Pinetti's Prediction

This is my variation of a trick Professor Pinetti included in his book Physical Amusements and Diverting Experiments. In Chapter XIII, the author describes a card trick called “How to guess a Card that has been thought of by anybody, by writing before hand on a Paper or Card a Number, which will certainly be that of the Card that has been thought of”. As that’s a bit of a mouthful, I’ve renamed the trick “Pinetti’s Prediction”.

The trick doesn’t read particularly well in Pinetti’s book, but it is surprisingly effective if you try it with cards in hand. “Pinetti’s Prediction” relies on a simple mathematical principle and is entirely self-working. However, the trick is improved if you include a false cut or two during the proceedings.

This trick is the second in the Piquet Pack Series.

JUMP AHEAD

On This Page

Effect
Background & Credits
Requirements & Preparation
Method & Presentation
Performance Tips & Additional Ideas
Afterthoughts

Effect

You write a prediction on a piece of paper and place it aside, out of view. You then ask a spectator to shuffle the cards and choose a number between one and twenty. Once they’ve made their selection, they deal that many cards face-down onto the table, remembering the card on the top of the pile. The remainder of the pack is dropped on top of the pile. All this happens while your back is turned to the audience, so there’s no way you could know which card they chose.

Once they’re finished, you turn around and take the deck, dealing a “mystic number” of cards onto the table. You then drop the remaining cards on top, further randomising the pack. The deck is cut several times, making it even more impossible for you to know the location of the selected card.

Finally, it’s time to reveal the prediction. You show your prediction to the audience, which reads “24”. The spectator then announces their chosen number. Let’s say it’s thirteen. You start dealing cards from the top of the deck, counting up from their number (in this case, beginning with the number fourteen) until you reach the predicted number of twenty-four. Then, you dramatically turn over the card at that position and reveal that it’s the exact card the person selected earlier! It’s an incredible feat of magic that will leave your audience speechless.

Background & Credits

This card trick appears on page 25 of Physical Amusements and Diverting Experiments by Signor Giuseppe Pinetti, also known as Professor Pinetti. The book was first published in France as Amusements Physiques et Différentes Experiences Divertissantes in 1784. Later that year, he also published it in English to sell after his performances in London.

I’ve changed the handling so that you do not need to take the pack behind your back (or under the table), and I’ve updated the presentation to connect to the other tricks in the Piquet Pack Series. Believe it or not, Pinetti suggested you sniff the pack and locate the selected card using your sense of smell!

Requirements & Preparation

To perform “Pinetti’s Prediction”, you’ll need a pen, some paper to make your prediction, and a special deck of thirty-three cards. First, remove all the high cards—the Nines, Tens, Jacks, Queens, and Kings—from the pack. This leaves you with only the Aces, Twos, Threes, Fours, Fives, Sixes, Sevens, and Eights in each suit. Then, add one Joker to complete your special “Piquet pack”.

I must confess that this isn’t an actual Piquet pack. A genuine Piquet pack consists of thirty-two cards, not thirty-three, and comprises the Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Ten, Nine, Eight, and Seven in each suit. However, this specific setup offers certain benefits when performing one of my favourite tricks in the Piquet Pack Series called “Pythagorean Prediction”.

If you want to use an authentic Piquet pack for this trick, you can certainly do so. However, it’s important to note that a Piquet pack only contains thirty-two cards, whereas all the tricks in this series use a deck of thirty-three cards. Furthermore, this trick’s method doesn’t require thirty-three cards. It originally used a standard Piquet pack containing thirty-two cards. You can also modify the method to work with a modern fifty-two-card deck. However, for the sake of consistency, I suggest you add a Joker to the pack to complete the setup. This will allow you to perform other tricks in the Piquet Pack Series, such as “Piles of Pinetti”, before or after this one.

Method & Presentation

Tell your audience that you’re going to make a prediction about future events. Take the piece of paper and write the number “24” on it (without letting anyone see what you’re writing). Fold up the paper and place the prediction aside. Put it in a clean glass so that your prediction is in clear view the entire time, eliminating the possibility of it being secretly changed after the fact.

To begin, spread the Piquet pack face up on the table and introduce it to your audience by saying, “This is a unique pack of cards. It was used by the famous Italian conjurer Professor Pinetti in the late eighteenth century. Instead of having the usual fifty-two cards, it contains only thirty-two.”

Gather up the cards and hand them to a willing spectator for shuffling. Instruct them to cut the pack several times. Once they’re satisfied that the cards are in a truly random order, turn your back to your audience and say, “Please mentally select a number between one and twenty. Don’t say it out loud. Keep it a secret. Have you got one?” Once your volunteer confirms that they have a number in mind, continue by saying, “Queitly deal cards into a single pile on the table equal to the number you’re thinking of. Have you done that?” Next, tell your participant to look at and remember the pile’s top card, replacing it on top. Finally, instruct them to shuffle the cards remaining in their hand, drop the talon on top of the pile on the table, and then square up the pack. Once they’ve done this, turn back to face your audience.

“I don’t know what secret number you’re thinking of, so it would be impossible for me to know what card you’re thinking of, correct?” Your participant should agree that this statement is accurate. Next, say, “As well as being a clever conjurer, Professor Pinetti was deeply superstitious and believed in the mystic power of numerology. So let’s use a special number to further randomise the pack. We’ll use the number ten because it is supposedly the most powerful two-digit number. Like the famous mathematician Pythagoras, Pinetti believed that the number ten represented the Universe and the sum of human knowledge.”

Deal ten cards to the table, then drop the talon on the pile.

Show your prediction to the audience, and say, “Here’s my prediction. Twenty-four. Remember, I wrote this prediction before you picked a secret number and before you shuffled and cut the cards.” Ask the participant to announce their secret number for the first time. Let’s assume that they say it’s thirteen. Start dealing cards from the top of the deck, counting up from their number (in this case, beginning with the number fourteen) until you reach the predicted number of twenty-four. Deal slowly and verbally count the numbers aloud, e.g. “fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four...”

Then, dramatically turn over the card as you reach the predicted number. It will always be the thought-of selection.

Performance Tips & Additional Ideas

Pinetti’s original method asks a spectator to spread through the face-up pack and count the cards until the thought-of number is reached. The card at this spot is remembered. The pack is then taken behind the performer’s back, and twenty-three cards are secretly transferred from the bottom to the top of the pack, which is one less than the prediction number. Pinetti used a pack comprised of thirty-two cards. If you want to use his method with a thirty-three pack, it works just the same. 

My modified method achieves the same thing as Pinetti’s by openly transferring ten cards from the top of the packet to the bottom, which is more efficient than moving twenty-three cards from the bottom to the top of the pack. However, if you prefer how Pinettis did it, go for it. If you use his method, it is easier to transfer the cards if you first turn the deck face up behind your back. But remember to turn it face down again before bringing it back out. I also think asking a spectator to deal a known number of cards to the table is a better selection process than asking someone to spread through the cards and count them simultaneously because there is less opportunity for error.

The maths behind this trick is rudimentary. Once you’ve run through the trick a few times, you’ll notice that you’re openly adding ten cards to their secret number and then dealing ten cards from their secret number. However, because you count up from their thought-of number, this simple case of addition and subtraction isn’t as apparent as it should be to most people. If you throw in a false cut or two before you deal out your “mystic number”, then the method is incredibly difficult to backtrack.

It is possible to repeat the trick by varying the prediction number. For example, if you use “27” as your prediction number, you must adjust your mystic number to seven. And if you want to use nine as your mystic number, then your prediction must be “25”. 

See the table below for all available combinations. You should use a mystic number that isn’t too large. Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten and Thirteen all work well and can be easily justified through the presentation. For example, seven is considered a lucky number in many Western cultures, and eight is considered lucky in Chinese and other Asian cultures.

Use whatever number pair you prefer. First, however, you must find a good reason to justify using your mystic number. For example, if you decide to use eight as your mystic number, you could frame the trick as an “ancient Egyptian ritual” connected to the Ogdoad, who were the eight primordial deities of creation. During the eighteenth century, there was a lot of fascination in Europe surrounding ancient Egyptian antiquity, so something like this would work well.

Prediction	Mystic Number
1	33
2	32
3	31
4	30
5	29
6	28
7	27
8	26
9	25
10	24
11	23
12	22
13	21
14	20
15	19
16	18
17	17
18	16
19	15
20	14
21	13
22	12
23	11
24	10
25	9
26	8
27	7
28	6
29	5
30	4
31	3
32	2
33	1

Another approach is to ask someone to name a two-digit number below thirty. Write this down as your prediction. Then mentally calculate the relevant mystic number by subtracting the chosen prediction number from thirty-four. Use this mystic number to reveal the thought-of selection at the predicted number. I don’t think this is a sensible idea because it might encourage people to link the prediction number to the mystic number. But I mention it as a possibility that you might like to explore. Pinetti’s original method might also be a better choice in this situation because it only requires you to subtract one from the prediction number and then secretly transfer this number of cards from the bottom to the top of the pack. 

Studying this table actually exposes the method. The sum of each prediction number and mystic number pair is always thirty-four. Once the participant has told you their secret number, we’re simply subtracting the known number from the secret number by counting up from the secret number.

You can avoid using a mystic number by spreading through the cards and establishing a break below ten cards (or Pinky Count ten cards if you can). Then, perform a Double Undercut to transfer ten cards, or whatever number you’re using from the above table, from the top of the pack to the bottom.

If performing this as part of a more formal show, you might want to buy a cheap crocodile/alligator clip card holder to display the prediction.

Finally, it is possible to perform a similar trick with a standard fifty-two-card pack of playing cards. However, it works much better with a reduced pack because this limits the required amount of dealing. See the table below for all of the prediction and mystic number pairings: 

Prediction	Mystic Number
52	1
51	2
50	3
49	4
48	5
47	6
46	7
45	8
44	9
43	10
42	11
41	12
40	13
39	14
38	15
37	16
36	17
35	18
34	19
33	20
32	21
31	22
30	23
29	24
28	25
27	26
26	27
25	28
24	29
23	30
22	31
21	32
20	33
19	34
18	35
17	36
16	37
15	38
14	39
13	40
12	41
11	42
10	43
9	44
8	45
7	46
6	47
5	48
4	49
3	50
2	51
1	52

If I did use a regular deck with this method, I’d use eleven as my mystic number. This would make the prediction number “42”, which would allow me to use a reference to Douglas Adams’ classic book The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. In the book, 42 is revealed as “the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.” Max Maven was the first performer to use this idea with a card trick using the Gilbreath Principle.

Afterthoughts

As already stated, this trick doesn’t read well. However, when you perform it, you’ll find it is a very effective and mysterious prediction that will baffle most people. It also works well if you perform it as a lead-in to “Pythagorean Prediction”.