You’ve probably been asked at some point in your life to think of a playing card by a magician. You also probably think that you have a fair and free choice, but in reality there are really only four playing cards out of the 52 cards possible that most people think of.
Go ahead, think of a playing card and then check out the rest of the story.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=revealing-psychology-playing-card-magic
As “hbadino” wrote in the comments to the American Scientific article, I don’t see how the research has a practical application to most card tricks. Knowing that some cards are more likely than others to be picked is not that helpful. Even if you know which cards statistically are most and least likely to be picked, a much greater degree of accuracy is required for magicians. In other words, even if one memorized the entire frequency chart, when required to pick out *one* specific card, a magician would still be wrong the vast majority of the time. It’s just not good enough.
When I attend a Magic show in a theater if the magician pulls out a deck of cards then thats my que to go to the bathroom or concession stand. As most magic card tricks are for kids.
Thats kinda freaky! But what about those that might think differently might end up looking bad with this trick.
Normally when asked to visualize a card, most of my people seemed to choose the Ace of Hearts more often. They chose it almost twice as often when asked to visualize rather than name a card. Perhaps something about the visualization process makes people more likely to think of this particular card…
Very well researched! Majority of the things listed in the article were very precise..Wonderful stuff! Hope to see more such stuff from u..:-)
I love playing cards and enjoyed ur blog! Thanks for sharing. Very interesting.
Almost any heart gets picked most often from what I have seen