it into his right pocket.

The performer then performs another XI to show the top[?] card, and makes sure the identity of the card is burned into the audience’s memory. We’ll assume it’s the Jack of Diamonds. He turns it face-down saying, “Again, I hope you remember this, because that’s the last we’re going to see of the Jack of Diamonds until the magic is done.” He has the spectator hold out one hand palm-up, the top card is placed on the palm, and then the performer instructs the spectator to place their other hand on top of the card and keep them securely together.

The performer says, “Now, all that’s needed is a bit of magic…” The performer snaps his fingers (or whatever magic-moment ritual is preferred), before saying, “Do us a favour and show everybody the card in your hand.” The spectator opens their hands and looks at the card, it’s the 4 of Clubs, the performer’s card that was just seen going into the pocket. The magician takes advantage of this revelation to act as misdirection to perform a VII, before reaching into his pocket and producing the Jack of Diamonds.

That’s pretty much it from a handling standpoint, but there’s a lot to examine here.

Notes: Revelations are GREAT misdirection, and so long as you didn’t louse up your XI, the misdirection is strong. The use of a revelation as misdirectional cover from another sleight is nothing new — it goes at least as far back as the Cups and Balls, and probably further. The attention-grabbing nature of having the spectator’s card change in their hands is great cover for performing the VII — you’ll need to do it quickly, and while you won’t get away with flashing the card itself, you should be able to cover the usual VII tells in that moment. For me, personally, it was the possibility of the audience seeing the tells that scared me when doing the VII, and that fear is the sort of thing that sticks around even when you know you aren’t actually flashing the item. Misdirection works most effectively when the audience has something of interest to look towards — they are far less likely to feel that they’ve been hoodwinked into looking where they shouldn’t. A card change such as this one accomplishes this nicely. You might want to hold off on this routine until you’ve identified a spectator whom you know is going to be expressive and eye-catching. I can’t imagine any better misdirection than a really attractive woman giving out a yell of surprise when she turns over her card and shows it to everybody with a look of shock on her face. If you can’t VII a card in that situation, you’re never going to be able to VII.

But let’s assume your hands are being burned when they shouldn’t be. Go back to the presentation and find the spot just after you’ve placed a card in your pocket. At this point, you could go into a full deck false shuffle of some kind so as not to disturb the order of the cards. RRTCM describes plenty of simple methods for the overhand shuffle. Why do this? Two reasons: First, it’s always nice for the spectator to believe that randomness is a part of the equation. Shuffles help. Second, and more importantly, is the benefits of conditioning. Right after the fingers are snapped and the magic has happened, you can use the XVI as cover for the VII. Again, this is not new. Many resources on the topic show how to enter a VII under cover of beginning a XVI, which adds a little bit of extra concealment of the sleight just in case the misdirection doesn’t work.

Here’s the basic idea. Your right hand is holding the deck from above (as if it had earlier lifted the deck from the left hand’s dealing grip). Your left hand comes over, you perform the VII, and then immediately the left hand takes the deck, rotates it to the left (counter-clockwise) and the right hand regrips it with the right thumb and forefingers along the long edges. At this point, begin to casually XVI, taking packets with the left hand, before finally taking the rest of the deck, and letting the right forearm drop and the right wrist drop a little as you relax. At this point, go to the right pocket and produce the card.

There are those who might say this is not the best VIIing technique out there. They’re probably right. If you’re in a situation where you’re being burned really closely, then you’ll want something with a better steal. I do not advise people to end their education with the VII based on this trick, unless you never plan on doing another trick using a VII, and even then I’d try to explore better, more invisible methods than the one described. So many people have good work on this subject — John Carney, Michael Close, etc.

For what it’s worth, though, the routine construction here helps. For the initial revelation, all eyes are on the card in the spectator’s hand. That’s where the initial hit of magic happens. What’s more, they know there’s a card in your pocket that you have to produce, so that’s already motivation for going to get it. It’s different from those situations where your hand has to retreat from the deck for no apparent reason (and some great effects involving the VII require that).

Incidentally, I have a thought on producing the card from the pocket as well. People like the idea of having the VIIed card be produced at the fingertips. I think that’s cool, but to add to it — another idea that I’ve not seen bandied about (surely it must be out there) is to actually have the card come out at the fingertips and rotated 90 degrees. I think it’s another nice throw-off to the VII, since by all appearances you shouldn’t be able to VII with the card in that orientation (one can, but that’s a technique for another time). If you do decide to use that method, then make sure you place the initial card in your pocket in that orientation as well. Also, don’t make a big deal out of retrieving the card. Just go to the pocket and pull it out. Again, they already know that a card is in there.

The ironic thing about an effect like this is that, despite being crafted for the VII, it actually needs much better technique for the XI since (a) you need to do it twice, and (b) you’re not misdirecting away from the deck at that point. So be sure you’ve polished your XI. If you can’t do an XI very well, then you’ll need to look into some other form of switching.

Also, this trick does not really solve the standard XI problem of having the card turned face down before taking it from the deck. It tries to deal with it through a variation of “calling the card face down” (read Whit Haydn’s essay), to gain agreement that the card you’re pointing to is the one they just saw. Notice the patter line immediately after turning the card face down, both times. Still, it’s a tell for those who know about the XI, so don’t do this trick for them unless you’re supremely confident in your XI.

Now, technically, you can do this with signed cards. If you have a borrowed deck that might seem like a moot point, but one advantage of this is that you’re not handicapped by FASDIU-dictated randomness — ie: having two entirely dissimilar cards swap places makes for a clearer effect than two overly similar cards, and signatures can help with that differentiation. I probably wouldn’t do it myself though, even if I was using my own cards. In the unfortunate situation whereby FASDIU randomness had made my card a Six of Hearts and the spectator’s card a Six of Diamonds, I’d probably go out of my way to stress the suits. If you were going to use two signed cards, you’d need to do a little bit of addi