Aldo Colombini's, from Impromptu Card Magic. Most people meet it as a think-of-a-number trick. This page is here for people who own the book.
Somebody thinks of a number, takes that many cards off the top, and keeps them. You show them eighteen cards and ask them to remember the one that lands on their number. You never learn the number, you never see their card, and you never touch the deck again in any way that matters. Three piles dealt from ten down to one find it.
The number they choose is a real choice and it cancels out. That is the part worth understanding, and the reason this trick survives a spectator who is actively trying to catch you.
Be the spectator and you think of the number, and it finds your card without ever asking what you chose. Nothing is installed, nothing is signed up for, and it works on a phone.
Be the magician and it thinks of one: you show the cards, you place them, you deal every pile and call every match yourself. Nothing stops you getting one wrong. That half teaches the trick, so it opens once you have answered the question about Colombini's book.
The deck sits on the table and you take cards off it with your hand. Deal one too many onto a pile that has already matched — the mistake this trick actually punishes — and you can drag that card back onto the deck, which is the one thing you cannot do at a table. The buttons do the same job if you would rather press them.
The magician's side is where you practice it, so it opens with the method — answer the question further down.
Easy Location is Aldo Colombini's, and it is published in his Impromptu Card Magic, which is still sold. Playing it is yours — the spectator's side above is open to anybody, forever, with no account. Learning it is his, so it opens to people who have the book.
Answer one question and the whole method appears: how to perform it, why the number they choose cancels out, where the limits are, and the magician's side to practice on.
The question is still being written. Come back in a day and it will be here.
This is Easy Location by Aldo Colombini, published in his book Impromptu Card Magic. Colombini credits it as an adaptation of a routine by Richard Vollmer, which was itself based on a trick published in John Scarne's Scarne on Cards in 1949. The ten-to-one count underneath all of them is older still and has been in print for decades.
Two things here are not theirs. The spectator thinks of a number and removes that many cards, where the published handling has them cut a packet and count it privately — the same arithmetic, a cleaner premise. And the limits set out above were worked out from the mechanism rather than taken from anybody: the ceiling of eighteen, the floor of five, and the fact that two piles would let somebody pick a number as high as twenty-nine.
The explanation and the demonstration on this page were written from the method, not from Colombini's text. Colombini died in 2014. His books are still published and sold by Wild-Colombini Magic, run by his wife Rachel.
Impromptu Card Magic collects ninety card tricks with no setup and no sleight of hand, from Colombini and from the magicians he admired. Easy Location is the fourth one in it. The PDF arrives the moment you buy it; the paperback is the same ninety tricks on paper, and the two are typeset differently, so a page number in one is not a page number in the other.
That is a paid link. It costs you the same and pays this site a share. It is also how you open the method below, because the question asks for something only the book can tell you.
Somebody thinks of a number, takes that many cards off the deck, and remembers the card at their number while you show a run of cards past them.
You never learn the number and never see the card. Three piles, counted down from ten, find it.
This handling is Easy Location by Aldo Colombini, from his book Impromptu Card Magic. Colombini credits it as an adaptation of a routine by Richard Vollmer, which was based on a trick in John Scarne's Scarne on Cards from 1949. The ten-to-one count underneath all of them is older still.
Yes. Play it as the spectator above and it will find a card you think of. Nothing to install, no account, and it works on a phone.
Because the method is Colombini's and his book is still sold. The effect is open to anybody. The method opens to anybody who owns the book, and the question asks for something only a copy of it can tell you.
The 21 card trick also finds a card without being told anything — but it narrows down to one, where this one puts a card in a fixed place and then walks to it.