Category: Ace Trick

Nick Trost’s Subtle Card Creations Vol. 2 has a trick called the Magnetic Cards. It basically is a four ace trick that is similar to the Gemini Twins. His description of the effect: The performer and a spectator each hold a shuffled half-deck. The spectator follows the performer’s actions. They each remove a card from their half-deck. They rub it on their sleeve to “magnetize” it. Then, they replace it face up into their respective half’-decks. Each half-deck is spread to show that each “magnetic” card has attracted two aces.

I was experimenting with the “cut deeper” method that I wrote about here and came up with a variation. This version has a cleaner ending but requires a bit more effort.

This is one of the classic card magic plots. There are a lot of variations to it, the Conjuring Archive lists over 100 entries when searching for the title. The basic plot is the spectator is invited to cut the deck, and—through a cleverly designed plot—the aces end up being revealed at the cut. One of the earliest versions was published in The Royal Road to Card Magic, titled “Poker Player’s Picnic.” This version sets the template for many of the ones that followed, namely having the deck cut into four piles on the table.

I found this in Marlo’s Magazine Vol. 5. Basically it is a Triumph style production of four face up aces in different locations in the deck. I like that the aces are widely separated in the production.

This is a variation on my Ace control that I described in this post from 2018. The main difference is that this one is more direct, but doesn’t show the top and bottom cards between each ace being lost.

One of the first card tricks that blew me away was the MacDonald Aces. This is the classic ace assembly trick. The downside, of course, is that the trick relies on gimmicked cards. You can read about all of the variations at https://geniimagazine.com/wiki/index.php?title=Ace_Assembly. My version uses two sleights, the Braue Add-on and the Elmsley count.

Here is a simple “Spectator cuts to the aces” trick.

Start by getting the four aces to the top of the deck. I let the spectator shuffle the deck and then use my two step cull to accomplish this. You could also just start by already having the aces on top before you begin.

There are several methods I use for “losing” the aces into a deck of cards and controlling them to the top. Several involve cutting the deck into four piles and losing the aces, one in each pile. One day I was looking at some magic sites preview videos and saw a different method that I thought looked good. So I deconstructed the performance, figuring out what the magician had done. While I can’t be certain that this is the same method, I think it is close.