Beautiful Card Trick - Numberphile

This trick and many others are taught in Portugal at early age, often by people that have limited knowledge of mathematics. All they had was to practice long enough until they learned the system.

His trick was pretty obvious. He explicitly said he was grabbing the piles from stage left to right... but you can easily see him putting the 2nd on top of the first and the last on the bottom - not the right order, based on what he said.
I didn't realize the specific placement was to get the card into the 10th place, but I did know it was part of the trick. I figured he was just getting the card to the top of the pile to simplify tracking it. It WAS for tracking it, but not for simplicity.

I try to make the re-stacking of the piles look casual, without anything looking manipulated or calculated. At one point he inserted the selected pile into the middle, which looked like a manipulation. That’s what you want to avoid. But I know he did it here just for instructional clarity.

So I tried this with my 6 year old son. I asked him, what is your favorite number? He said "1 million", ok how does this work?

Here is the rub....This is a pretty straight forward card trick that takes 15 minutes to learn. It is easy and it is like many other card tricks. This trick was done 100s of years ago with no maths. Do not get me wrong, I love this. Depends where you are coming from: People who like Maths, or people who like Tricks?

ok, my last comment was two years ago and not one comment. i will re do this....

Can you explain it the way I count every card not this 🤔 I took cards off during the performance 😅 I count it in 9s piles of 3 and take any off that don't add up and the pile thing maybe 21 than show I like that way

I did this trick for friends and family this Christmas, was a success! My favourite part of the video is Matt's smirk at the end when he says "not many audiences will sit through the 10 billion version a second time", made me laugh.

Not the best explanation

The best variation of this trick would be with 60 cards, with one round of five piles, one of four piles and one of three piles. The best part of this variation would be how easy it is to figure out where the pile with the card goes.

First round:

If the favourite number ends in 1 or 6, it goes in the top pile. If it ends in 2 or 7, it goes in the second pile. If it ends 3 or 8, it goes in the third pile. And so on.

Second round:

If the favourite number’s first digit is even and ends 1-5, it goes in the top pile. If it’s even and ends 4-9 or odd ends in 0, it goes in the second pile. If it’s odd and ends in 1-5, it goes in the third pile. If it’s odd and ends 4-9 or even and ends in 0, bottom pile.

Third round:

1-20 goes in top pile, 21-40 goes in middle pile, 41-60 goes in bottom pile.

That’s it. No extremely complicated maths and working out numbers in other bases. It’s just a shame there are no decks with 60 playing cards. Maybe you could add eight of your own blank cards?

You can do it with 48 cards by doing four piles twice and then three piles once.

the number that the person chooses and the set and subsets of the card chosen are actually the same number in base 10 and base 3!..like 10 and 101 as seen..101 is 10 in base 3

Is it possible to do with full packet of cards including joker

Can't find the extra footage of this video, link is gone, anyone got it?

Divide magic number by 3, take remainder. Map remainder as 1=>Top, 2=>Middle, 0=>Bottom

Repeat for each step.

Step A: Divide magic number by 3, take remainder and map it
Step B: Divide magic number by 3 twice, take reminder and map it
Step C: Divide magic number by 3 thrice, take reminder and map it

F

I know i'm.. 10 years late to the party, but I wanted to share one of my favorite card tricks as well, and it involves the 52 card deck. The only issue with this trick is that it requires learning a shuffle (if you look up the Faro Shuffle, you may see why), and it is a perfect 1:1 shuffle if you cut the deck perfectly in half. Essentially, I can have somebody pull a card, put it on top of the pile, and within at least 6 shuffles, you can use 1:1 shuffles to place their card anywhere within the deck by converting the number into binary and doing a sequence if in/out shuffles accordingly. What denotes an "in" shuffle, is where the top card is the one moving into the deck, and an "out" shuffle is keeping the top and bottom cards the same with this 1:1 shuffle. A 1 in binary calls for an in shuffle, and a 0 calls for an out shuffle. The Faro Shuffle is honestly one of the hardest shuffles to learn and takes a lot of practice to nail down, but it is a purely mathematical shuffling trick once you get the skills.

I can't understand the british English speaking language . So it is difficult for me to understand whole talks he says . But i read Comments & all say that it is an excellent trick of 21 cards . so i accept it is a very beautiful trick . i want to teach it . but i will have to see more times this video . Then i can understand it.

“do you want to know how it works?”
“yes plea-“
“THIS, this is brilliant”
😂

Loved the detailed explanation as well as the addition of six more cards to the trick. However, if I can remember correctly, when this trick is done with 21 cards, the performer does not have to calculate where to put the packet of cards that contains the spectator’s card when reassembling the deck. I remember that the packet with the spectator’s card always goes in the middle, and you only have to do the dealing out three times in order for the spectator’s card to appear in the appropriate position to conclude the trick. It seems that with this version using 27 cards, the performer often has to to place the packet with the spectator’s card in different positions when reassembling the deck which the spectator might notice.

I did this trick as a child, not shown by anyone, you can do it with as many cards you want, you just need to have more as a stack where you can put the cards back..

It's beautiful maths.

alternatively, just don't do the favorite number thing, and choose where you want the card to go in advance

But what if the audience choose 27 number i.e (9×2 + 3×2 + 1×2 = 26) the last number for this trick you can get is 26 so just ask what is your favourite number from 1 to 26 not from 1 to 27.

How to represent 27 in that base 3 numbers?

OK. I'm a logistic and logistics is about optimising things. If you have 52 card deck and you want 27 cards, count out 25 and you're left with 27 cards. Faster to do than counting out 27 cards. I'm sorry that this was the first thing I noticed from this video. Nice trick, but my father showed this to me sometime in early seventies.

I had to sit down for a few hours and come up with very simple formulas for calculating every number you need ( 0 1 and 2) and then I was able to get it!

This mathematical calculation went over my head but this calculation is damn deep

I don't understand. If their number is 3, then you would need 0 nines, 1 three, and 0 1s. That would be top middle top, but if I look at your chart, I see that you're actually supposed to be top top bottom. How do I figure it out? What am I doing wrong?

I swear everytime I do this trick to my friends they choose 27.. not funny

This was fascinating to watch, and did make sense. Thank you!

my teacher sent us to watch this video

I am doing this when I was a kid never thought of this😁

Oh this is great!!!!

82824

this is so. incredibly. boring. I hate math homework

Darby Senior

Hi 😂

Nice trick. It took me 30 mins to learn it.

but what if the person wants 27th?
2x9 = 18
2x3 = 6
2x1 = 2
total = 26

in the video he showed that 15th would be
1x9 = 9
2x3 = 6
0x1 = 0
total = 15
ok, but there is not a way to sum up to 27 (but there is a way to get 0...) so in that case what would i do? if the person choose 27?

One does not have to work out the base 3 representation upfront. I find it easier to just work out the remainder of the current order of magnitude as I go.
Example: position 13 -> 12 cards on top
first draw: 12 mod 3 = 0 -> top, 12 div 3 = 4
second draw: 4 mod 3 = 1 -> middle, 4 div 3 = 1
third draw: 1 mod 3 = 1 -> middle, done

Why am I always get ,,number" plus one? WTF

As a magician, I'm definitely going to start using this. Thanks a lot!

Every time I do this, it works great, and it's an awesome trick! Though one weird thing, instead of ending on the number they picked, I have to count their number, and add one. For instance, if they picked 17, I count out 17 cards, and then flip over the 18th card which happens to be theirs. Shouldn't it be on the exact number they picked? How is this happening? It's a reliable hiccup, so I can just go with it. It's still just as cool, but my mind is blown because I have no idea how I keep doing this.

He Is Marshall from how i Met your mother

MARTIN GARDNER

Ohhhhh... it’s logarithmic!