OK so now we're going to redo the very first trick I did in almost slow motion, in annotated mode if you will. And so you had a look at one card, and then I started dealing these. And then I talked to you about your favorite number, and you said 10. You're looking for the king of hearts, and I'm thinking how am I going to get that king of hearts neteller casino play here? Well I don't know what card it is.
How'm I going to get whatever the card is to the 10th position? And 10, nine goes into that once. And so I want to get nine cards on top. So I actually have to put it in the top, the top, and then the middle. So has the king of hearts gone past? Where was it? BRADY: It was there. MATT: OK so I now know it has to go top, top, middle. So when I pick them up from left to right-- these two I don't care about-- that can be bottom, that can be middle. The king of hearts is in this one, so it has to go on top. Which means it's going to be one of the first nine to get dealt out. And so it's going to be either the top card of the next piles, or the second card of the next piles, which it happens to be, or the third card. And then the rest we actually don't care about. Because those other two piles I know it wasn't in those. These are just padding to get it into the correct position. So now which one was it in? The middle one? OK so again it's top, top, middle. So it has to go top again. And if you watch, when I pick them up I still pick them up in the same order. But I put them together in a different order. So that goes on top, and then I'll get this last one, and I'll just shove it underneath. So now I know it's on top. In fact I know it's in the top three of the top pile. So when I go down this time it has to be the top card, there it is. And then the rest go on top, and then the last time it has to go in the middle. And so you can see what's going to happen now. Because if it goes in the middle it's going to get nine cards put on top of it. It's going to be the top card in the middle pile, it's going to be the 10th card. So it was in this one? Well how about that? Pick that one up first, pick that one up and put it underneath. So it was the middle one, put that one underneath like that, and so now it has to be the 10th card. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, boom. So in fact one way you can think about it is I like drawing a time versus card height diagram. So the first time you do it-- this is the first time you deal out-- you've got the bottom pack, you've got the middle pack, and you've got the top pack when you put them back together. And the reason I use 0, one, and two is actual units column in ternary. The second time you've got the bottom pack, you've got the middle pack, you've got the top pack, and again that's 0, one, and two. And that's the second time you deal. And then the third time you deal, again you've got the bottom, the middle pack, and the top, and that's 0, one, and two. So there are the three packs when you put them back together. And in fact this is your units column, or that your 1's column. That there's your 3's column, and that there's your 9's column. So if you want to put 15 on top, to get 15 you're going to need two 3's, one 9, and no units. So it's going to go top, bottom, middle. To put 15 cards on top. And it'll end up being the 16th card. BRADY: If someone at home wants to do this trick do they have to be pretty good at maths? MATT: You have two options. You can either be pretty good at maths, or you can spend a lot of your free time practicing until your brain gets used to doing this. Which to be fair, are both exactly the same thing. Maths is all about practicing something, and developing a new way of thinking for your brain to get used to it. So either option, learn maths, of learn card tricks. You're ending up with the same skill set to be honest. BRADY: You said at the start this was your favorite trick to some extent. MATT: It is. BRADY: There are lots of tricks. What is it about that one that resonates with you? MATT: People know the 21 card trick, where you put it back in the middle each time, and then it ends up being the middle card. And so people kind of know that, but they don't know why it works. Whereas this one you know why it works, and then you can do so much more with it. And there's a huge difference in math-- indeed in anything-- between just memorizing the steps so you know how to do it, versus knowing why those steps get you where you want to be. And so this utilizes the advantage of knowing why the steps are doing something, and then you can tweak it as you go. So instead of always putting it in the middle you can put it anywhere you want, because you understand how it works. Because you're putting three piles back together three times there are 27 possible arrangements of putting it back across the trick, which correspond to all 27 possible positions. In fact you can do this trick with a lot more cards if you really want to. It's the number of piles to the power of how many times you deal the cards out. If you get 10 billion cards, which is a lot of cards, and you deal them out into 10 piles 10 times, you can put any of those 10 billion cards into any position just through 10 deals. Although admittedly you are dealing a million cards into each pile, so it does take a very long time. In fact in Martin Gardner's book Magic, Maths, and Mystery he describes that if you want to do the 10 billion card version his recommendation is to be very, very careful as you're doing the 10 piles of 10 each time. Because if you make a mistake very few audiences will sit through that trick for a second time.
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