Glass Balance Magic
The Effect
You take an ordinary glass, can be full of liquid or empty and a normal pack of playing cards. Riffling through the cards ask a spectator to say "Stop" As soon as they say stop you remove the card they stopped at, show it front and back then proceed to balance the glass on the thin playing card. Amazing!
- Seems impromptu
- Use any regular pack of cards
- A really neat quick trick
- One of the coolest free online card tricks
You will need
- Double sided sticky tape
- An ordinary pack of playing cards
Preparation and Secret
Take any ordinary playing card and one of the jokers from the pack.
Fold the joker card in two, length ways back to back then place some glue or double sided sticky tape along one side, on the face of the joker. Press the two together exactly.
Carefully stick the face of the joker to the back of the regular playing card (See pic 1).
From casual holding and showing the card(s) front and back (pinching the card(s) together on the open side) the card(s) looks normal.
The glass can be empty but preferably contain liquid. You will have to experiment with different glasses and the amount of liquid to put in as the playing card(s) can only take so much weight. But as you can see from (pic 2) the card(s) can hold quite a lot of weight!
To set the trick up place the prepared card into the middle of the deck and get a glass with some coloured liquid in. The liquid in the glass makes the effect that much more impressive as well as adding cover so the spectator can not see the other card through the glass!
To force the gaffed double card onto the spectator you can either casually shuffle the deck then look as if you are randomly taking any card from it to perform the trick but in fact choose the prepared card.
However if you are a more experienced magician you can use the riffle force to cut to the prepared card. The riffle force basically involves you holding the deck in one hand and riffling though the cards until a spectator says "Stop" Because the prepared card is in fact a double card the riffling will naturally stop at that card. All you have to do is time it right, so when the spectator says "Stop", you stop at the prepared card
This does take practice, but is well worth incorporating into the routine if you can master it! (You can learn some alternative card forces by signing up to this very site for free HERE, you then get access to a totally FREE eBook that teaches you more card forces and free online card tricks).
Once the card has been introduced, take a glass and fill it with any liquid (to the desired amount you have found to work best) You can of course let the spectator examine the glass, there is after all nothing to find.
The first thing you must do when performing the trick is to place the glass on top of the card this provides cover as you open the ‘stand’ and begin to balance the glass on the card.
Once the glass is balanced remove your hands and let the spectators gasp! Don't give them too much time to examine your feat - close the stand remove the glass, show the card front and back again and place it casually in the deck then the deck into your pocket.