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Comment by christiangenco | Hacker News Reader

This is amazing! This tech unlocks some impossible card effects (ex: "shuffle the deck, pick your favorite card from it, hand the deck back to me, your card is the Ace of Diamonds").

While reading through this repo I was reminded of a project I'd heard Randy Pitchford, the CEO of Gearbox Software (creators of the Borderlands franchise) talk about wanting to make after one of the magic shows he hosted at his house in Frisco, Texas.

Randy is a huge fan of magic. He's the great nephew of Cardini and notably recently purchased the Magic Castle[1].

Lo and behold, the primary contributor to this project—Paul Nettle—is an employee at Gearbox Software[2]. What a small world! I'm so happy they've made this open source.

1. https://www.lamag.com/culturefiles/the-former-magician-who-n...

2. https://github.com/nettlep

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That's interesting background for having Pen and Teller in the Borderlands 3 [0], and also for the passing resemblance between the Calypso twins and the Ehrlich brothers...

[0]: https://borderlands.fandom.com/wiki/Pain_and_Terror?file=Pai...

When I was a kid, my dad had my brothers and me pick a card from a deck without showing it to him then reinsert it into the deck. He then threw the deck into the air scattering the cards on the floor and then picked our card up from the floor.

The secret? Amazing dumb luck.

Sure it's not sleight of hand? https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/v4r8ex/ex...

Yes, he was as amazed as we were when the right card came out and has (a) never replicated the trick and (2) always said it was dumb luck.

Of course, this could be a long-game illusion like the old Chinese magician or the twins in The Prestige.

I don’t know your dad of course but that meta joke would have been right up my dad’s alley.

> impossible card effects (ex: "shuffle the deck, pick your favorite card from it, hand the deck back to me, your card is the Ace of Diamonds")

There is one deceivingly simple trick that is essentially just that.

There's more than one that I can think of, and the best I've ever done is the "imaginary deck" one.

Setup: shuffle an imaginary deck, fan the imaginary deck, tell someone to pick an imaginary card and remember it, shuffle it back into the imaginary deck and put the deck in your pocket.

Remove a deck from your pocket, ask what the card was, fan the deck out, and - it's the only upside down card in the deck!?

This is one where if you have the time and effort to dedicate to it, can be simple. You memorize your deck, so when they tell you the card, you thumb to it and flip it so when you fan it, the card they picked is upside down.

That's close to how the version I know worked, but it was a step or two from that (and a bit simpler).

The "Invisible Deck" is a very famous trick. It can be purchased[1] for about $10 and just about anyone can master it in about 10 minutes. With the standard method, you don't need to memorize the deck or flip the card.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/U-S-PLAYING-CARD-COMPANY-SG_B002MI1B3...

What did you buy today honey?

A box of invisible cards.

This is not how invisible deck is done though. It takes a gimmicked deck, no memorization, and not too much skill.

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