Hello all,

I thought it would be fun to hear from those of you that are performing this effect...; spectator reactions, maybe a unique way you perform it, etc.. Have you ever done it wrong, and what was your "out"? Let's hear about it!

I don't have it anymore, but after watching the trick and learning the secret, I was slightly annoyed by the fact that the paper doesn't follow the Jeopardy format of stating an answer which has to be questioned.

For example, the first part says; "21 cards will be face down." If I were performing, I would have it say; "This many cards are face down-if they were all Aces, you'd have a blackjack." and the correct response would be "what is 21?"

Ed,

I know what you mean, but I think that would just confuse the matter - what's the effect, that there are 21 face down cards? that they're all aces, or something to do with blackjack?

The effect, as I remember it is that you've made a series of predictions and the cards will carry them out.

If you're going to use "Jeopardy" as the frame, then I think you should follow Jeopardy's format in presenting the predictions.

Pit Hartling performed this recently the follwing way:

He had a "sort of official" brochure which was titled "Research of the Shuffling of Cards"; where statistics about shuffling cards where printed.

On page 1 it was said, that when normal people do shuffle a deck of randomly mixed cards (face up/face down), 97% of them do shuffle that way, that 21 cards would end face down"

Page 2 has the following statement "89% of these people have shuffled that way, that there will be 10 red cards"

and so on....

The presentation was a kind of "scientific" which made it unique. I liked that very much!

This sounds like a variation of Simon Aronson's "Random Sample Shuffle-Bored" which is available free in the August 2003 edition of "Magic"

For those who can be bothered with a stack, it's a wonderful opener with the obvious premise of shuffling the cards prior to the ensuing routine. For those with good Microsoft Word skills, there's detailed instructions of how to make an A4 template for use with this effect.

If you want a copy of the "research document" PM/mail me and I'll gladly send you a colour one. For obvious reasons, I will not be sending the effect instructions (You will have to seek out the various versions for that) but just the A4 "Market Research" document. It will have my outcomes on it which differ slightly, but you can easily edit them to suit (Oops bad pun!) yourself.

I've used the original Simon Aronson version as above and the reaction has always been very strong. More recently, however, I have developed my own presentation which is based on a Victorian Murder Mystery Game in which the participants ultimately determine which card murdered the Jack of Diamonds. The underlying principle is one which lends itself to all kinds of presentation possibilities...

Cheers

Justin

I performed this several times this past Saturday at a school fair, after having first tried it out on family. First time with a group of kids about 12-14 years old, the others involving adults who were hanging around with their children. I performed it as I learned it from the DVD.

Reaction from the adults was very good -- each time, they were convinced, at the kicker phase, that everything was as it was provided in the answer ("all the black cards are clubs"). I had to keep spreading the cards a couple of times before they spotted the spade, and the final answer reveal knocked them over. Definitely a keeper for me!

When doing this with the group of kids, I don't know what went wrong -- it became obvious from counting the face-down cards, that the trick had "gone South" for me. I hadn't planned on an out, except that I always keep an ID in the same color backs as my regular deck. I mentioned this is all about math, and I wasn't good at math in school -- pocketed the deck, switched it with the ID, and went into an ID routine. Bless the ID! The kids forgot about about my failed card trick . . .

Roger -- would love a copy of the "research" template; a creative twist I believe would work well with teachers, for example.

IMHO, a big asset of the Jeopardy premise is that it involves all the other spectators hanging around. Keeps them interested.