“I just had a funny thought. It was imagining you doing a multiple selection routine. You know, the kind of thing where like ten cards are selected and you find them all semi-rapid fire style.
But then that made me wonder - have you actually tackled a trick like that?”—JT
I get this sort of thing a lot. “How would you perform [some trick I’d never do].”
“I wouldn’t really do that trick.”
“Okay, well, gun to your head, how would you do it?”
“Oooh, gun to my head?”
“Yeah.”
“Pull the trigger.”
I would never do the Multiple Selection, just because it’s not my sort of trick.
But if I had to… gun to my head, and I didn’t want to eat a bullet and all of that…
Methodologically
I would do something that forces the cards in a relatively quick manner and then I’d hand the deck out to be shuffled. If the audience doesn’t shuffle the deck, then the trick is just: “He’s very good at keeping control of multiple cards.” I understand that that’s the goal for a lot of people with the multiple selection routine. They want to look like someone who has mastery over a deck of cards. But I don’t really like any trick where the audience is left with the feeling: “Wow, he must practice a lot.”
By allowing them to shuffle, they’ll still credit me with the magic (which there’s probably no way around in a multiple selection routine) but their mind will be forced to go to some weirder places beyond just, “I guess he can keep track of all those cards while he’s shuffling.”
I’d take the shuffled deck back and find the first card in a boring way. I’d spread through the deck and slide a card out. Card #1 which would be marked in some way on the back so I could remove it from the shuffled deck without looking at the faces. I’d give it to the first person. As I built up the reveal to that card—and the focus was on that—I’d do a deck switch for another deck with cards 2-10 ready to go on top.
Presentationally
Hmmm…this is where you run into a wall a little bit. There are some tricks that lend themselves to all sorts of presentations. OOTW, a 2-card transposition, Ambitious Card. But a trick like the Multiple Selection which consist of 10 or so variations on the same climax… that’s rough. I don’t even really love a three phase trick. So 10 phases is definitely a stretch. Not only that, but it’s sort of a trick that feels designed for a formal magic presentation—just the fact that you’re performing for a larger group of people suggests that
To make it feel like less of a “show trick”, what if we performed the same trick for less people? For example, imagine doing the multiple selection for one person. And I’m not just saying have one person select a card and then find it. I’m saying having one person select a bunch of cards and then find them one by one.
The question is… why would you ever do this?
I’m not sure.
How about this. What if you told your friend you were “auditioning” to get into this exclusive magic society, and you might need their help with something sometime soon.
Then the next time you’re hanging out at your place with them, you explain this society is kind of corny, but it would give you access to a lot of people and secret information that can’t be found anywhere else.
[Reinforcing the idea that there are magic secrets that aren’t to be found online is always a good thing.]
You explain that the audition process involves variations on the most classic trick in magic: they pick a card, you find the card.
“There are ten levels. It’s a system sort of like belts in karate. The higher up you test, the more advance you are. There’s a table of ten guys, they each select a card and return them to the deck themselves and shuffle the cards. And you go one-by-one trying to find their cards in increasing levels of difficulty. If you get past level three, you’re granted conditional membership into the organization. If you get past level five, you get full membership. At level eight, you’re in the inner circle. The final two levels are just theoretical.”
Then you have your friend select 10 cards in some simple manner and have them write them down (or just remember them if you’re performing for the World Memory Champion). Then have them shuffle up the deck.
Here I would do a slight variation on the method I was originally thinking above.
So you would have this list of the levels of finding a card.
Level One: With the cards face up.
Level Two: With the cards face-down
Level Three: Blindfolded
As you’re finding the “Level-One” card, cut or cull the Level Three card to the top.
During Level-Two, you’ll find the card because it’s marked.
At Level-Three, because you don’t have a blindfold, have your friend cover your eyes instead.
As you’re reorienting yourself after Level-Three, with the three previously found cards already on the table, that’s when you could switch the deck (This is a type of “Anchored” deck switch.)
After that, you just follow through with your stacked deck, level by level.
Essentially, this would be a way of presenting a wide variety of disconnected card revelations but with one cohesive narrative.
You could do some standard Multiple Selection reveals.
Level Four - With One Hand
Level Eight - Behind Your Back Spinning the Card Over Your Shoulder
But you could also work in some more involved ways to reveal the card.
Level Six - Wrap the deck in a handkerchief and cause only the chosen card to pass through
Level Nine - Mentally direct a 3rd-party to find the card
Level Ten - Find the card by stabbing it out of the air from a tossed deck.
You’d need a little acting ability to pull this off. For the first few levels, you want to seem relatively confident, but not 100% certain. For the next few levels, you want to make it seem like success is possible, but not probable. And for the final levels you want to make it seem you never thought you’d be able to reach these levels, like you’re a little astonished yourself, but we might as well try them because we’re on a roll.
You could do this presentation with an audience of 2 or 3 people (each taking a few cards). Or 10. Or in a theater setting. But I think the smaller your audience is, the more they’ll get lost in the premise. If I’m performing for an audience of 100 it’s unlikely that I’d be trying things that I didn’t think would be likely to work. But with just one or a few people, it’s possible I’d try things just for the fun of it.
Often I write about splitting up a performance over hours or days. But in this instance, I think you’d want to string them all together in one 20-30 minute interaction. And you’ll want to do stuff that feels different. Not just all flourishy card reveals.
Doing them all together (rather than splitting them up over time) will allow the trick to build momentum, which makes sense with this premise. You want it to feel like Who Wants To Be a Millionaire. Like you started off with something easy and only mildly interesting, but each revelation builds, becomes more difficult, and you want to push on just to see how far you can take. By the time you stab the card out of the air (or whatever) in Level 10, you should be as surprised and confused by your success as anyone.
Of course, then you come back a week later:
“So, remember the audition thing you helped me with the other night? I had it last night. I fucked up the first card. I can try again in five years.”
This keeps the focus on that one crazy night between you where everything worked.
