Jack the Bounty Hunter
Fifteen cards to them, fifteen to you, and they cut both piles wherever they like. They take a card and decide where it goes. The Jack finds it anyway.
Play it through
Be the spectator and every choice in it is yours — where your card goes, which pile buries it — and none of them changes the ending. That is what there is to see from that side.
Be the magician and you deal it. You count the piles, you place the Jack, and you choose which half to keep at every round. Three of those can be done wrong, and doing them wrong is allowed here: it plays out to the failure and then tells you which decision broke it. Knowing why a mistake is a mistake is most of learning a trick.
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It is a story card trick, which is a family of its own: the deal is the same either way, and what changes is that somebody is listening rather than watching. The Four Robbers is the other one here.
How to perform it
- Let them shuffle, then deal two piles of fifteen. One to them, one to you, counting out loud. Put the rest of the deck to one side.
- Have them cut both piles, wherever they like. Yours as well as theirs. There are four piles now and you know the size of none of them.
- They take a card from the rest of the deck and look at it. A real choice, from cards that have not been touched.
- The card goes face down on top of either of their two piles. Their decision, and it makes no difference.
- Either of your two piles goes on top of their card. Also their decision.
- The Jack goes on top of your remaining pile — that is the bounty hunter, and this is the only card you place.
- Their remaining pile goes on top of the Jack, and that stack goes on top of the other one. Thirty-two cards, squared up.
- Deal the packet face up, alternately into two piles, and throw away the half without the Jack. Repeat. Thirty-two becomes sixteen, then eight, four, two — and the last two cards are the Jack and theirs.
Why it works
Read the assembled packet from the bottom and it goes: a piece of their fifteen, their card, both pieces of your fifteen, the Jack, their other piece.
That is the trick in one line. Whichever pile they put the card on, and whichever of yours they bury it with, your two pieces finish between the card and the Jack — because one of them is placed on the card and the other has the Jack placed on it. The gap is fifteen because your pile was fifteen, and the cuts only decide how that fifteen is split between the two sides of it.
So the cutting is genuinely free, and it is free in the way that matters: they cut your pile as well as their own, and neither cut can change the total.
Why the halving finds it
Fifteen cards between them means the card and the Jack are sixteen positions apart, and sixteen is even. Deal alternately into two piles and two cards an even distance apart land in the same half, with the distance cut in two. Sixteen becomes eight, then four, then two, then one.
The packet goes thirty-two, sixteen, eight, four, two, and at two there is nothing left but the hunter and the card he was sent for. Deal that elimination face up so you can see which half the Jack fell into.
This handling was taught by Mismag822, The Card Trick Teacher, in 2009, under this name. The mechanism above was written as code and run over all 784 combinations of cut points and choices before this page described it, which is how the numbers here were arrived at rather than copied.
What can go wrong
- Counting the fifteens wrong. Everything rests on the two piles being the same size. Count out loud, and let the story carry the pace so the counting does not sound like counting.
- Assembling in the wrong order. One of your pieces goes on their card and the Jack goes on the other. Put the Jack on the piece that is already on the card and both of your pieces end up on the same side of it.
- Dealing the elimination face down. You need to see which half the Jack landed in, and there is no other way to know.
Questions people ask
How does the Jack the Bounty Hunter card trick work?
Fifteen cards go to the spectator and fifteen to the performer, and the spectator cuts both piles wherever they like. Their card goes on top of either of their two pieces, one of the performer's pieces goes on top of the card, the Jack goes on the performer's other piece, and the spectator's other piece goes on the Jack.
Read that packet from the bottom and both halves of the performer's fifteen are sitting between the card and the Jack, so they are always fifteen cards apart. Dealing the packet alternately into two piles and keeping the half with the Jack halves that distance each time, until only the Jack and their card are left.
Does it matter where the spectator cuts?
No, and that is the whole point of the trick. The cuts decide the size of the four piles and the performer never learns any of them.
Whichever way the pieces fall, both halves of the performer's fifteen finish between the card and the Jack, so the distance is fifteen either way. The choices about where the card goes and which pile buries it are just as free and change nothing either.
Is Jack the Bounty Hunter a self-working card trick?
Yes. There is no sleight of hand and no move that could be fumbled. The deck can be borrowed and shuffled first, nothing is arranged in advance, and everything that decides the ending is dealing and counting done in the open.
What it asks for instead is the story, told at the pace of the deal.
Why does the deal go down to two cards?
Because halving keeps the pair together. The card and the Jack start sixteen positions apart in a packet of thirty-two, and sixteen is even, so dealing alternately into two piles sends both of them into the same half and cuts the distance in two.
Sixteen becomes eight, then four, then two, then one. The packet goes thirty-two, sixteen, eight, four, two, and the last two cards are the Jack and the card he was sent for.
More
This is one of the self-working card tricks here. The other story trick is the Four Robbers, and the closest relative by method is the 13 card trick, where a count you make in the open decides the ending in the same way.
Harrison Alley
Hobbyist · Writes Sleightless
A hobbyist, not a professional. I write up the self-working end of card magic, because it is the door I would point a beginner at, and every trainer here is played through and checked before it ships.