A multi effect comedy card routine with audience participation and an unexpected climax. Cards mysteriously increase and decrease of number in magician's hands defying the laws of mathematics in a crescendo of surprises.
EFFECT
The magician fans a pack of cards to a spectator asking him to choose one and place it in his inside jacket pocket. The performer tries to read the mind of the spectator and to guess the chosen card but he fails. In desperation he slings the pack high in the air. With hardly a break, he removes some more cards from his pocket and goes straight into another trick which ends successfully.
Considerably heartened, the magician takes another pack from his pocket and announces that he will perform the "Fabulous Eleven Card Trick" for which, oddly, he needs exactly eleven cards ... and a spectator to count them. He invites another spectator to assist. The lady is seated, then asked to count eleven cards on to the performer's right hand. Diffidently, he asks if he may check them ... unless there are exactly eleven cards the trick won't work. He checks; there are only ten. He obtains one more from the lady and counts them again, to find still only ten.
He asks for another card, adds it to the others and counts. Ten again. It's unbelievable, so he has the lady check. There really are only ten cards. This is ridiculous, so he approaches the problem from another angle. "I have ten cards here. Would you be kind enough to give me three cards?" He adds them to the ten. "How many cards are there here now?" She says, "Thirteen." "So if I give you two cards back ... ", he does so, "How many should I have?" She says, "Eleven". He counts them. This time he has thirteen.
In disgust, he hands back two more cards, counts again and finds only ten. He takes another from the lady and adds it to the packet. This time when he counts he has eleven cards. He checks; there are still eleven. At last the trick can begin.
The cards are mixed and the Lady begins an elimination process with the cards until only one card is left in her hands. The card is shown to be (for example) The Five of Clubs "That's funny," says the magician. "I don't remember any Five of Clubs. Oh ... wait a minute. He walks over to the man whose card he failed to discover at the very beginning. "Would you mind taking your card out of your pocket, Sir, and handing it to me. Incidentally, what was it?" The man says, "The Five of Clubs." The magician shows the two cards to the audience and enjoys the well-deserved applause.
All you need for this trick are two normal pack of cards and the ability to perform some simple standard sleights. The instructions include complete comedy patter and a link to a video that explains one of the required easy sleights (Biddle Count).
1st edition 1980, 3 pages.
word count: 1570 which is equivalent to 6 standard pages of text
