Every step below is a picture of the actual cards, so you can stop on one and look at it for as long as you like. No video to pause and rewind, and no sleight of hand to practice.
Here is one trick in full, in eight steps. Then the rest of the tricks on this site, each of which you can play through in your browser rather than read about.
What the audience sees: four jacks are pushed into four different parts of the deck, one near the bottom, one in the middle, one near the top, one left on top. A moment later all four are together on top again.
What you need: a deck of cards. That is the whole list.
The reason it works is that the burying is real and the jacks were never in it. Once three ordinary cards are hidden behind four jacks, the top three cards of the deck are strangers, and burying strangers costs nothing. The four jacks sit on top the entire time, waiting.
Play it through rather than read it, and it will stick faster. The version on this site deals the cards for you and lets you take either side, the magician's or the spectator's.
Play the Four RobbersSelf-working means the method is the procedure rather than the handling. There is nothing to palm and nothing to force, so they work the same the first time you try them. Each of these plays in the browser, a step at a time, from both sides.
A video runs at its own speed. When the step you need is the one where three cards go behind four jacks, a video gives you about a second of it and then moves on, and you are left scrubbing the timeline to find that second again.
A picture waits. Every card on this page is drawn by the same code that runs the playable tricks on the rest of the site, which means a step here cannot show a card the method does not use, and the pictures cannot drift out of step with the trick as it is taught elsewhere on the site.
A self-working one, meaning a trick whose method is the procedure rather than a sleight. The Four Robbers above is a good first trick: the only secret is that three ordinary cards hide behind the four jacks.
Nothing is palmed, forced, or secretly counted, so it works the same whoever is holding the cards.
Yes, and that is what this page is. Every step is shown as a picture of the actual cards, so you can stop on a step and look at it for as long as you like.
The pictures are drawn by the same code that runs the playable tricks, so a step cannot show a card the method does not use.
No. These are self-working tricks, which means the method is the procedure and not the handling. There is no palming, no forcing, and no false shuffle.
The one thing the Four Robbers asks is that you square three cards behind four jacks, which takes no practice.
Show four jacks with three ordinary cards squared up behind them, and put the packet on top of the deck. Bury the top three cards in three different places, which buries the strangers rather than the jacks.
Show the next card as the fourth robber left on the roof, then turn over the top four cards and all four jacks are together.
Every trick on this site is self-working and playable in the browser. The ones that run on arithmetic are under mathematical card tricks.