Is This Your Card?
By Paul LePaul

You can't have too many methods for producing a chosen card. Here is one that I have found to be very useful, amusing and effective. It is one of those startling little effects that takes your audience by surprise.

The magician offers a spectator a free choice of one card from the deck. The spectator looks at the card and is asked to remember it and replace it in the pack. Without the spectator's knowledge that you have done so, bring the card second from the top. The pack is then squared up in the left hand, taken with the right hand, as in Figure 1. and the bottom card is shown. The spectator is asked: Is this your card?"

Upon his denial, the pack is returned face down to the left hand, and the right hand, still in the same position, picks up the top card and by a turn of the wrist shows the face of the card as you ask if this is the chosen card. As this card is shown, the back of the right hand is rested on top of the deck. The thumb of the left hand secretly pushes out the second card, and the corner away from the body of the performer is grasped between the knuckles of the first and second fingers of the right hand, as in Figure 2. When the spectator denies that this is his card, the card is returned to the deck by turning the wrist as before, but naturally in the opposite direction. This automatically brings the chosen card sticking up between the first two fingers of the right hand facing the spectator. The magician then says, as he picks up the remainder of the pack with his right hand, "Then this must be your card."