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Hello, all. I am not a magician, just an actor trying to learn a card trick that I'll be performing on stage. I ask someone to choose a card which I know to be the Queen of Spades. I then ask her to show her card again and it is the Queen of Hearts.

I have a Svengali deck containing the Queen of Hearts as a forced card. The trouble with this trick is that the script doesn't say the card initially selected needs to be planted back into the deck, and the initial card chosen is not the forced card. I think it would be relatively simple if I asked her to place her card back on top of the deck face down, and then flipped two cards over to show a Queen of Hearts, but the first card, the Queen of Spades, doesn't leave her hand.

Is there a way to do this trick?

There are potentially loads of ways to do this and have the card appear to change in the spectator's hand, but we're not permitted to give away methods on this forum so I'd be in trouble if I offered you an explanation. Maybe someone can point you in the direction of a pdf download that you can purchase and learn from if you're desperate to do something like this. I'm not personally aware of one.

A little bit of food for thought, though - If I was going to do this I wouldn't be using a Svengali deck. This would be a lot easier done with a regular deck.

My advice would be to pick up a copy of the Royal Road to Card Magic from your local Waterstones/Borders/Books Etc.

Scan through the card sleights.

At least a handful of sleights will give you ideas about how to achieve this effect. And they're not that difficult to master.

Short of breaking the law and going to magician prison, that's the best I can offer.

Pete

Thank you for your help.

I too would stay away from the sven on this one personally...with some sleight of hand knowledge you could easily do it with a regular deck...but a simpler way that would involve less sleight of hand would be to make a rough and smooth deck (or mirage as they are also called) with a simple force. I make my own r & s decks and do something almost identical to what you are describing as a part of one of my effects...it is a simple card transposition really

Dave,
Who is the "someone" that you ask? Another actor? A member of the audience?
It make a MAJOR difference.

what your describing sounds like the mcombical card trick.

Magician makes a prediction.. then a deck is shown to the audience as all being one card.

a spectator takes one, and it turns out to be a different card.


the Magician then shows his prediction matches the different card.

where are you based Dave?

What do you mean by "which I know to be the Queen of Spades?" Is it shown to be the Queen of Spades?

If you could explain a little more clearly we could probably suggest some places you might learn the appropriate effect (although if the trick is being done on someone else in the play, I doubt you'll need to learn anything...)

Peter M's question is critical. I've done magic on stage (as an actor in a play). The spectator was a fellow actor and we were following a script - so you can set things up anyway you like, you aren't trying to fool or impress the other actor, you are performing the play. Unless the audience can see everything you do, I don't understand the problem. Nothing new there though ......

Cheers
Will