Card Trick

A few years ago I was in Sydney and had the pleasure of a performance by a magician. He started out by doing the normal thing; asking us to pick a card. We put the card back in the pack which he shuffled once before turning over the whole deck to show us our card was no longer there.

Not immediately impressive but then he opened his jacket, took out his wallet, opened it, unzipped a pocket and drew out that very card we had picked. Very smooth. I'm still not sure how he did it but I'll wager the zip wasn't the only way into that pocket.

So years later I'm directing a tournament when someone calls me over to tell me there's a card on the floor. It could be from about three different tables and there's three boards on each table; that's nine boards to check. But I know that all good players count their cards before they look at them so I'll just pop it in my wallet and wait for someone to be short.

A full hour later I'm called over to the table to perform my magic trick much to the delight of the assembled. It's not till much later that it occurs to me that two tables in a pretty serious pairs tournament bid, played and scored the board without that one card.

Don't worry guys, I won't tell anyone who you are ;)



I'm off to play the NZ congress with Martin Löfgren tomorrow morning. Hopefully I'll have some time to post but if not I assure you I'll catch up when I get back.