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Today a layman friend of mine excitedly told me about a trick that he had performed on him the previous day. Taking into account that there is a possibility that he remembered it differently to how it actually was, i shall describe what he told me:
The magician asked him to think of any number. He then asked him to do various maths with this figure, dividing it and adding to it etc. After my friend had reached his final number(and apparently never having said it out loud) the magician rifflied through the deck and upon my friend calling 'stop', the two cards corresponding to my friends number popped out of the deck. For example, if his number was 23, a 2 spot and a 3 spot card both popped out the pack. I couldn't ascertain what my friend meant when he said they 'popped' out of the deck, but it sounded interesting, and i was wondering if anyone knew what this effect was called and who it was by? Oh and my initial thought was that the maths performed would always bring the same result, but the magician apparently did this on a few people and the numbers were different each time. Thanks for your help guys.

I'd say it's a combination of things... the Math side you can learn from two different sources, Annemann's 102 Forces (or however many forces are in it... I forget all of that) and Max Maven's Elephant in Denmark routine, which can be a bit of fun in and of its own if you have a devious mind such as mine.

Using either of these two math formulas you already know what the answer should be when people do each step properly... bear in mind that in today's world there are those that have difficulty adding two and two without a calculator.

The card part... well, there's a variety of ways of making the cards "pop" up and out of the pack. I'm betting the magician used a "Haunted Pack" styled set-up.

I personally don't think the bit with the Cards is such a great bit of business, not when you can do so much better and create a superior mystery using the force in question... but then I'm not a magician so I don't have to make everything into a card trick

Reminds me a little of the 'Number Reversal' routine that I saw on a Banachek tape a while back.

Spec purely thinks of a 3 digit number, reverses the order, subtracts one figure away from the other to come up with a totally random figure which the mentalist then proceeds to reveal.

Moving, as I am, ever further away from magic towards pure metalism, I love this routine - totally impromptu, requires no props (not even a pen and paper if the spec can do the maths in their head!) and gets a great reaction.


Sean

That's one of my favourites too Klangster; nothing needed (part from some facial expressions I adopt) - but I have a drawing of a well known ice cream combination in case of one outcome.

Thanks for your thoughts and ideas guys. Especially your recommendations. I will definitely be checking all of your suggestions out.