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I tried a search and couldn't find anything... sorry if this has come up already.

Does a classic force actually?!? I am just trying to learn some new tricks and it seems this is a common force to use... I have only seen it on video and never actually tried it in person. It seems amazing to me that something so simple actually gets someone to chose the card.

Does this force work? Have you ever had it not work?

I guess you could just go into a trick where you dont have to force the card if they chose the wrong one....

AcrylicAce

Yes this does work virtually everytime once you get it down right but on the odd ocassion it doesent then you have to be ready to go into something else. Ive heard the general rule by people that it works 80% of the time but to be honest if your good enough i would say it works alot more than this.

I find that classic force is generally slightly over-rated, but can also be useful. It works about 2/3 of the time for me, but is only useful for card tricks with people who are socially complaint enough to choose naturally, instead of choosing a card at either end of the pack just to look clever and/or annoy you.
If you want someone to feel like they have a completely free choice then this is definitely the way to do it.

It's worth trying on people a lot before you go out and perform in public, and needs to be done quite quickly for full effectiveness. Obviously if the force card is not chosen then a routine such as an ACR needs to be avaliable to be used.
If this does not suit your style then I would reccomend the backslip, which is well worth a look at and possibly my favourite force.

why not try a cut-deeper force instead? all in the hands of the person involved too...

annemann's old classic booklet has 202 different forces in it if you are interested? only a couple of quid...if you have £35 spare though, go for the encyclopedia of forces by lewis jones...

slip-cut force is ok, i like to do it vertically and with the short ends personally though, then a gentle tap with the cards to straighten them, them hand them the "empty" half....makes less noise too (can't remember where i learnt that)...

I think that from all of the forces, the classic force is the most enjoyable to perform when it comes off and I agree that it's one that needs to be practiced over and over to improve the success rate.

However, the cut deeper force is the one that I tend to use the most, depending on the trick veing performed. It just seems to the spec to be totally impossible.

I suggest practicing the classic force in tricks that don't need it. Then it doesn't matter if it fails and it means you know the card (which you would have otherwise just controlled) and have the option of trick switching.

My fave force has to be the psychological force that DB does in Devil's Workbook.

An absolute killer and he gives you a couple of outs too (not that I've ever needed them). Also I think it is improving my classic force because underneath they work on similar principles. (Well to my warped mind they do!)

svengali deck. I dont care. No buts about it! THEY dont know whats going on. Go ahead, push the envelope and let it happen in their hands. The whole routine. Its a blast. Cut deeper is good too.

On the note about the classic force, simply be able to read whether people are pompous or not and it will work 100% of the time. Usuaully I tend to present a few tricks to see my spectators style, and I simply adapt the force I want to use to that.

Try this,

face up classic force a blue backed card in a red pack, flip the pack over and tell them to put it anywhere in the deck..

cheers!

kirk

I'm not exactly sure what the classic force is (I don't do very much card magic at all) but if it is what I think it is, then it works 9/10 with me. When I perform a card effect, I treat shuffling, cutting, selecting a card, etc. as simply going through the motions, i.e just something that has to be done before the effect proper, begins. Spectators assume that the deck was fairly shuffled and there is no way I could have known, or had any control over which card was selected.

The only time it doesn't work is when a spectator takes the card selection too seriously. However, this usually only occurs when a spectator believes that the effect will simply be, he picks a random card and I 'magically' tell him what it is. If it is made clear before the effect that the trick is going to be more than that, then the shuffle, cut, select, becomes a mere preliminary to something about to happen.

Of course if the classic force, is not what I think it is, then ignore my answer.

I'm finding the classic force works more everytime I use it. I started practising it with virtually every trick I was doing, which really helps and its never a bad thing to know what the card is even if you don't need to for the trick! The trick for me is getting them to make the selection as part of the rhythm of my patter and force. When I first started using it I was awkward with my hand which stunted things and this in turn seemed to knock it all off pace. Now I can get them to pick the card at the same time as bringing the pack forward and saying to pick a card. I think this is just finding the right pace for these 3 things to come together. This has also helped me to deal with the kinda of people who deliberately pick a card you've moved past, or go for the one at the top or whatever. By making the force part of the overall rhythm I'm finding that they pick a card before they've time to think about being an awkward git!