Subscribing to see if in 2 years spark become the new david blaine after one of you foolishly prop bet that he couldnt.

Fun thread, I enjoyed reading the stories and watching some very cool clips

so these guys are all better than ricky jay? i thought he was the card GOAT?

Woops. He belongs on Mt Rushmore too. He's a shoe-in as well. Just slipped my mind.

Blaine's beard looks absolutely horrible.

Has to be fake, right?

THIS IS F AMAZING OMFG

Thanks for your insight and honesty.


In my experience, mentalists generally pretend to be psychic. Some might give you a literal or figurative wink, but they play it pretty straight, which, understandably, they have to do to make the effect "work."


Because both conditions don't hold true for me, I'm not a huge fan of mentalism, though I can appreciate the showmanship and dedication to craft.



The "mistake" they made (and who the hell am I to say this? LOL) is doing the clock bit with Simon and the engraving at the end.

If anyone is curious how they pulled this off (like I was)

Apologies if it was already explained earlier in the thread

https://m.reddit.com/r/explainlikeim...e_to_pull_off/

Sorta sucks that most magic secrets are readily available online now

I remember being so baffled/amazed at some tricks growing up

David Copperfield's massive illusions blew my mind especially walking through the Great Wall of China

umm that Shin Lim guy is a wizard. No clue how he switched the card into the plastic bag.

ETA: Now going down a Fool Us hole. Other than links provided anything else I should be sure to catch.

Yeah, if those signed cards are unique that performance was really impressive

Ricky Jay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jljt5Ml28FU

Ricky Jay is awesome!

I saw the run time for that vid n thought I'd never make the hour. Glad I did tho and will be looking for more of his work. Amazing skill


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He's incredible. Though I kind of wish he hadn't gotten into the card throwing stuff. It sort of bugs me that that's the big thing he's known for. It's just so gimmicky. I watched a video of him on Conan from way back and neither Conan nor the audience seemed to give a **** that they were seeing one of the greatest sleight of hand artists alive. They just wanted to see him throw a card into a watermelon rind.

Oh really? What a shame. Yea like I said I'm kinda new to him so this is pretty much all I'd seen and assumed the card throwing was just filler at the end.
The false dealing/card control and the cup and ball stuff I could watch for hours on end


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NYC magic fans:

https://atlantictheater.org/playeven...-brown-secret/

Pg,

Lol, every other fool us video the comments are all like "he did it using x" "weak, you can see y if you pause at 2:23" etc. This one was just like wtf wow this guy is incredible.

All of turner's stuff I've seen in the past has been similarly great.

He's really incredible. I'm pretty sure I've seen him do similar with borrowed cards so the deck isn't marked per se, but he must be some sort of incredibly minute crease or something in the kings when he's doing false shuffles at the beginning. The way he manages to control all the kings to the top/bottom pre-deal is really phenomenal - the kings are in random places so the controls needed are different every time but he makes it look so smooth. Unless he doesn't control them anywhere and just middle deals them, which is still amazing. Most of the time these guys do something that "must be really complicated" there turns out to be a simple trick but here I think he's possibly just that good.

I just wanna know how that bear is with that hottie Asian.
That's the real trick.

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David Berglas R.I.P

Grunching but the cigarette through a note or a playing card is surely trivially easy via sleight of hand. The fact that the note appears to have the same ID number is not exactly much of a problem given the fact that fraud and forgery are very adjacent to or even really a full-on part of magic.

With regards to the Berglas effect, my two most likely explanations, in no particular order, would be a) stooges, or b) what's known in magic as a 'force'. Derren Brown does this quite a lot. He's selective about who he uses, because some people aren't as receptive to his methods. Those who are can be influenced in their apparently free choice. He does some obvious things like make a diamond shape with his hands when he wants you to pick a diamond, and when telling you what he wants from you, he gets you to imagine a card by using his fingers to point out where the pips are, doing it a number of times that corresponds to the value of the card he wants; that's all I know about it and I assume there's a whole wealth of subconscious associations he can make with the face cards in order to influence you to choose those.

On top of that, there is the concept of 'magician's choice', which gives a lot of leeway to make mistakes until you get the correct answer, which could manifest in for example only the one that worked making it onto a broadcast tv show, or, perhaps, you've witnessed a magician doing the same trick twice, and the first time it worked on the first try, but the second time you watched it the first card wasn't correct so then he moves on to a second variety of the reveal which may or may not be correct, and then a bunch of different backup options until he finds the correct card.