Card Magic

Old and New Tricks with Cards

A Short Course on Card Magic

Prof. Ramprasad Saptharishi, TIFR Mumbai

About the Course

Card magic is a fascinating blend of mathematics, psychology, and performance art. In this short course, we’ll explore some fundamental principles of card magic, focusing on mathematical techniques that create seemingly impossible effects. While the focus will be on self-working tricks and the math that drives them, we will also cover practical and presentation aspects of card magic.

About the Instructor

Prof. Ramprasad Saptharishi Prof. Ramprasad Saptharishi is a faculty member in the School of Technology and Computer Science at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR).

He completed his Ph.D. under the guidance of Manindra Agrawal from Chennai Mathematical Institute. Following his Ph.D., he was a Research Fellow at Microsoft Research India for a year, hosted by Neeraj Kayal and Satya Lokam. Subsequently, he was a post-doctoral fellow at Tel Aviv University hosted by Amir Shpilka before joining TIFR.

His academic interests are in pseudorandomness and derandomization, algebraic circuit complexity, and broadly anything with an algebraic flavour. He also happens to be a connoisseur and performer of card magic!

Dates and Time
  • Dates: March 15 and 16, 2025
  • Format: Hybrid, but in-person recommended! Join us at Jayshree S Sheth Learning Theatre (1/102).
  • Time: 10AM-1PM and 3PM to 6PM on both days, with coffee and performance breaks
  • Zoom details: Meeting ID: 951 8057 7008; Passcode: 297620
Target Audience

This course is open to anyone interested in magic, mathematics, or both! No prior experience with card magic is required. Participants should bring a standard deck of playing cards. If you are at IIT Gandhinagar, sign up through our short course mechanism. We will shortly post a link to a WhatsApp group that you can join to stay up to date on proceedings.

Recommended Reading
  1. Magical Mathematics: The Mathematical Ideas That Animate Great Magic Tricks by Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham
  2. Expert Card Technique by Jean Hugard and Frederick Braue
  3. Mathematical Card Magic by Colm Mulcahy
  4. Card College (Volume 1) by Roberto Giobbi
Teaching Plan

Session 1: Introduction to Card Magic

We’ll start with the basics of card handling and some fundamental mathematical principles that underlie many card tricks. Topics include shuffle tracking, the Gilbreath principle, and basic probability in card magic.

Session 2: Self-Working Card Tricks

We now demonstrate some concrete card tricks that leverage the principles we saw so far. These tricks work automatically without sleight of hand. We’ll work out how the principles from before support the magic in these tricks.

Session 3: More Shuffles

Explore more shuffle invariants and learn about De-Bruijn sequences; and pick up some new tricks.

Session 4: Make it Your Own

Practice the tricks you have learned so far and challenge yourself to design new tricks based on the priciples you have learned so far.