How to Perform the Ambitious Card Trick

Magician: You know certain playing cards are like people, they’re very ambitious.

Alright. I’m going to cut the pack lastly. Just tell me to stop anytime you’d like.

Female: Okay. Stop.

Magician: Right there?

Female: Yeah.

Magician: Okay. Do you have any idea what card we may have stopped at?

Female: No.

Magician: Well, let’s take a look. Two of hearts. That’s a very ambitious card.

Female: Yeah?

Magician: It doesn’t matter. We’ll put it in the deck. It’s like certain people on life at which come out on top.

For the ambition card effect, I employ a technique that’s known as the double lift. What that means is that instead of removing one card from top of the pack, I actually removed two unknown to the audience. And here’s how I do it.

I riffle the pack with my thumb most likely to two cards. It looks like one but it’s actually two. See that. I’ll do that again, you can follow it.

A riffle, watch carefully. I riffle and so I can feel two cards. And remember, it looks like one and I replaced them both on the top and I just push off the top card at which is what the audience thinks they’ve seen.

Put it at the center. Give the pack a riffle and I push off the card that was below it. And it appears to that the top card has returned to the top of pack.