I have a great METHOD for BANK NIGHT which I love...... but I don't feel comfortable with the I WIN YOU LOSE aspect of making it a competition.

I would love any suggestions how I can use the same bank night type method, but make it more of a fun / friendly / less competitive PRESENTATION.

I've done a search on Café, but I couldn't find any topics on this.

Many thanks!
Geoff

There are multiple things you could do. Test them out and see what fits you.
1) Performer's attitude once the money is revealed at the very end. Make it playful.
2) The contents of the "losing envelopes". Bookstore vouchers, tickets to concert, lottery tickets... etc
3) Or, keep the contents as useless paper, but at the very end, hand out something to each participant as a gift along with the line "I don't want you to walk away with nothing, so here are tickets to [famous person's concert in town]"

A note on number 2. If say you used lottery tickets for each envelope, fold them one time so that once they take them out, on first impression they think they got an empty piece of paper. After revealing that you got the money (and by that time, unbeknownst to the audience at large, your 3 participants have probably unfolded the papers and discovered they actually got a lottery ticket), tell the audience as a whole that they're not actually holding empty pieces of paper, because you can't let them go away empty handed, so you ask them to unfold the paper (which they probably already have done) and ask them what is it in their hand.

I love the idea of putting a lottery ticket in the "losers". The reversal of the paper being valuable is a nice emotional TWIST.

I'd love some more opinions from anyone else?

My latest idea is to REVERSE the bank night where there is *one* BAD THING (e.g. a kick in the butt) and 5 GOOD things (e.g. tickets to my next show). I then influence them to AVOID the bad thing, and make sure I get the envelope with the kick in the butt. It might create some laughs to get a kid up to give me a kick! Can anyone else extend my early idea to make it better?

I was going to suggest this too. It's the premise of my first published article, which appeared in Supreme's "Trixagram" in April 1990. The title was "Just the Lady".

Barry

I perform a version of Steve Bargatsge’s I Hate Kidd’s. The kid WINS the two dollar bill.

George

Stop thinking about the how, and start focusing on the why. That will inform you of the details.

Osterlind's version involves a 'special' losing envelope which is opened after the performer reveals he has the main prize. Lifts the ending from 'oh so we all lost then' to 'but now here's your chance to win again'. You should check it out if you haven't already it's on his first dvd.

Don’t use your money. Borrow a $20 bill to put in the winning envelope. The lender of the bill is at the mercy of the audience. In the end, everyone gets a “thanks for playing” note and the lender keeps his/her money.

Patrick

I got this recently and am loving it. Completely new approach. And quite cool for the times. Will try to do a detailed review asap.

Propless Bank Night by Unknown Mentalist

https://www.lybrary.com/propless-bank-night-p-923729.html

Don't use real money. Use fake money and joke about it at the end when you win, something like "I'd feel bad about it but I actually got just paper too, as you tear up the money.

Or use a combination of this and Osterlind's approach... Have one envelope with fake money and the other envelopes with lottery tickets or tickets to your next shows.

At the end, when you win the money and everyone else is holding their tickets you say something like "What you got is actually more valuable than what I got, as this is just paper!" As you tear up the money and drop the pieces on the floor.

My solution was to make the prize exactly $1; that way, no one cared if they won or lost, and the lottery tickets that I gave out at the end were worth far more potentially. My premise was that it didn't matter what the prize was, it was the fact that we were playing for money that triggered the purpose of the game.

Max Maven had something that basically revolved around simple messages. One that I came up with trying to build on that involved a variety of messages, with the last one being a self-effacing one meant for the performer.

That said, it's important to really isolate the problem here. Bank Night has three key details in it. First is the effect (people make choices, performer is left with the odd one out). Second is the format (the choices are based around envelopes which are opened at the end). Third is the stakes, which dictates the presentation (money for the performer at the end).

It's easy to get caught up with the idea that making it about money turns it into a bet, which the audience member loses, and this is bad (for whatever reason).

But, what makes it strong is the fact that something is at stake. Money's just one way of achieving that, but eliminating money and not replacing it with some other important stake reduces the trick to a merely clever effect with a specific format.

One potential way to do this could be to have four envelopes, one containing the performer's paycheque for the evening, and with each choice the spectator makes, the envelope is destroyed in some interesting fashion (a shredder is one potential way, but method-wise you can run into issues with paper that's been folded over too many times). Now, this can bring about a new suspicion (each envelope contains a paycheque, and nothing is actually lost when one is destroyed, it simply can't be cashed) but you can get around that by involving the host and verifying from them the conditions of the effect (namely that they didn't sign four different paycheques ahead of time).

There are others, but I think it's also important to make sure that you're not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Meaning, is it possible to present the effect where the performer gets the money and the spectator doesn't, and not have the spectator feel bad for "losing"? Magicians who do three card monte or the shell game are worth studying here.

Another way is to look at what Tommy Wonder did with Elizabeth IV.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPZoSRpGT4o

Notice the challenge: Guess the right card, and if you do, you win by getting to be the superstar of the moment, and if you lose, I've got this money here as a consolation prize.

In terms of the format, this is IDENTICAL to "I know which card you're going to choose, and if you do, I keep the money, and you only get it if I'm wrong."

There are very subtle, but powerful, redefinitions of what the aim is, what it means to win and lose within the context of that aim, and what the money represents (the main prize vs. the consolation prize).

In theory, something similar should be easily achievable with Bank Night. In practice... well, a lot of people just copy was Osterlind does.

I wrestled with the same thing. Most of the Bank Night routines are the mentalism equivalent of the magician's sucker tricks...and are made even worse because the idea is to dangle a possible GOOD prize in front of the volunteer and then whisk it away. It's a flawed routine, I think, from a mentalism perspective because it doesn't offer a 'surprise.'

No one in the audience expects the volunteer is going to win. Everyone -- including the volunteer -- knows it's fixed. So the ONLY question in the minds of the spectators is "How is he going to fix this?" And when they start thinking that way, the effect -- however entertaining -- is reduced to a puzzle, which makes it a magic trick and not mentalism.

There's another thing I don't like about the design: it puts the performer and the volunteer into competition with each other. It creates an adversarial relationship, which is something I really try to avoid most of the time.

But having said that, there are also some potentially wonderful things behind the design: the volunteer is offered a number of apparently free choices, the performer takes his hands off of the effect (apparently) and the finish of the effect is not in question for a second. Most of the time the methods are dead simple (I am in favor of dead simple. )

This is the kind of crap I was thinking about when I was working on a re-design of BN myself a number of years ago.

What I came up with has been a part of my shows ever since. Maybe it will be of use to you?

I decided to do away with the whole game show concept because I couldn't shape it into anything that didn't look tacky, silly or contrived.

My idea was to make the effect adaptable to ANYTHING because the volunteer was simply charged with choosing ONE particular "Item" and then transmitting that choice telepathically to another person. The premise was like the standard BN, but I set it up to be an ESP experiment between two audience members with me in the middle. Let me explain:

The first time I performed it was for a convention of travel agents. I asked them all to call out destinations they would send clients to. I got 8 of them. I asked VOLUNTEER ONE to mentally choose their destination and write it down. I then put their selection into an envelope. (Yes, I read it.) I then asked this person to choose another person he felt he could communicate with on a psychic level...and he did.

I had the second person look at the board with the destinations on it and then look at the volunteer who had initially picked ONE from the list. I asked him to MENTALLY think the destination they had chosen over and over again and have the second volunteer 'open their mind' to the thought transmission.

Enter equivoque. (I favor my own version of Docc Hilford's design.) The SECOND volunteer makes a series of (apparently) free choices which lead to the elimination of destinations until only one remains. The FIRST volunteer -- who has been standing with his back to the proceedings reveals his choice by opening the envelope. It is the same one the second volunteer has landed on after making three (apparently) free choices. Volunteer ONE is amazed. So is Volunteer TWO and then the audience.

The same thing can be done with food, movie titles...songs -- anything, really.

There's a lot more to the effect design -- but that's the bare bones of it.

I like it because all three of us are working together. It's cooperative not adversarial. There is a triple surprise at the end...and everyone wins.

I appreciate it's quite a departure from the standard BN routine, but I've used this effect for years and it really works for me. Hopefully it is something that will help in your deliberations, Dervish.

David

Wow! I am so incredibly grateful for everyone's contributions!

I'v experimented with a few different suggestions... and the one that "sits" right to me is the Tommy Wonder Elizabeth IV video (thanks Burnaby Kid).

Geoff

Ben Hart has a very interesting solution to Just Chance in his new book. He's not even a mentalist!

I've been doing a version for many years that doesn't involve prizes or anyone winning or losing anything

Okay. Here is something I have been working on for a while:

The envelopes are numbered and the linear approach happens. One by the participants choose a numbers and the envelopes. Upon leaving you with the “prize”, which turns out to be a message that says “IT HAD TO BE”. The other envelopes have only blank pieces of paper. As it turns, the four selections are the exact four numbers needed to open a lock that has been sitting on the table all this time.

The question is, what comes next that makes this worth it?

The lock could open a small box that has been sitting there. When opened it has a paper inside that reads an exact description of the order of the envelopes and a description of the spectators used.

Greg

P.S. Think DW and Lippincott box.

I like it.

I also thought about using the language of playing the game to win a “treasure”. The participants win $1 bills, which seems like they’ve won until you open yours and it is a picture of your loved one(s).

End with a comment such as...

“ a wise man once told me never trade money for what money cannot buy.”

I think about “plot twist” bank nights a lot. This effect deserves more than we give it.

Here's how I did it.
4 different colored envelopes. People call out colors: One envelope reveals Buy Greg Otto Lunch, the other Buy Greg Otto A Drink, third reveals Buy Greg Otto Dinner.
I'm left with an envelope that's slip says I Am Greg Otto.

Mike Pisciotta also has a version I like