How about a little card magic?

I just came across this on the Internet. It is an amusing little self-working card trick that I would like to share. It would probably be particularly effective on children, but I admit to being impressed when I first tried it.

I am going to just present the mechanics. You will have to work out your own presentation.

Take 9 cards. The chosen card is the third from the top. Suppose the card is the 7 of clubs. Deal from the top of the deck and form a pile by spelling out the name of the card – “Seven of clubs.” So you start dealing “S-E-V-E-N”, forming a pile of 5 cards on the table. Note that in dealing the cards, the order is reversed. After each word, place the cards in your hand on top of the pile. So after spelling out “seven”, the pile on the table is combined with the rest of the cards. Then do the same thing for “O-F” and “C-L-U-B-S”.

You can now easily find the chosen card because it will always be the fifth one down.

To figure out how the trick works, just figure out where the card is after each word is counted – the position after each word does not depend on the name of the card.