A Quaint Happening

Effect: Two decks in their boxes on the table. Spectator choses one, shuffles it and cuts the deck. He names the value of the card he cut to. You take the remaining deck, take it out of its box, count down from the top of the deck the amount of cards equal to the value they told you, and you find that at that number is the exact same card as the one they cut to!

Setup: (deck 1)Take a deck and take out all the hearts and clubs. Shuffle those two suits together so they're in no particular order. Here's how you re-stack the deck. From the back to the face: 6 indifferent cards, 13 hearts and clubs, 13 indifferent cards, the remaining 13 hearts and clubs, the remaining 7 indifferent cards. Put that deck in its box.

(deck 2)Take another deck and take out all the hearts and clubs. Keep them seperate from each other. Stack the two suits so they each run from ace to king, ace being at the back and king being at the face. Take the remaining of the deck, cut it approximately in half and turn one half over so they are now face to face. Place the clubs face down on one side and place the hearts face down on the other side. You can now deal from either side of the deck and be dealing through either hearts or clubs, in order from ace to king. When you reach the king, the next cards are still face down for several cards. Put this deck in its box. Make sure you know which suit is on which side.

Make sure you know which deck is which. If you want you can use a red deck and a blue deck.

Method: Ask them to pick up one of the decks. If they pick up deck 1, have them take out the cards and proceed with the trick. If they pick deck 2, have them hand it to you, you take out the cards and hand them the cards.

They now hold deck 1. Have them cut it in half and riffle shuffle them together. What they have just done is put all the hearts and clubs in the center of the deck in a big chunk. Have them cut somewhere in the middle of the deck and to show which card they cut to. It will be a heart or a club. Let's say it is the 6 of clubs.

You pick up the remaining deck and take the deck out of its box so clubs is on top. That means that if you inserted the deck with the clubs against the half moon cut out, open the box and take it out so that side is up most. You don't want to take out the deck with the wrong side up and have to turn the deck over only to show backs on the other side too. Also make sure not to spread the cards on the bottom of the deck because they are face up. Cleanly deal down the amount of cards equal to the value of their card, in this case 6. The sixth card will be the 6C. If they had cut to the 6H, you would have taken the deck out the other side up and the 6th card would have been the 6H.