Hi! Nowhere Else by Gérard Bakner is on sale at Vanishing, Inc., but I cannot tell much about what is in the book from the product description. We are informed that it's a "brand-new principle that will allow you to perform impromptu mentalism effects while letting the spectator shuffle the deck themselves." However, there is no description of any of the effects that can be done with this principle. Anyone have this? I'm not trying to find out what the secret it is. I'd just like to know more about it so that I can make a reasonable decision about whether or not to buy it.

Thanks,
Jay

I know this was on the recent sale, sorry for not getting back sooner.

It's an interesting concept, but I feel would have been more appropriate as an article in a magic magazine rather than as a booklet for $45 which is extremely pricey. The booklet is small and thin, the font is also very small, but the margins are extremely generous; some pages have just the center third of the page containing text.

The principle could be described in about half a page. The rest of book is routines using different cards with the same principle (cards with numbers, cards with flags, etc.). Then maybe two pages of extensions of the concept, which I think would have been more useful described in more detail than focusing on detailing the routines.

Note that despite the description, the spectator is NOT 'shuffling', but rather 'dealing'. I guess by dealing, one could say a spectator is 'shuffling the order' of the cards, but in my opinion, the wording was chosen to be deliberately misleading to magicians (I assumed a spectator is riffle-shuffling, overhand shuffling, etc., which makes the description sound more amazing than it is).


Brian

I also saw it on the sale and I also was curious about it.

I did not purchase it.

My reasoning was, that if the author claims it’s a new principle, then it must be that he doesn’t know too much.

Money saved I suppose.

I got it in the sale but it's a bit meh.

I would call it a poor man's Redvider by max maven

Although the principle isn't the same it is similar but also more limited than what Max shares in his booklet