Hiyo all yee mentally charged personnels,

I'm just thinking, out of 52 cards, how many do i need to prepare to get a blind hit of the spectators named card, say 50% of the time? Please don't tell me 26 cards..

One thing Derren Brown mentioned in Pure Effect.. or was it Absolute Magic? Well, which-ever, he mentioned that he used to bring along this lighter which has an engraving of a Queen of Hearts on its back. And he likes to start off an conversation by trying to verbally force the Queen of Hearts to the spectator, but if that doesn't work, he would just proceed with bullsh*t and stuff and go on to another trick.

I am thinking of doing something like that, but i want more cards put in to increase the changes of blindly hitting the card.. to well, hopefully 50%. Any suggestions of what cards you guys have heard mostly chosen and how many should be used. (Of cos, verbal and mental and whatever force will be taken into consideration.)

check out Kenton Knepper's Kollosal Killer.
Its not exactly what you described, but pretty close.

Construct your own 5 card force deck or something. Then you can get it 100% with some pumping. Plus all you need to do is just get them to look at and think of a card!

Though there are many other ways to narrow the range of cards he would choose. Using these verbal suggestions plus a bank of cards, you can probably get the selection 100% of the time.

And depending on what exactly you want to do, you can even use a method that is outlined thoroughly in Corinda pages 88-92.

(That's right! You kids thought Mr. Maddened was going to reveal the precise method didn't you?! Well noooooo... Now you actually have to buy the Corinda book! And it's expensive! Which means you won't buy it unless you're serious about your mentalism! Which means if you're just interested in the method, you will never find it out from me!!! Muahahahahah!! :off: )

Wuahahahahahaha... Maddened ki siao already :lol:

Hmmm, besides the books mentioned above, I think you may find Banachek's Psychological Subleties useful to you... and good news for you, it's now back in the market and very reasonably priced too!

He's got a chapter or two about that topic, if I remember correctly. I flipped through the previous edition some time go... I think owners of these older prints (especially those who bought them for really high prices from the 'black market') are feeling kinda sore now, since this 2006 reprint is out and the hardcover is quite affordable.

Hope this helps!
Ning ;)

Banachek's Psychological Subleties i've read actually.. Hehe.. Actually that is one of the reason i'm looking to do this.. (remember he suggested alot of those one-hit stuff. Hit and make a big fuss of it, miss and move on series of tricks. This is kinda like an expansion of that.)

Corinda i have too~ Maddened, you can't put me down! I shall go read up those pages later.. =P Oh yah, and about forcing, i don't really want to force too much, i want it be as casual and free-willed as possible.

About Kolossal Killer, it's not really examinable. The idea of hit and reveal, miss and move on tricks is that on hitting, i can let them examine my revealation 101%. Like if i have 5 predictions prepared, i can have 5 at different completely locations or totally different presenation method, like one written, on picture in hp, and stuff like that, so it is totally examinable..

Maybe he meant is verbal force, which is hypnosis. Which is very hard. Other methods like mentioned by ning is good. :)

Yup, closer to verbal force, but with a bit more leeway.

Example:

"Imagine you have a deck of cards in front of you, separated into reds and blacks. We need only one card, so we'll put away one of the colours. Now imagine the remaining cards in 2 suits, and discard one of the suit. Now imagine the cards running from Ace to King. We'll do away with the Ace because it's too obvious, and I like you to know picture one of the cards. Just picture it bright in your mind, making it big. Ok, what card do you have?"

Of course just reading the above won't do any good and you'll require some *ahem* actions to accompany it. But well, it's one way to do it...

Weaver > Your 5 predictions prepared in 5 locations is actually one way to do it. And the pages in Corinda I pointed you to described this in detail, so go check it out.

See I am psychic.

Hmm... so you can really verbally F a card?

I just remember that's this particular trick I saw (smiliar to what Weaver is talking), where the magician simply spread through the entire deck (or at least I think was the entire deck) faced-up and asked me to remember a card in my head. I remembered the K of Hearts in that instance.

After that, he pulled out the only faced-down card in the deck and showed it to me. Of course, it was not the K of Hearts, but some indifferent card. He then asked me to read the small writing at the corner of the card which read, "YOu will choose the King of Hearts!!!" I was blown away.

Till today, I still have no clue how he did it.

Anyway, could it have been a verbal F? I'm not too sure....

*ohm* Right Maddened - now guess what I'm having for lunch right now :g: Heh.

Anyways! I need to share with with you guys... is anyone here familiar with Sleight Of Mind by Ian Harling and Martin Nyrup?

I've been interested in this book for ages, it's been around for just a few years, now available from Murphys. It's marketed as a mix of waking mentalism, NLP & hypnosis for magicians! Sound like really solid darren brown stuff, you can read more about it here!

They may have something in there that touches on blind guessing too, tho i suspect it'd be more on suggestions and very powerful verbal forces! I'm considering investing in this book, it's got good reviews ^_^

Anyone owns a copy?

No....that's a gimmick and sleight based method. I cannot remember where I've read it, but i know i've come across this before. Er..provided the effect is what i think it is ;)

Back on topic...

I've read in various different material about commonly named cards lists. I think this is what Weaver is looking for? Some of these lists are as little as 6 cards, but quite a few of these lists are drastically different.

I suspect, that such "commonly picked cards" are demographically sensitive, therefore, such a list from US for example, might not be as effective in Singapore.
But with an locally effective list, you should be able to do what you were thinking with just 10 cards and get probaby 80% hits? Ahgaration.....


You know what we should do? We should ALL go out, and each of us ask 20 lay-people to think of a card, and we can tally the results into a Singapore's version of such a list.

Ok...who wants to volunteer to coordinate this? B)

Aloy! Exactly! I've saw a couple of such lists and i doubt they will work for Singaporeans, cos, me for one, haven't hit much of the top listed cards before.. That's why i am asking if maybe possible for everyone to post like top 5 cards from their OWN experience..
I think it'll be pretty cool if we could really go out and just like get a survey and compile the results! We could compile most thought of single card, most thought of word, shape, color.. Wow, it would be a great milestone for the Singapore Mentalism Club~ Hehe.

P.S. Yes, i've considered verbal forces too. (Yea, it DOES work.) But two things, firstly, the style doesn't really fit me.. Hehe. Secondly, i'm trying to aim at those who would proposely try to spoil your trick by not listening to your "force" and just have his own card in mind from the start.

i did a research a few monrthes ago on malaysian.
if you really want to carry cards
actually it's like 6 cards...

ace of spade, joker(whoa suprisingly quite a lot of people will say this one, about 12.25% of singaporean or malaysian wont expect you to carry it and they'll name it),
nine of diamond,queen of hearts,5 of clubs, seven of spades.

actually if you can do verbal force, just use it.
my verbal force is about 50 percent hit also.. :P
to lay people verbal force can be 100 % to a group of people if you know how to present it correctly...i sort of dicovcered this method of 100% verbal force to a GROUP of lay audience.

hey pal if you're interested in this kind of effect, we can discuss more about it when we meet. now i got 3 methods in mind to achieve this effect.;)

Yea I agree with that verbal forces might be demographically sensitive. I've done Brown's 3D force like 5-6 times and so far only one (1) complete success. Most of the times, the number is right but the suit was wrong (though I noticed that mostly they say Spades. hmmmm....). So that's 20%. Bugger.

And I'm down for such a survey if one takes place. Though honestly, I think there may be too many factors involved if one just randomly goes around asking for cards. You need at least a controlled environment, like say, at your performance venue. I think it would matter if say the person being surveyed just came from a poker game or a dai dee game. And equally the results might differ if he/she isn't very acquainted with cards (I know someone who call the club cards as "5 of Cauliflower").

But still a worthy venture I say. Yaaaare!

pal if you got enough basics on NLP you can create your own patter for verbal force. ;)

and it might work better.

the 3-d force i seldom use it, because the hit is quite low in Malaysia, when you say: picture a little no. on top and bottom corner, they already got the card, that's the reason why most of the time we cant get the suit right.

Yea bro, I think that may be a reason.

Am trying to figure out where to learn more about NLP actually. Seems powerful, but I have my reservations. Dunninger, Al Mann, Kreskin all never had NLP and yet look at them... But would love to find out more. Any recommendations? Maybe PM me about this because I think we have gone off-topic long enough. :P

pmed you.

yea and i got to agree that NLP is not necessary. :lol:

To I_Never_REgret: Hey thanks man! This trick has been baffling me for quite some time already! So when is our next gathering?

Anyway, just something on NLP...

I can't say I am an expert in NLP but due to my work, I had actually done a bit of research and some training on this subject. In regard to performing magic, I don't really see how does NLP fit into it.

Basically, NLP is more for building rapport and state changing. For you to really influence somebody, it would be more on hypnosis. But sometimes, I think hypnosis is given more credit than it actually is, cos a lot of techniques is actually employed in everyday lives, only we didn't see it as a hypnosis technique.

So cool.. When when when will be our next meeting? NLP and stuff to discuss.. Must be fun~ =o