talkmagic.co.uk

Ok, so i gave in and, against my better judgement, bought myself a brainwave deck. I have no problems getting it to work and think it would be a great trick to show people. I have one problem though and was hoping you could shine some light on it.

When the spectator thinks of a card, you sit there with a smug grin on your face for a second before opening the blue box in front of you both and pull out........a red deck of cards. Does this strike you as an odd thing to do? Do your spectators that you perform this for pick up on this? It just doesnt seem quite right to me. How do you stop people thinking this?

Thanks for any advice you can give me guys!

Rich

A blue bicycle card box has a BLUE back and a RED front.

If you align the deck so the RED FRONT side is shown when pulling the RED BACK deck out, and the BLUE BACK side is shown when pulling the BLUE BACKS out, you're laughing.

The audience don't CARE what colour the box is, usually

Another alternative I've used is to have the deck rubber-banded and placed in a small brown manilla envelope, which is sealed.

Works a treat, and looks totally tamper proof

Bear in mind, I didn't do this because I thought the deck from box was iffy, I did it cos it fitted my routine better!

I only really use brainwave as a backup (and it's brilliant for that) and have never had a problem with the different colour box. Over the past 6 or so years I have used different lines to combat this including incredibly cheesy lines about magic being about the unexpected.

However, nowadays I simply rely on the fact that the whole trick is centred around different colours. All those red cards seem out of place in that blue box ... except for one ...

Having said that, it has never been a problem for me (no spectator has ever found it too suspicious) and I guess I only really used those lines to make myself feel better. As long as undue attention is not drawn to the different colour, the main focus will be on the effect, and the effect is strong enough that when they see their card face up the last thing they will be thinking about is the colour of the box.

Good luck

If I pull out the red side, I say I took the reversed card from a blue deck. I have never had a problem with this in the last 20 years or so.