Cool Card Tricks: Hindu Shuffle and Karate Kard—The Complete Idiot’s Quick Guide

Cool Card Tricks: Hindu Shuffle and Karate Kard

In This Quick Guide:: The Hindu Shuffle; Karate Kard

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There are literally thousands of card tricks to choose from. Dozens of books on the market teach nothing but card tricks. The tricks in this guide have one thing in common: they are real mind blowers with endings that have maximum impact.

The Hindu Shuffle

Making people think they have a completely free choice of any card in the deck, but making them actually pick the card you want them to is called a force, or forcing a card. To perform the Hindu Shuffle, hold the deck in your right hand by arching your hand over the top of the deck, with your thumb along one long edge and the fingers along the other long edge. Some magicians also like to rest the right forefinger on top of the deck to stabilize it.

Hold your left hand palm up, with your thumb and fingers raised upward to form your hand into a sort of U shape. With your left fingertips, grab the top five to ten cards of the deck, holding them together as a small block.

Release tension with your left thumb and fingers, and let the packet of cards fall onto your left palm. Repeat this series of moves: each time, pull off another small packet from the top of the deck with your left hand, and then let them fall on top of the cards already on your left palm. Eventually, all of the cards will have been shuffled off the deck into your left hand.

The hands in position to perform the Hindu Shuffle.

(Photo courtesy of Titus Photography.)

As you shuffle, you may want to stretch your left forefinger out and around the outer short end of the cards so they don’t fall out of your palm. If it will help to visualize what your left hand should look like, think of it as the tray that catches the copies as they come out of a photocopy machine.

Once you’ve got the Hindu Shuffle down pat, try it again, but this time before you do, look at the bottom card of the deck. Start to shuffle off small packets into your left hand until, like before, you only have a dozen or so cards remaining in your right hand. Stop. Look at the bottom card of the packet in your right hand. It’s the card you just looked at—the bottom card of the deck. Right?

Knowing this, you can now mess with someone’s head.

Forcing a Card Using the Shuffle

Begin to Hindu Shuffle the cards. Ask the spectator to call “Stop!” at any time. As soon as he or she does, stop shuffling, pause for just a second, and then raise your right wrist to show the spectator the bottom card of the packet in your right hand. (This is the original bottom card of the deck, your force card.) The short pause is important because if you immediately turn over your right hand, it might be obvious that you’re simply showing the person the bottom card of the deck. Ask the person to remember the card. Turn the cards in your right hand face down, and then drop them onto the cards in your left hand. The cards can be shuffled again, either by you or by anyone else, because you already know the name of the card you just forced.

Forcing the original bottom card of the deck using the Hindu Shuffle, your view.

(Photo courtesy of Titus Photography.)

How does this work? When you abruptly stop shuffling, the spectator’s train of thought is interrupted. The volunteer’s mind is also confused because you change the way you hold the cards during the shuffle. At first, they’re being shuffled horizontally, but you display the chosen card vertically, and then you lower the cards again to square the deck.

Karate Kard

Have you ever come out of one of those crazy martial arts movies and just wanted to go around kicking, punching, and chopping things up? Well, here’s your chance, and the only thing that’s going to get hurt is one of your playing cards. But don’t feel too bad. The trick is so freakish that it’s worth the sacrifice.

Effect

A selected playing card is returned to the middle of the deck. You set the cards on the table and make a karate chop across the back of the deck. With a flourish, you reveal that the chosen card has magically been karate chopped in two.

Preparation

You’ll need a duplicate of the playing card you want to force. For the sake of explanation, let’s say it’s the Queen of Spades. To set up for the trick:

Place one of the Queens on the bottom of a stack of about a dozen playing cards.
Take the other Queen and cut it in half widthwise (across the midsection of the Queen).
Reassemble the cut card and lay the two sections face down on top of the small packet on the table.
Take the remaining cards of the deck, place them on top of the gimmick card, and square the deck.

What you now have is a deck of cards with one Queen on the bottom and a duplicate card cut in half, positioned about three quarters of the way down in the deck. To keep the gaff card in place until you’re ready to perform, you’ll probably want to carry the deck in a card box.

Performance

Take the cards out of their case, and set the box to one side.
Ask the person to call “stop” to select a card as you shuffle the cards, using the Hindu Shuffle to force the Queen of Spades on the bottom of the deck. Make sure that you shuffle slowly enough that you don’t pass and, in the process, disturb the gimmicked duplicate Queen. (That’s why you have it located so close to the bottom of the deck.) You also have to be careful that when you raise the right-hand portion of the deck to show the force card on the bottom that the loose sections of the duplicate Queen don’t fall out of the stack.
After you’ve shown the force card on the bottom of the deck, drop the cards in your right hand onto the cards in your left hand. This will bury both the force card and the gimmick card in the middle of the deck.
Square the pack and set it on the table in front of you, so that the long side of the deck is parallel to the edge of the table.
Tell your spectator that you’ve been studying karate, and that you’ll use the venerable Japanese martial art to find the chosen card. Raise your flattened hand over the deck, and give one swift karate chop to the middle of the deck, as if you were trying to cut the deck in half along its width.

The Karate Kard gimmick.

(Photo courtesy of Titus Photography.)

The Karate Kard gimmick set in place in the deck before adding the upper half of the deck, exposed view.

(Photo courtesy of Titus Photography.)

Place your left hand over the top of the deck, with your thumb pressing down on the long edge at the table’s edge and your middle, ring, and little finger pressing down on the other long edge of the deck. Place your left forefinger on the middle of the deck, and press down to hold the deck in place.
Hold your right hand palm up, and slip your right fingers under the right short end of the deck.
Quickly riffle upward through the cards with your right fingers, allowing the cards to fall back down onto the table. Air pressure will cause the right portion of the slit duplicate card to pop out of the right short end of the deck. It won’t fly free of the deck; it will still be embedded in the deck with half of its length protruding out.
Grasp the deck with your right hand, with your right thumb pressing down on the inner long edge of the pack, your right middle, ring, and little fingers pressing down on the outer edge, and your right forefinger pressing on the center of the deck. Slip your left fingers under the left short edge of the deck.
Briskly riffle your left fingers up through the deck, letting the cards fall back down onto the table. The left portion of the gaffed card will pop about halfway out of the left short edge of the deck.

Riffle the cards upward to make the karate card appear.

(Photo courtesy of Titus Photography.)

Pause to let the audience plainly see the two halves of a playing card, apparently cut by a magical karate chop, sticking out of the ends of the deck. Grasp one half of the cut card in each hand, pull them out of the deck, and turn them over with a flourish. It’s the selected card! The revelation will be so surprising—and entertaining—that you won’t need to show whether or not there’s another Queen of Spades in the deck.