"SPLIT DECK" (#53)

This is another trick that works especially well with small children, but is good regardless...

The magician gives two volunteers each half a deck of cards and leaves the room (or turns his back).
Each volunteer choses a card from the OTHER person's deck, memorizes and shows it to the audience. The volunteers put the cards they chose into their own deck.
The magician takes each of the decks and spreads them out on the table and tells the audience what the cards were.


Secret:
You need to split the deck into cards with a flat (or sharp) top and cards with a round top
(the 3 is usually made with a flat top, but sometimes is rounded... look at your deck to figure out which pile it should be in for your trick)
FLAT TOP:
3 4 5 7 J K A
ROUND TOP:
2 6 8 9 10 Q
with practice it will get easier to spot these cards quickly.
Put the two halves together, one on top of the other. When doing the trick, turn the cards so they're facing you and split the deck so that one half is the flat top and the other is the round top (I usually make this easier by putting the ACE of SPADES where the two halves divide. That way, when I see the ace, I know where to split the deck in two
Give each volunteer one of the halves (one volunteer gets the flat tops and the other gets the round tops).
When they chose the cards and put them in their own deck it ends up that there's one flat top in the round top pile and one round top in the flat top pile.
With practice you'll quickly be able to spot the oddball when you spread the decks out on the table.