- Today, I'm teaching you the David Blaine self working card trick. Yo it's your boy Six and welcome back to another card magic tutorial. You see about 10 years ago, I was watching some David
Blaine YouTube videos, and I came across one in
which he taught an affect. And it's a really cool self working trick that's very simple to do,
but very, very powerful. Listen, if it's good enough
for David Blaine to perform, it's good enough for you. It's really, really good, and I think you're going to love it. I was going through the comments
in which he explains it. And people were kind of
confused, they were like, I don't really get it, but I'm still amazed and you
can even see the reactions of the people that he performed
it for and then explained it to and they were still kind of
confused after he taught it. So I wanted to go ahead, take
some time to make it very clear we'll go step-by-step through it, it's a really cool, really simple affect that you're absolutely gonna to love. So let's go ahead and take
a look at the performance of David Blaine's, self working card trick. (upbeat music) All right. These right here
are the Believe playing cards and if you like these and
want to win some well, I found a way to do it because
YouTube has some policies and I want to respect
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can sign up to my email list and you'll get chances to
win great playing cards. Like the Believe playing cards, as well as a behind the
scenes photos. And of course, you'd be the first to know, every time I drop a video and
I'll also be teaching you some stuff that I'm not going to
be teaching on this channel. You can only get it by
signing up to the email list. So if you want to win
some free playing cards, be sure to go ahead and sign up for that. And here's what's going to happen. I'm using today is David
Blaine's Gatorback playing cards. We're going to be using
these also I'll link down to these below. If you like them, you want to try to find them, I'm not sure if they're for sale anymore, but I'll drop a link. These are gorgeous I love these cards, but let's go ahead and
look at the performance of this self working trick. What's going to happen
is I'll start off by mixing the cards a little
bit, just like this, you get the idea, and we'll
give the cards a little shuffle. I like to play fair. That's
a real good mix right there. I'm going to have the
spectator to my right here. I'm going to say, go ahead, cut off the pack at about
less than half the cards and I want you to hold onto
those cards, and the spectator will hold onto those cards. And I go to this spectator over here, and I'm going to tell this spectator, what I'd like you to do, is
you're going to go ahead, go in there and remove
any card that you like. So they go ahead and remove
any card that they like. Let's say that one, and they're going to get
to show it to everybody. So you are everybody, so there you go, that'd be the card. And then I'm gonna have this spectator go ahead and place their card back. It goes back inside the pack. And again, I like to play fair.
You can throw in a cut, just like this and lose their
card somewhere in the pack. Now, this spectator has been holding onto the card the entire time. This spectator is holding those cards, well I'm going to tell them to take these cards and I want you to deal down onto the table
and stop whenever you like. It's freely up to you,
whenever you want to stop, you can go ahead and stop. So the spectator will deal the cards, just like you see here. And let's say they stop right here and I can give them a choice,
they can deal some more, take some away, it's really up to them, but they stop here and they
land on the nine of clubs. So I'm going to use that nine. Now, if you would have
went one card before you would have had a 10
different outcome, right? If you would have went one card after you would have had a six
again, different outcome, but you stopped on the nine. Well, let's try something. If I just cast a shadow over
the cards and the spectator has been holding them the entire time, I say, grab those cards and I want
you to deal down nine cards. The number that they decided on, not me, that they chose fully,
deal down nine cards, one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine. Turn that card over and
would you believe it, the spectators card, the seven of clubs, a perfect coincidence. Let's go ahead and take
a look at the tutorial. (upbeat music continues) All right. So in order to do this trick, you have to go through the
pack and remove some cards. In this case, you're
removing the four eights, as well as the four nines. And
just for clarification here, I'm going to show you two
ways in which you can do it I'm going to show you the
absolute beginner way which is completely self working,
no skill required. and then I'll show how you can do it with some advanced touches as you saw that I did in the performance to make it even more amazing. So you kind of get best
of both worlds here. So make sure you watch the entire video to get all that great information because I'm dropping some
knowledge on this one. So go ahead and take out the fours, four nines and the four eights. And you're going to go
ahead and shuffle those up. So these cards are then
going to be placed on the top of the pack, because this is going to
be part of your setup, and I'm going to show you how
to do the setup right now. And then later on, I'll show you the advanced way to do the setup. So this is the self working way. Take the four eights, the four nines drop those on top of the pack,
and you're going to alternate them every other card.
And here's an easy way in which you can do this, you've got a top and bottom card, and pull those out and you're going to see what's going to happen is you're going to alternate those cards, just like this so I'm going to do this for all the eights and all the nines. I think that's all of them. Yep. And that's your set up. Now, if you want to just go
through manually and do this, you can do that as well. But the setup is this is that every other card
is an eight or a nine and they are in odd positions. So
that's important to remember. You can do even positions. If you feel more comfortable
with even positions. David originally talked
about odd positions so I'm just keeping that. What I mean by odd is that here
are the cards and you'll see that they are in the odd
number positions if you were to count down. So what that means
is the first card is a nine. The third card is an eight. In this case, the fifth
card, the seventh card, the ninth card, the 11th card,
the 13th card, the 15th card, all odd number position. If you want it to be at the even position, obviously one card has
to be on top of that and then it's two, four,
six, eight, 10, 12, 14, 16, whatever you can remember best and you feel more comfortable
with in this case, I'm going to put it in the odd
position, and that's going to help me out for this routine. And you'll follow along
with those instructions. So that's your set up and that
goes on top of the pack and that's all you really
have to know how to do. Now you can do a shuffle just like this where you shuffle the bottom
portion of the cards, right? So I shuffle the bottom
portion of the cards. And then when I'm done, all I do is I take these two packets, flip them face down and throw
them on top of each other. And it looks like you just
give the cards a quick mix, but really the top packet
still stays the same. Now I'm going to go to the
person on my right here. And I'm going to ask them to go ahead and cut off a small packet of
cards. So in this case, let's say, you can even
make it easier and say, cut off a quarter of the pack or cut off less than half the pack. Proper wording is great for
magic because you say cut off a small packet of cards.
Some people are like, oh, I thought that was a small packet. So if you say cut off less
than half or cut off a quarter, they're going to look and then they can figure out that's half. If they go too far, you
can say, ah, that's, that's more than half drop some, take less than half and correct them. Without it looking weird right? Because if it's small
pack it doesn't matter. But if you want less than half, which is going to make
sense for the dealing, this is the way to do it. Say cut off less than half, they do so, and they hold onto those cards. Now remember they just cut off the portion in which the eights and nines are every other card in odd positions. And they're going to hold on to that. Now we're tapping into some thinking from the Spanish school of thinking. So some of my favorite
magicians, Dani da Ortiz, Juan Tamariz, fantastic,
incredible thinking magicians. And we're using the Spanish
school of thinking here by creating this pendulum effect
where you go from left to right in your performance. Why does that matter? Well, when I go from left to
right in my performance here, as you see in this routine, people can't keep track of the routine. There's too much happening
for their brain to process, as opposed to, take a card, put it back, I find it, very simple, easy to follow. In this case, someone cuts a packet, someone picks a card, someone
deals down at a number, we deal down at this number. They happen to match that back
and forth removes a lot of the method and a lot of the
memory for the spectators that they can't keep track of,
and they can't figure it out. An effect like this that
is super self working. This is super clever. So
they cut off a packet. I come over here and I say, you're going to go ahead
and take out any card. Now I'm ignoring this person, right? People will think you're
forgetting what even took place. Go ahead. You're going to reach aside, take out any card which they do. They showed it around to everybody. While they show it around to everybody. I'm going to push over eight
cards, so in this case, I now have eight cards here
and I'm going to tell the spectator to put their card
back when they found it, this is not where they found it. They don't know that because they were showing their card around to everybody. And I just pushed over eight
cards to make it sound like it. But you're placing their,
the spectators card, in this case, the four of diamonds, into the ninth position,
so eight cards go on top. So you put it here and you say, look, I'm going to take these
cards, drop these on top, give them a little mix, do the same thing as before, where you shuffle
up a few from the bottom through the cut like this,
and you're set to go. If you're more advanced, you
can throw in some false cuts, I'll link to the video and false cuts if you don't know any. And that way you can learn some
false cuts and throw it in, it's a good time for that to go in. But what has to happen
is the spectators card is now at the ninth position. Easy to get to, right? Literally, as I showed
around you count it, turn back put it back. You can also do it where you
don't spread the cards over where you can simply
count over eight cards as they're showing the card around, come back, say, put your card back, and drop all these on top so
they don't see the spread, and maybe it looks like
more cards are put back, that's another way in which you can do it. And again, still keeping
it completely easy because you just count it off of the cards when nobody was looking because they were showing the card around. Using that misdirection to your advantage. So their card is in the ninth position. And now this spectator is going
to deal the cards, I'm going to have reverse count them
so I can do this face up. Now you're not going to do
this face up and you don't have to worry about the reverse count, that's just so you can see them face up. So this is the card packet
that the spectator cut off. They don't know the position
or the set up of the cards, but you're going to have
them deal the cards and stop whenever they like. Now as they deal I want you to notice that every odd card is the nine or the eight. So all you have to do is
count how many cards they deal and when they stop. Pro tip here, don't let them just do this because they'll deal through fast. Say I would like you to count slowly, feeling each card for intuition. So they'll feel up this
card say, place that down, place the next one down, and because you allow them
to deal slowly and you're going to go quiet while they deal, it's going to force him to stop and not go past any of the eights or nines. They're not going to go all
the way through the packet. They could go through most of it, but they're not going to
go this far because A, silence is uncomfortable
for our spectators, so by you being quiet and
they're dealing slowly, they're not going to sit
there, dealing all it. This is some professional, psychological magic advice
that we're going into here. Again, I love the Spanish
school of thinking. You should definitely learn from them. I'm not going to go into too much detail into why this works, but you want to be quiet,
have them deal slowly, and they're going to deal and they're going to stop within your stack. So they go ahead, they start dealing nice
and slow and they stop. Now while they're dealing,
you're counting it. So you know how many
cards they have, right? Because you want to know if they stopped at an odd card or even card. So that's one, two, three,
four, five, six, seven, eight. Let's say they dealt eight cards. Well, you know, your
card is an odd number. So you're going to say, take the next card and deal it onto the table,
because you want to make sure you get to an odd number, in
this case, the ninth card. Now, if they don't do it that way, these are, there's two ways
in which this works, right? Let's say they deal down to an odd number. One, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine. Then you take the ninth card say well you dealt nine cards take that, the last card you dealt
and put it off to the side. There's again, two ways
in which you can do it. So that is how you operate it. So let's do it face down,
because that's important to see. Deal down. I count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. I don't let them know I'm counting. I just count along as they
deal slowly, that's also why you have them deal slowly so you can keep track of how many cards. I know those are eight cards so I say, take the next card and deal it to the side because I want the ninth card, I want an odd number card to
be placed down to the table, now and again, just to show
you that'd be an eight. Now let's say they deal an
odd number to the table. You say five, one, two, three,
four, five. I know it's five, take that card on the
table that you dealt last and put it to the side. Now what's cool about this is
because this is the eighth, there's two random cards
between this because we did every other card. So you could show the cards
that they dealt before and say, well, that's a 10 interesting. What about after? Oh, that's a two. It's going to be two random cards, you don't know what they are, they're just interrelation between them. But that allows you to show
that the outcome could have been different by there being a
two or that there would have been a 10, two possibly
different outcomes, but you landed on eight. So now you can tell the spectator, you landed on eight, and again, just as then, there was two outs here, there's two outs here. And what I mean by the two outs is that it could have been odd
number or even number, the same things that are happening here. I know the spectators card
is in the ninth position. So I let them deal eight. One, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight. Take the next card, put it on the table. That is the ninth card, that is the card I want them to deal. So again, I see eight and a one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight. Take the next card, place it on the table. Now if for some reason, that
we ended up with a nine, right? So let's say we stopped on
a nine instead of the eight, which happens all the time. You take count nine cards, one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine. Take the last card you dealt
and put it to the side. Again, you're controlling their outcome by making sure that that ninth card is the one that gets dealt. So, you know, when David
Blaine teaches this in the original video,
which is linked down below, you can see the confusion
in people's face because there's a lot of thinking
going on, a lot taking place. But what happens, again, here
is one of two possibilities, them landing on an even or odd, and you control which card they deal. The same thing here, they can
land on the eight or the nine, but if they land on nine,
the ninth card is their card. If they land on eight, then you have to take the eight
cards and deal the next one. So those are your two
possibilities of what's going to happen for this routine, and that's basically it, so
really simple stuff there, but a lot of complex
thinking taking place. Let's talk about the
more advanced versions, and then I'll run you
through this one more time, really slow, just so you can
remember exactly what to do. So for the advanced version, first off, if you're familiar with how to cull cards, you can simply run through
the pack and call the eights and the nines as you
start the trick right? So I go through, I see
all the eights and nines. I'm removing them from the
packs, just like this, right? So you can see that. And that's going to give me all my eight, I think I missed one
actually, cause I was talking. Yeah. So I'm going to get
all my eights and nines to the top of the pack. So now I have all the
eights and nines on top. And again, the order doesn't matter, it's irrelevant to this trick. So now that the eights and
nines are on top of the pack, this is my starting position personally. And I come out, I do
the same thing where I shuffle off some of the bottom because that looks like
a cut, but it's not. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. This right hand pack it
just goes back on top, eights and nines still
up there ready to go. Now what's going to
happen is I'm going to do, this is my setup for the effect, I'm going to do a faro shuffle. And we talk about a faro shuffle I think in the video with Xavior Spade so I'll link it and you can watch it and he talks about the faro shuffle, it has to be a perfect faro
shuffle from these cards. What I mean by that is these eight cards, the eights and nines that are on top have to be perfectly interwoven, but you don't have to
have a perfect shuffle. So what I mean is that in this
case I can shuffle like this perfectly, and now I'm set the go because my first card,
my top card, is a nine. So I'm still in the odd number
position where I know every card to be odd. Another way to do that is by
simply, and this a little bit easier actually, surprisingly, it's a good way to
practice the faro shuffle. Is you're going to Faro
just randomly into the pack like this, but now
these cards all good, but what do I do with this top stock? Well, because I want this card on top. I'm going to squeeze
these cards like this. And all I'm going to do is
let that top packet fall off. As I pull it out from underneath
and fall onto my hand, put these cards on top
and then I can go ahead and mix them together. And that's kind of like a
straddle faro technique, but it's a great way to get into it. Now I'm positioned with every
other odd card being the, the number that I needed
to be an eight or nine, so I can follow the same procedure. Again you're going to go
ahead, cut the packet, they hold on to those
cards. I go to my left here. I allow someone to pick a card from here. They're going to place that
down on a table. Same idea. They showed everyone. I look away. I count off eight cards. So in the, now in my right hand, I say, place your card back, in this
case, the jack of hearts, they place it back, all
these cards go on top. Do that same, just shuffle
a few cards in the bottom, do that cut again if you
know some false cuts, this is now a good time to do that. If you feel comfortable
with false shuffles, again, go ahead and throw in some
false shuffles. Why not? Whatever you feel comfortable with. But what I do know now is that
the ninth card is going to be the jack of hearts, the spectators card. I go back here, I swing to this side, have them deal, they stop whenever again, I just keep track one, two,
three, four, five, six, seven, I know it's odd. They turn this one over because that's an odd number. It's a nine. Now the easy part is done. I just go one, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine. Turn that ninth card over it's their card, the jack of hearts. Remember that this outcome could be a little bit different over here. So let's say they landed on an eight. In this case, here we go an eight. They, they stopped on an
eight and I can say, well, if we would have stopped one
card before would have been a queen different outcome. One card after would have
been a 10 different outcome. You stopped on an eight. Can you go ahead and remove eight cards? One, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight, because I know their card is ninth, I say great so take the next
card, deal it to the table. What was your card?
They say jack of hearts. And you can show that number
landed at the jack of hearts, a beautiful, beautiful
coincidence effect. Really simple. Remember to join the
email list down below, you got any questions
and you know what to do, like, comment, and subscribe. Let me know what you think,
if you liked this one and I will see you all
in the next episode.
