Even so, that person doesn't say it took more than twice which is still incredible.

Interesting thread. u El D

yeah, it's pretty weird - whenever you read about berglas/ACAAN you see lots of magicians say that 'it's just a trick for magicians', and that laypeople are never really that impressed by it.

every time i read this i thought 'wtf? what kind of moron wouldn't find this impressive!?'

thx for answering that question baltimore!

I think laypeople aren't that impressed by it because the presentation is rather minimal. The audience expects that the magician will find the card and probably doesn't know or care too much about different techniques. So the most impressive tricks for a general audience involve finding cards in surprising ways (e.g., card levitating out of the deck) even if the method involves little skill. To many, the Berglas effect will just seem like another "pick a card, any card" trick because they don't realize that the magician not handling the deck eliminates most of the usual techniques.

Here's someone else doing the same trick.



Does anyone think there is any special significance to the 'reveal' of the restored bill coming immediately after turning the bill over?

They look at the hole from the face of the bill, but the hole is seen to be gone when looking at the reverse of the bill.

Econ,

Yes.

The second post makes sense to me, that it's not necessarily reliably repeatable.

The first post would make sense if it weren't for the celebs doing it. However, looking at the celeb one I posted, I'm now questioning the camera cutaway before the reveal.

And these magic post commenters are def not math whizzes!

Here is a video which purportedly shows how the bill is gimmicked:



Graphics appear to be from a magic book in Chinese.

Well I was pulled on stage for a Penn & Teller show in Vegas. They did a very similar trick to the airport security machine trick linked at the bottom. Except I was standing behind the paper with my head sticking out to the audience. At the end reveal, I was just as surprised as the audience, as I had no idea wtf happened and was not privvy to the trick at all and couldn't figure it out standing on stage. So clearly not 100% of tricks with audiences use stooges. Yes, it wasn't some amazing trick that requires a stooge, but it was cool to have first hand knowledge that they're not all plants from the audience.

A similar effect with unlit cigarette and a playing card:

Magic fans,



Berglas is great.

As far as the jlaw video goes, how do all the failed attempts just go away without some mention by anybody?

If it took him 4 tries to do it you don't think at some point down the line she might let it slip to somebody?

the one with the boy at 3:24 is just amazing... Did he figure it out when he was handed the cards, how they were placed?

edit: thinking about it, he puts down a card next to the pile... He left himself an alternate out, and was probably able to figure out which 2 cards it could possibly be from how he saw the boy handling and leave the cards

i have absolutely no idea what's going on at 4:27

Berglas effect - I think there are stooges involved but they are not "in on the trick" per se. For instance, in the video Person #2 may have been fed the number by the magician that corresponds to the card chosen and not told anything else (the fact that the deck is memorized). So he still sees the woman pick the random card and it get pulled from the deck in that slot. In his mind it is still a pretty great trick. He's not going to question it or feel like he is hiding the critical aspect of the performance. Probably works particularly well with celebrities and old people who are not going to over-analyze. The result is that to them it's cool, but to everyone else it's mind-blowing.

There are a lot of magic tricks that utilize this "dual reality" effect.

This 1 is too easy to figure out.

At the :03-:05 sec mark you can clearly see the slide flap on the top of the card in the glare of the lights.

You can also see at the 1:00 mark that he slides the flap and hide it with his finger as he flips over the card.

At the 1:40 mark you can see he uses the same finger to put the flap back into position to cover the hole after he pushes the cig through.

Then at the 2:06 mark you can see him use his finger and thumb to make sure the flap is in place. You can even see the flap in the glare again as he turns the card over.

It's partly this.

I'd argue the rest is because I'm smarter, not dumber (though for most people it might be the latter). It's too transparently obvious that something has to be up with at least one of the 3 people, because otherwise it's impossible (or works 1/52 times, with a segway into a backup trick if not).

Anything with plants pisses me off.

You guys who like poker and who like the Berglas type ACAAN card trick will love this fun version of it since it takes place at a 4th of July party arranged by Antonio Esfandiari and is done by noted magician Alain Nu. Antonio picks the card. It starts at 1:57.

baltimore,

what do you think of this one?



http://themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt...550548&start=0

discussion here by lots of magicians that have seen the trick

I haven't had the chance to research the Berglas Effect yet but definitely will be doing so. I've always been a fan of magic/illusions. Was kind of obsessed when I was younger.

Any chance there is an element of suggestion being used? This video is worth watching all the way through, but mainly the second half. Could Berglas/Blaine/etc be doing something along these lines?

https://youtu.be/J94uO-urSTg

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

Maybe I'm over magic.

(Without reading forum):

1) He opens it up to the possibility of changing the card before he's told the card.

2) He accepts the card first named, but this should not necessarily be assumed to be the case 100% of the time the trick is done.

3) He clearly arranges the deck in a certain way.

4) He gets the guy to change his first number given. This also would not happen 100% of the time, I'm guessing.

5) He deals from the top. We're seeing the trick once. He can go bottom, he can start cutting, he can do any number of things, with us being none the wiser.


So that's all fine and clearly a lot of skill involved, but picking up on obvious manipulations takes away from it for me. I need illusions where there's definitely no plant and none of these obvious pivot points.

(After reading forum): It would be nice to actually see the performances the people are raving about.

This one actually is extremely impressive imo:



Sleight of hand btw is always another possibility although he's unreal at it if that's the case. In the video I posted,

I can't imagine the 3 stooge/JLaw version being anything other than this.

Maybe he's drawing the beach photo while his hand is visibly doing something under the table.

This guy is fascinating me, lots of reports of him doing variations of this trick impromptu. However, he does not always do the trick/variation (doesn't necessarily do it on request), and there are differences. So what's likely is that in different situations he notices something or has set something up that will allow him to do ACAAN in some way, and he's capable of doing it many ways.

What's amazing about the video is that he's doing it for magicians who are about to learn how he did it, and so presumably he had to do it in a specific way.

F*cking whore, El D.

Beach might just be based on probability. He knows he's going to pick a guy, and guys lean towards green and blue. He lists several colors with blue at the end, and the last item in a list is likely to be memorable. He then gives an example for green knowing that the guy will likely not pick green again, and pink, and mentions a park or a field, again removing those choices from the guy's options. What other landscapes are there besides maybe desert, mountains, or ice? But brown and white weren't in the list, so it's blue, and beach.

I wonder if the variations are based on who he thinks he can get the best read off of in the audience.

The hand movement under the table is interesting. I wonder if he was finding the 7 of clubs from another deck. After the audience member counts out the cards, Turner takes back the remaining cards- reaching right over the other cards- puts them back in the box and puts the box in his right pocket. There's a camera cut before the reveal.

When he does the second (10 of diamonds) effect, he pulls out an identical deck from his left pocket. This deck is certainly set up, so now is it just a matter of getting the audience member to pick the right number since he knows the location of any card the audience member could pick?

He explicitly says "ten" and "diamonds" last when he's going through the various suits and ranks.

Just probabilities based on images he is giving that lead to Jack of Spades, and then Td as a second card?

BJ,

At the risk of getting rheemed again by elD, He asks him what landscape he is thinking of and says beach. Then a few minutes later someone hands him the envelope. Not even sure how that is a magic trick.