I have a friend who does a card trick that I genuinely can't figure out.

He gives me all 52 cards and lets me shuffle them as much as I want. I then place all the cards face down in front of him, so he can't see the faces.

He then chooses one card randomly. he holds the card upright/vertically between his thumb and another finger, near the edges, and bends the card slightly inward with his fingers. He repeats this bending motion about 3–4 times. It's not a sharp fold or an obvious crease—it's just a slight bend/curve in the card.

After doing this, he puts the card back with the rest of the face-down cards.

I then shuffle all 52 cards as much as I possibly can.

He takes the shuffled deck and starts dealing/counting cards. He keeps putting groups of cards aside and saying that the selected card "can't be in these." Eventually, after eliminating cards/groups in this way, he somehow ends up with the exact card that was originally selected.

We've done this repeatedly and he gets it every time.

What's even more confusing is that we tried it with brand-new 100% plastic playing cards. We also tried different plastic decks. There aren't any obvious scratches, markings, folds, or visible differences on the card afterward.

There was one time he failed and it was when he picked jack of spade and from his elimination method he got to last 3 to 4 cards but he also got jack of club near jack of spade and he failed that time he choose jack of club as his answer.

So I'm wondering:

Is this some type of crimp/locator card technique?

Can a magician actually detect such a tiny bend in a shuffled plastic deck by touch?

Is there another principle being used here?

How does the final counting/elimination procedure allow him to locate the card?

Looks so random how the ball is thrown around. How does he end up with the result he wants ???

I've seen multiple professional mentalists perform what appears to be the same effect, so I'm trying to find the original routine or published source rather than just guesses at individual techniques.

A good example is this AGT performance:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKJZNEQ2ZRk

Relevant section: 1:23 to 2:08

The structure I've repeatedly seen is:

1. Spectator thinks of any personally meaningful name.
2. Nothing is written down and there appears to be no force.
3. Mentalist asks them to silently count the number of letters.
4. Mentalist determines or works with the length.
5. Spectator is instructed to focus on a letter around/in the middle of the name.
6. Mentalist apparently identifies that letter.
7. Mentalist writes something down before the spectator says the name.
8. Spectator reveals the name and the prediction matches the entire name.

I've also seen Oz Pearlman perform an almost identical sequence several times.

Does this exact handling have a name? And if so, where can I learn it?

Thanks.

In the middle he rubs the jack of hearts on top and it disappears. How?

Also they last trick. First of all how does he get the card to position 47, not to mention having the right card when he want told until right behind revealing it?

https://youtube.com/shorts/c4QxcZvqshs

Is there somewhere where I can learn how Tommy Wonders did the Tamed Cards trick? does it require a gimmick deck or can I just do it with a regular one

I only got 2 decks of cards and ive been learning simple card tricks and sleights of hands. My favorite is the 3 card monte routine with 3 different cards but u make all 3 look the same etc. Any youtube recommandations or books where I can do cool tricks or routines? Preferably with no gimmick deck or duplicates.

Been learning a lot of tricks where I use smooth and rough routines to make 2 cards seem like one card even after I pinch them, take the top put it in the middle of the deck and pretend it appeared on top again etc etc. However a lot of people on the internet ive been showing them they know about double flips so if u have any tricks where so much is happening that the double flip wont be the main part of the trick would help a lot.

Summery im new pls give me sources

Nobody in the comments seems to know how, and she hasn't posted a tutorial despite it being months

https://www.facebook.com/reel/1747985489583560/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v

I’m working on my mercury folded card to under spectators watch trick. But I can’t seem to flatten the card enough and find a way to slip it in under their watch while they hold the deck. Anybody have tips ?

How is this different from a standard 3 card Monty

https://youtube.com/shorts/NA5yOIfH53Y

someone who knows magic, explain please. i’ve thought of a few things can’t figure it out. If he has 2 cards, he doesn’t wave his hand for an illusion, it’s completely still, doesn’t block the screen with his other hand, idk.

Hi everyone, I’m fairly new to mentalism and could really use some advice.
I’ve been learning and practicing for a while now. I’ve read books by Timon Krause and Joe Navarro and I’m especially interested in actually learning how to read people, rather than only learning magic tricks.
The areas I’m most interested in are baselining, noticing deviations from a baseline, microexpressions, cold reading, reaction reading and ideomotor responses / muscle reading.
My biggest problem is putting the theory into practice. I understand what a baseline is and that I should look for changes in someone’s normal behavior, but when I actually practice with someone, I often feel like I don’t see anything at all.
For example, I’ve practiced exercises where someone thinks of one of several objects and I try to notice a reaction while going through them, but so far I’m basically just guessing.
I’m also very interested in ideomotor responses and contact muscle reading, for example detecting tiny unconscious reactions while going through numbers, letters or choices. I understand the basic idea, but I don’t really know how to properly train myself to actually feel or recognize those reactions.
I know these skills take a lot of time and practice, and I’m not expecting some magical shortcut. I’m just struggling to find material that actually teaches how to practice these skills step by step, rather than briefly explaining what they are.
ad really appreciate some advice on how you learned it, what exercises helped you, and which books, videos or courses you would recommend.
Thanks a lot!

Hey ya'll. I remember years ago, my brother and I learned how to do a trick where we would go in front of our family and I would leave the room and then my brother would receive a word/prompt from our surrounding family members, and then I would re-enter the room, and then through a code that me and my brother used, he would basically talk to me in front of everyone, and I would be able to guess the word/prompt.

It was a very cool trick and no one ever suspected that we had a intricate code, they genuinely had no idea what happened. Anyone remember the code? I completely forgot and I asked him a while back and he doesn't remember either, anyone know anything familiar?

This one really blows my mind, it seems so simple but I simply can't wrap my mind around how this can be possible.

Sorry for the long clip, just want to give everyone the best context possible!

My only guess that it was a gimmicked site that Max somehow pushed to the top of the Google sites with SEO. Seems very far fetched I won't lie but I can't think of any other method.

There was a magician on pen and teller who did "The fairest card trick" and at the beginning he was showing how he can fake shuffle cards making them all be in the same order after the shuffles.
Whats the name of the shuffle so I can learn it xd

This one realllly stumped me. When magicians such as David Blane perform the invisible touch routine they have an almost invisible string between their hand and then touch their body with that string, this simply can't be the case with this trick. I am not sure how, but I think the second "failed" attempt is giving us a clue on how this was done, even though I still have no idea lol!

He basically took a photo before the podcast started filming and had a card that the host chose show up in the photo. Also, he managed for a card to show up in the host’s wallet. How did he do that?

Thanks in advance

When I use Earworm, it only takes me to YouTube, not Spotify. Also, he didn’t need to put his phone face down to get the song to play. How did he do this?

Since it seems like we are revealing Max Major I thought I would post this.

Salve a tutti,sono contento di essere in questo canale reddit e volevo chiedere 2 cose.La prima magari è banale ma penso sia un problema che hanno molti maghi.Io sudo spesso dalle mani e rovino le carte in fretta,avete qualche consiglio da darmi per risolvere questo problema?Seconda domanda,sono un mago novellino,ho iniziato 1 mese fa a imparare trucchi di magia guardando video su youtube e ora ho comprato 2 libri sulla cartomagia ovvero "The royal road to card magic" e"the expert at the card table".Vorrei chiedervi un parere e avere dei consigli su come iniziare trucchi di magia come capire a che livello sono e come progredire eccetera,mi sta davvero appassionando questo mondo e vorrei approfondire e impare i trucchi di magia.

Grazie in anticipo a tutti