• A deck of playing cards

1. Shuffle the deck, then remember the card on the bottom.

2. Ask a friend to pick a card, any card, from the deck and look at it carefully, without showing you.

3. Take the top half of the deck in your left hand and the bottom half in your right hand.

4. Hold out the left-hand pile and tell your friend to put the card on top of it.

5. Then put the cards in your right hand on the others.

Your friend’s card will always be the one under the card that was on the bottom of the deck at the beginning of the trick.

Art by Susan Foster

To learn more about Lance Burton, read “All Hands on Deck” in the February 2001 issue of WORLD magazine. Click here to receive WORLD each month, or call 800 437 5521 (U.S. and Canada only).

Play more card tricks.