It's Thanksgiving here in Grey Matters central, so this is going to be a quick post. I thought I'd share some quick card tricks with which you can entertain your family over the holiday weekend.

Garth Sundem starts us off with a simple card trick in which people determine how many cards you deal in each of several piles. When the final cards are revealed, they prove to be all Aces! It isn't intended to be the most amazing trick, as you might guess by the title of the article, Math Card Trick: Amaze And Astound Your (Idiotic) Friends And Family!, but it's still good fun.

If you know someone else who enjoys mathematical card tricks, and would like to help you pull one over (as long as you agree to do the same for them), check out Poker-Faced Over the Phone. In this trick, you mention that there's a prediction that's been placed in the card case. You ask someone to get out a good, but not perfect, poker hand out for a game of draw poker. You then ask them to replace any card of their choice with another one from the deck.

When they replace the card, you tell them to open up the card case. Inside the card case is a name and a phone number. Your participant calls the phone number, reads off the cards in the new hand, and the person on the other end of the phone identifies which card was not in the original hand! This is an interesting take on the Fitch Cheney Card Trick. I won't go into the exact method, but I will say that fans of Leo Boudreau's work will probably enjoy this.