I was performing for a friend once in the school canteen upon request. She was sitting next to her friend who was busy doing her work. Not thinking of this as a problem I started performing my ACR, which starts off like Oz Pearlman's ACR routine in Born to Perform, but my routine requires a pass near the end with a b***k one card above the chosen card so that I can complete it with Brad Christians ACR in Ninja 2, the one where he covers the face up card with a face down one and the face up card changes to the spec's chosen card. It was exactly at this point that her friend looked up and saw my "rubbing" move to change the card. She looked at me and her friend saying, " omg, he jus had 2 cards and left the card on top of the other one, dats dumb" This broke my momentum, and my spec's attention was also shaken. I ignored the comment finishing up with my card-to-mouth and ending the trick there.

In itself it wasn't really that much of a problem, but it is important to note that she would not have made that remark if she saw me putting the card face-up in the middle like I did before passing, because then the idea that the card is in the middle would eliminate in her mind the possibility that I could rub the chosen card at the top. Hence this is a problem of cognitives.

What would be the best course of action under such circumtsances?

That's an observation I've also encountered quite a few times Lumpy.
And it's one that really demostrates that magic happens in the spec's mind, not in their eyes, regardless of how visual the effect is.

In my humble opinion, it is so SO important for a spectator to follow thru an effect from beginning to finish for the effect to work. If someone comes into the effect 1/2 way, it is very likely that they will "figure out" how it's done, because their reality were not altered by the psycology of the effect.

Your example is a very good one. Had she seen the effect right from the beginning, she would have seen that the card was lost in the middle of the deck, therefore eliminating the possibility that you just have 2 cards and leaving 1 behind. They are not amazed because they saw the card appear, they are amazed because their logic tells them it's impossible.
I have found at times that this is true even for super visual effects like floating bill. If they didn't see the bill borrowed and crumpled up before floating up in your hands, when they see it already in mid-air, they become very convinced that they know how it's done.


What to do? I don't really know. :!!:
Maybe try your best to avoid it at all times?
Where that fails, maybe when you see someone joining to explain what happened previously to them?
Or try making each "portion" of an effect shorter? But that's not always possible.

I'll leave it to the greater minds in here to answer that properly... B)

Hmm, yap, if this kind of situation do happens, i wont be bothered by the comments and continue what i wanted to do, if they eventually asked, then i juz tell them that its up to them to believe anot. :)

But since its ur frenz, its harder to convice them that its magic, most of the time, they say that your hand move very fast, or things like that.

Sometime, to win this kind of people, they are half hecklers la, doing a very very simple effect, that dun realise sleights will beat them down. By the way, i really really rarely do for frenz le.. Because they cant give u the right response, you cant know whether your effect is strong enough or require any improvement anot.

Always a good try.

Hey thanks for the advice guys, next time i'll rpobably just try to be more careful about my surroundings :D