I am looking forward to trying it out at my IBM chapter's Members' Night next week. I really like Jan Forster's variant of passing out the whole deck to five spectators (two get 11 cards, the rest get 10) and fishing after the card calling procedure eliminates all but two (or occasionally three) options in each case. How, that is a lot of busy brain work for my first time out with a large audience, so I will probably just do it as written this first time (five cards per volunteer, five or so volunteers, no need for fishing).

And, yes, it is stack independent, and works perfectly fine with Mnemonica, which I know.

Do it with 50 cards and no fishing?

Possible, if you use 10 spectators which I feel is no real option in practice... BTW, in my version which you'll find in another thread about "Histed Heisted" you wouldn't call out all cards, forty would be sufficient. And with a deck switch what I use the mental work is far smaller than estimated. You see "it", you have"it"... you just fish between two (in very rare and only two possible scenarios three...) possibilities - and you are a mindreader... So, what's wrong with it? Jan

Yeah, I really need to get comfy with a deck switch for Forster ten (or eleven)-per-person fishing version--I would like to see the actual cards, both for card calling and for mental prompts for fishing. Moreover, in the counting deck I could mix up each "decade" of cards to through off stack-savvy magicians in the audience. (But then again the magician's in my club who work with stacks no this one anyway.) I don't wear a jacket, but with loose enough jeans I could try to pull off the bold Tommy Wonder pocket switch Tamariz describes in Mnemonica.

To practice I will have to use my spouse, and just have her play all five specs and write down the chosen card from each group. My six-year-old and the cats aren't quite sophisticated enough for that

The deck switch has not to be a very subtle one , although I could do one of my many as I am wearing often a jacket. See the entire picture: False shuffle the stacked deck, distribute the cards, give a reason why each one has to remember/chose mentally only a card he sees..., let somebody else collect and shuffle all the cards, take the deck and put it in the box, pocket all as you do not need the cards anymore... At least that is what you say for the moment.

Create a little time delay by recapping what has happened so far... And what will come, how difficult it is... You keep the spectator who was helping to collect and shuffle all the cards all the time next to you, "use" him by having a dialogue with him, let him confirm some of your statements. Finally offer him to keep the cards as a present as thank you for his help... Get the second (switched in) deck, hand it to him, there is no heat at all. When he wants to leave you, stop him, as you get an idea in which order you will try to read the minds.... Ask him if you can borrow his cards for a moment, take them, hand the empty box to him and casually false shuffle the cards while complimenting his shuffle from before. Let the helper be next to you as you (announce that!) will give the cards back to him, in several steps of course. And let him look also in the cards while you read them out loud.... Hope you get the picture jam

Jan,

You fish on every card and that works for you, but I am not sure it’s for everyone as it probably requires a lot of convincing acting, and it is not for Allan Ackerman for sure. A quote from his trick Impromptu Paul Fox from his book La Vegas Kardma:

“I did this effect about 14 years ago and I missed on my first guess on all 4 selections. After the performance, one lady who saw the effect, mentioned that I needed practice on my mind reading and that the questions I asked, gave me the clues I needed to discover the thought-of cards.”

Priceless

He went on developing 6 no-fishing methods for the effect.

I’ve come to appreciate the beauty of a deck switch, as you preconize, but I was thinking that maybe it could be used to add a bit of humour and reinforce the effect too. For some it could be overkill and as I am unlikely to gather the number of people to do the effect in the near future, I submit this for discussion. Also, you forego the easiness of your method.

Once the deck switch has happened and the spec is in possession of his souvenir deck, as in your presentation, you claim that you’re going to read the mind of your spectators, but furthermore, to make it even more impossible, you’re going to call the 52 cards from memory and without repeating yourself. You then start calling a few cards in NDO: AH,2H,3H… With the right acting it should generate some laughs. You admit that you were jesting but you offer to do it for real. You ask your spectator to hand over the cased deck he’s holding and you then deal the 52 cards one by one and quickly, preserving their order.

You then hand the deck back to your spectator and you call your stack out of memory having the spectator check if you make any error.
Basically you turn the calling of the cards into an effect itself, instead of a procedural requirement for the effect to succeed.
The deck switch and the afterthought about using the spectator’s deck should help obscure the method as no layperson would think that you’d know by heart 52 cards in perceived/real disorder.

Any thoughts?

Partly I like it, but not there where you make the presentation part of the method. But the gag is good, calling out cards in NDO... What produces a laugh AND a reason to get back the shuffled deck... I am not with Ackermann here as I see this routine mainly or entirely mental while he is a pure cardician (this is alright!) who tries some mind reading... And if someone doesn't like to fish you could still use my strategy and distribute part of the deck, but not even please, better like 5, 6 or seven cards. You'll find also cards then by logical elimination. And call out different size groups with some x-cards additional. Jan

Yes! This is a great compromise. You can even set it up so that you fish only some of the time but know the card right away most of the time. How would you handle it?

Les

Exactly like that !

I like Simon Aronson’s no fishing method, but I also like the idea of giving 10 cards to each spectator and calling out batches of 10. I’m looking for a solution whereby the spectators receive 10 cards each and where more than 5 spectators can participate; it’s counter-intuitive but possible.

I hit on a method which, though not perfect, is slowly bridging the gap: The spectators receive each 10 cards; the cards are called by batches of 10. The fishing is reduced because in some cases no overt fishing is required.

My compromise solution, based on what Jan seems to suggest, goes something like this:

Spectator 1 gets 1, 6, 11, 21, 31, 41, 51
Spectator 2 gets 2, 7, 12, 22, 32, 42, 52
Spectator 3 gets 3, 13, 23, 33, 43
Spectator 4 gets 4, 9, 14, 24, 34, 44
Spectator 5 gets 5, 10, 15, 25, 35, 45, 50

The groups are called out thus:
1 through 10
11 through 20
21 through 30
31 through 41
42 through 52

Of course the groups themselves may be presented in any order, and the order of the cards within each group may be called out in any order. Moreover, only four of the five groups at most need to be called out, since if any spectators are left after four groups are recited then their cards must be in the fifth group.

This puts 32 cards in play, most spectators will have more than just five cards, and less than half of the selections (1, 6, 31, 41, 2, 7, 42, 52, 4, 9, 5, 10, 45, 50) present the need to fish. Moreover, I like the idea of Spec 3 getting just three cards, as in the original--one only needs to keep track of five "outs" for the prediction climax, and as there is no fishing for that spectator one knows immediately what the selection is and can bring out correct prediction BEFORE embarking on faux-fishing and feigning bafflement.

Though I like the idea of a deck switch I am practicing a miscalling-from-memory recitation. I know the stack cold, and I find that staring PAST the spread of cards I am pretending to read out minimizes the risk of me calling out the card in front of me instead of the card I am thinking of. Another option is to sneak a crib card onto the face of the spread--like the Poker Bingo card in Phoenix decks...

This is how I do it! Via Jan

I only use 50 cards and I have shortened the corners of some cards to make it easy to hand out 10.

That's it. But I would call out only up to 39... In the worst case you still would have 2 direct hits (43 and 44) and three fishings between just two: 41/51, 42/52 and 45/50. Or hand spec.5 stack number 40 instead of 45 what increases direct hits to 3. Besides that adjust your calling which can be shortened also using your original. Jan

Wow, overly complicated solution, especially the setup where it's easy to make a mistake, for really little gain. Actually I can't see any. Besides versions of the trick where only half the cards are handed to the spectators strike as odd. Why?

An excellent version of this effect can be found in Barrie Richardson's trick It Isn't Mind Control from his book Theater of the Mind. What's remarkable are the cribs he describes. They're very easy to handle and do not hamper the handling of the cards.

Believe it or not, although knowing these scripts, I truly enjoy to have a spectator next to me looking over my shoulder and seeing that I actually do what I claim to do: calling the cards he sees as well Jan

I believe it is discussed in "The Impostress Princess" Expanded version Peter Tappan

^ Is it?

I'll try to buy a copy as I have heard excellent things about this book. As I think I have devised two original ideas, I'll be keen to verify whether or not I got scooped by a few years, if not decades

In what particular effect(s) is this described? Thanks.

I think it is in the expanded Impostress in the Additions section. Maybe the Steinmeyer version or Barrie Richardson has an impromptu version which allows this. Traveling now so not 100% positive.

Now that I think of it ...maybe not what you are thinking about but one version in there allows different numbers of cards to be given out.