Card Tricks > Key Card - Card Trick
Key Card
Essentially, a key or locator card is simply a card, observed and noted
earlier by the performer, that is used later by him to locate the
spectator's unknown card.
As a primitive example of key card use, consider the following
elementary effect. A card is selected at random by a spectator from a
shuffled deck. While this card is being looked at and memorised by the
spectator, the performer secretly glimpses and notes the bottom card of
the face down deck that he retains. Following this the spectator is
instructed to place his card back on top of the pack and to give the
pack a complete single cut so as to lose his card in the deck. But from
the performer's standpoint this card is not lost for in cutting the deck
and completing the cut, the original top ( spectator) and bottom (
performer) cards of the deck are automatically brought together (if
skeptical on this point, check for yourself ). Hence the performer can
now locate the position of the spectator's card since his key card and
the spectator's unknown card are adjacent. To conclude the trick at this point, say by looking through the deck and
picking out the spectator's card (next to key card), would be of course
questionable. Such an uninspired routine obviously makes no attempt to
cover up the use of the key card idea and the principle would soon be
exposed by some alert spectator. Hence cards effects based on a key card
must be designed to hide the fact that a key card is being used. As a
first example of how this might be done, there is submitted a card trick
titled 'Undercover Agent'. It represents a first step in introducing
some degree of sophistication into a key card routine.
Card Tricks > Key Card - Card Trick
|
