Card Trick:
Rigging the deck before hand: Place the cards in four piles starting with Spades then Hearts, Clubs, and finally Diamonds. Each of these piles should then be arranged, face up, in order from King on the bottom to Ace on top.
Now starting with the Spades count back until the King is showing (bottom card is now Queen then Jack, Ten etc) Next take the Hearts and count back in the same manner until the Ten of Hearts is on top. For the Clubs you need the Seven on top, and the Diamonds will have the Four on top.
One more step to complete. Take the King of Spades from its pile, turn it face down, and start a new pile. Onto this put the face down Ten of Hearts, then the Seven of Spades, and finally the Four of Diamonds. Continue to place the top cards in the same order of suits on the new pile until all the cards are placed into one pile. This completes the rigging of the deck.
Action:
Now practice your mind reading skills. Have someone cut the deck (as above) and take the top card off the left pile. You place the right half of the deck under the left half. While doing so, take a glance at the bottom card without making it obvious. Mentally count three cards up from the card you see on the bottom of the deck, and this is the value of card that was chosen. As for the suit, if a Spade is showing on the bottom then the card chosen is a Diamond. (Example: Six of Hearts is the bottom card, then the Nine of Spades is the chosen card; Ten of Clubs is on the bottom, then the King of Hearts is the chosen card.
Tips – Always tell the spectator to place the chosen card back on top of the deck after the trick is completed. Mix the cards each time you perform the trick, by cutting the deck in half, so as to appear to shuffle but not to actually change the order. If the audience asks to see the cards, flip them over and quickly run through them, as they appear to be in random order. Don’t let the audience shuffle the deck. Once you have completed the trick a couple of times, really shuffle the deck well and hand it to them. While doing this trick, you might first make a “mistaken” guess to throw the audience off, after all, it’s 80% your game, 20% your trick.