The Prophecy

 

You show your audience a small booklet entitled "The Prophecy", an ancient prediction of a terrible battle.

A deck of cards is also brought out, the four suits representing the four great armies. You explain that in a moment your spectators must randomly mix and shuffle the deck, flipping some cards face up, others face down, all this to mimic the raging war that took place. Finally they must spead the cards out, the face down cards will lie dead and defeated, the face up cards left standing weary on the battle field.

You now roughly cut the deck and give half the cards each to your two volunteers. The volunteers now shuffle their cards, turn some face-up and swap some of their cards between each other. Again they shuffle their cards, flip some over, and swap a few with the other person. This can be repeated as often as they like, until they agree that the cards are well and truly mixed up. The two piles are finally shuffled together by one of the spectators, ending up with a totally random deck of cards containing a mixture of face-up and face-down cards.

You now hand the booklet to a spectator, they read out each page in turn. Amazingly each page predicts exactly how the cards have ended up, with a spectator verifying  each stage.

The final prediction stuns everyone when turning to the last page the volunteer reveals a lone King that stands out from all the others.

Amazingly the performer never touches the cards throughout the effect.