Me too. I don't like that there only happened to be one card person in the room who had a deck for Turner. Since Turner needed an identical looking deck for the second effect, you have to wonder about collusion.

I'm thinking the order of the deck is known to the magician and the "magic" is influencing the subject to pick a certain number. Turner's hands are all over the place as he's doing his spiel. He often touches his fingers to his temple, perhaps to reinforce whatever he's trying to reinforce. It's fascinating.

The audience member also seemed a bit off. When asked if he had a favorite card, he immediately said "Yes" in a loud clear voice. Seems weird to have a favorite card, but who knows.

Nice catch, I just watched it again. He also said jack first and 10 last at one point.

Could be. The way he snaps his fingers, puts his fingers to his temples, moves his fingers around his mouth, modulates the tone of his voice, etc. seem meant to influence.

That audience member really seems like a plant, his behavior doesn't seem natural at all. But if so, there would be no need for all of Turner's shenanigans under the table, and if they're all audience plants there's nothing to talk about, so... what IS he doing under the table before the jack of spades reveal?

Again, I hate that the camera cuts as Turner is picking up the cards prior to the reveal, especially since he's doing something under the table right before that. It's possible that he's using sleight of hand and we aren't seeing it, in the same way that the audience wouldn't see it. That too would be pretty lame in the scheme of things, and doesn't square with seemingly reputable magicians stating that they're seen the Berglass effect first hand.

So I guess I'm still leaning towards the magician influencing the card selection and/or the number. My other guess is that this effect works better with men than women.

you are terrible at this


anyway it's obviously by far the least impressive element of the video, but i assume the fact that when naming off the colours of the rainbow he says 'red, yellow' makes a lot of people think 'huh, why did he say yellow before orange?'. this worked with me, and although the order later in the sequence was also a total mess, by that point i had stopped listening.

anyway, once you are thinking of yellow/orange, a beach is a natural leap, and of course he effectively eliminates green with his little speech. also if he is thinking blue there's a decent chance you think of the sea / a beach anyway, there aren't many red nature scenes, etc etc.

with all this said, i know nothing about mentalism tricks whatsoever and i'm rarely sure whether they are employing methods that work most of the time, or employing more 'boring' methods that work all of the time.

Yes, I think this is how the effect from the OP is achieved.

Perhaps asking for a 'large bill' helps ensure that it's not a worn out and soft one that would be tougher to gimmick and switch.

berglas effect is pretty sick, though there's no "grand reveal" and it's too easy to inherently think "he's in on it."

Instead of picking a number, I'd like to see someone spin a wheel between 1-52 and have that be the chosen number, assuming the trick is still doable that way of course.

Cuz if that's true, got damn.

The video specifically says Spectator 1 and 2 are not stooges and says nothing about Spectator 3 not being a stooge, so the deck is set and Specator 3 knows how to move the right card in the right spot after the spectators reveal their choices.

There might be something involving misdirection - often the cards are counted out face up so we can see if the target card is there, then a pause before the target is revealed. Good time to place the card you're looking for on the remaining pack while everyone is fishing through the discard pile.

or, you know, the magician is lying :P

They're both poisoned.

Yea, also agree that beach is the least impressive part. He may have gotten lucky there and didn't have to do sleight of hand with the envelope, whereas if the guy hadn't said beach he could have pulled a switch (or maybe still did anyway). I'm assuming the envelope holder wasn't in on it.

In this case I trust that the guy at the table is a legit non-participant, no planning with the original deck (note that he obviously switches the deck later and may have several types on him - yet another possibility is he has multiple decks in multiple pockets for whatever opportunities may arise).

I might buy that lecture (Peter Turner LIVE from Penguin Magic, $30).

How crazy would it be if it was all an elaborate hoax? Maybe Berglas, tired of doing the same tricks everyone else does, decides to create something legendary. He uses accomplices and tells nobody the "secret." People of course suspect the collusion but he simply denies it or doesn't respond.

The legend grows. Eventually he tells one other magician (Marc Paul) who begins performing the effect, lending credence to the notion that methods not plants drive the effect. Maybe he lets a few other magicians in on it, all swearing to protect the secret. Top flight magicians seem to be a tight little community and maybe they like the idea of perpetuating the mystery since there's a tutorial on Youtube on how to do every other trick in the world (which must drive "real" magicians nuts).

Maybe it's a way to get back at all the amateurs and all the people who divulge the secret behind tricks. Here- finally- is an effect which nobody can explain. He supposedly even explained the effect or at least talked about it in detail in a book written by a respected writer on magic, which is obviously not a true explanation as it would be all over the internet if it was.

Voila: Magic in a world without magic.

somebody contact the alliance of magicians

Bj and others,

I mean, wtf!?



21-25 is his story of meeting berglas.

25-30 is him performing his version.

Is this just some 50 year old inside joke among magicians that's just totally fake? That somehow the entire magic community keeps secret? That seems impossible. But so does the trick!

If any community could keep a secret, it's this one. At least that's my impression of the higher echelon practitioners.

The thing too is that Berglas wouldn't have to tell that many people, and it would be a huge badge of honor to be included in the select group. In one of the links someone posted there were comments from magicians who said that Turner had done the effect with them over Skype. Are we really buying this?

Sucker,

Watch mins 25-30 of the video I just posted.

An in-joke among people in an industry doesn't sound very implausible to me.

Well I'm going on the assumption that the effect is impossible (within the bounds of chance, but essentially impossible). I'm ruling out that there's a method or methods that would allow someone over Skype to do the effect, and this video doesn't sway me. In person is slightly different as I think it's possible to get a read on people and influence them, but I still don't think the effect is possible without plants and a setup deck.

The patter in this video- "don't get mad if I get it wrong," etc- promote the notion that technique is involved and it's not infallible. In the Turner/Penguin video, Turner- who is apparently a big name in the field- is shown to be obviously manipulating something with his hands under the table. That's so amateurish and it doesn't square with his supposed bona fides. But it makes people think that something is going on, something beyond collusion.

I can see where the handful of people on the inside with Berglas would love the idea. And it actually doesn't matter if the effect is real because the "effect" IS "real"- the Berglas Effect is legendary.

I assume some of you know the method for the Berglas effect was published several years ago, and you can buy it for $140.

http://www.penguinmagic.com/p/S14257

From the reviews here, we learn that the trick involves memorizing the position of the cards in the deck and having multiple ways to get to the chosen card. E.g., if someone picks seven, then you can instruct the third volunteer to deal from the top or bottom. You can also change it so that the card will be the 7th from the top or that you first take 7 away and the next card will be the chosen one. And it sounds like there are other ways of getting there that raise the odds of the trick working successfully. The reviews also confirm that the trick won't work 100% of the time.

http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/v...4121&forum=110

Reading the following article, you can get an idea of how Berglas would work this into his routine.

http://www.magicalapparatus.com/secr...as-effect.html

econo,

What about the Skype Version!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?!!!

It could be that he just takes a 1 in 52 chance to get the trick right; more plausible is that he colludes with the guys on the other end of the skype call.

All part of the ruse. Just more misdirection. Make people think actual methods are in play to keep the legend alive. Let's say you've memorized a deck. One volunteer says 9 of hearts and another says 24. Sure you might get lucky with the way the deck was ordered, and can raise the odds of making it work in various ways, but it's still basically impractical in any performance-based sense. It also doesn't explain how it can be done over Skype where the deck hasn't been memorized, though maybe that's a variation that he doesn't endorse.

One thing that is probably worth noting, in one of the videos itt, he tells the guy to pick a number between 1-50, he repeats himself and still does not say 1-52.

I've always thought magic tricks were fascinating, especially cards and sleight of hand stuff.

I remember these two guys I knew did one where one would leave the room, you'd whisper a card to the other guy, and the guy would come back in the room and know what card you said. Every time. wtf.

Subtle hand/face signals.

K,

Uh, yeah, I can do that whisper a card one.