talkmagic.co.uk

Hello all,

I'm working on a little research, I'm looking for any methods to fish for a card from a free choice of any in a deck.

The method doesn't need to be good, effective, convincing or deceptive.

I've come up with a method to fish for a single card out of a possible choice of four, but without asking any questions or making any statements. I'm trying to apply it to a full deck but I'm struggling, so I'm looking for inspiration in established methods.

I am aware of a couple of methods already, one uses a progressive anagram. Which I really don't think will work for my method.
The other isn't strictly a full deck fish, and is a method by Ramon Roiboo in his book 'thinking the impossible'. This method won't work for my method either.

I'd appreciate any leads you could give me, any straight full deck fishing method should have lots of potential.

Thanks,

Sam

Perhaps not exactly what you are looking for but nonetheless may help you in your search.

Check out K.E.N.T released by Kenton Knepper.

In essence...a borrowed, shuffled deck is used...the spectator spreads them all over the table and removes any five they like face down. The procedure for them taking five is completely free, can be done in their own hands...however you want.

They look at the cards and discard four, leaving what the consider the best card. You can discern it very quickly and efficiently with minimal work. It can also be done over the phone.

Docc Hilford demonstrated something like this at a Tabula Mentis. I am not sure if it was a genuine full deck routine, or if it used one of his products (as I recall, at one stage he said it was a regular deck, then at another that it was one of his marketed decks). There were multiple participants, so it was done partially like a tossed-out deck routine, but I didn't feel it came over too strongly. Even a performer of Docc's calibre and charisma can only cover so many misses!

The problem you have is in hiding a miss. Realistically, with a card, any more than a couple of wrong answers and it looks like you are doing exactly what you are doing. This may be why there are no resources on the subject: it's a pipe dream.

There are ways of doing something similar (like the aforementioned K.E.N.T.), but you want to give someone a free choice of card from a full, ungimmicked deck and to be able to whittle the options down without it being apparent. Rather like the old adage about projects, I think you can have any two from three. You can have a free choice from a full, ungimmicked deck, but the process may be obvious. You can have a free choice from a not-so normal deck, and a less obvious process. You can have a guided/restricted choice from a full, ungimmicked deck and again, conceal the process.

Every trick has a compromise. If there is no compromise, you are doing it for real.

Personally, I think it's often more interesting if the spectator can tell the performer what card the latter has chosen.

Hi FTHO

I saw somewhere on one of the forums a post about the statistical distribution of cards that people choose from a deck. So if the person can see the cards and you ask them to choose one they have an affinity towards, you can statistically whittle it down a bit. If you need to get a bit more info on stats look up the normal distribution (note: I'm assuming the results of the study were normally distributed), combine that with your method and some fishing you could have a great effect,

regards,

Sea.