Card Tricks
ProjectX by Matt Ellison
£16.99 from :// www.alakazam.co.uk
http://www.alakazam.co.uk/acatalog/Mentalism_13.html
The Effect.
You tell the spectators that you are going to try an experiment. In fact you can iterate that this isn’t really a card trick at all, it's an experiment to prove how easy it is to implant a thought into someones mind.
You take out a deck of cards and tell them that you are going to flick through it very fast in front of a volunteer, and that the volunteer should try and remember any card that they see. Tell them it is important that they actually see the card as you are not 100% sure that all 52 cards are in the pack. It doesn’t have to be one volunteer either, in fact there is a lot to be said for doing it with 2, 3 or even 4 people.
Once the volunteers has selected a card, you hand the deck to them and tell them to deal the cards face up, and to stop when they get to their card. You also can tell them to count the cards as they go.
What they will find is that their card has disappeared from the deck of 51 cards. The cards can be spread out on the table where they are free to inspect them. Their card is genuinely the only one missing.
You can then reveal their freely chosen card as still being still in the box, or in an envelope, top pocket etc.
Difficulty. 2/5
1=Even I can do it, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used,
4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)
Nothing too difficult, but I did need a little practice with the one move before I was confident with it.
Review.
This is yet another of the tricks I saw Peter Nardi demo the other night. When he demonstrated it he did it with four volunteers who all picked the same card.
The reason given for doing it to four people at once was that it then didn’t matter if only some of them picked the card. In fact this strengthened the trick for me as it made it much more of an experiment rather than clever trickery with cards.
Remember the card selected was just a card that the spectator saw – It would appear that the spectator had total free will to select any card they wanted, and yet – inexplicably when they come to count the cards – the card they chose wasn’t even there. This is very impressive.
The other reason why I liked it so much was the patter that went with it. I am not sure about posting details here in the open forum but if any one is interested I will post further examples in the MO section. The reason why the patter is so brilliant (for me) is that he convinces the spectators that the reason the specific card was chosen was because of the clever wording used when he was giving out the instructions for what he wanted the spectator to do.
I am embarrassed to admit, that I fell for this totally.
If you are in any doubt at all about the effectiveness of this trick, then see the following demo as Peter Nardi himself demonstrates it. (Complete with patter)
www.tricktv.co.uk/demos/projectx.wmv
Rating. Effect/item: 10/10, Quality of goods: 9/10, Value for money: 8/10
Bottom Line.
This may not be one of the cheaper tricks, but for me it is a must have.
The bottom line?
WOW!
