The Spackle feature is where I try to fix a weak part of a trick, or at least give my best attempt at how to address it.
This email comes from ML…
I perform a version of a Poker effect using Craig Petty's Evoke deck. At the end, the volunteer has five positive emotions and I am left with five negative emotions. It's a great trick.
At the end, there are two cards remaining (one positive and one negative), so I use Magicians Choice by asking the volunteer to point to one card.
If he (or she) points to the positive card then no problem... I just slide it to him.
If he points to the negative card, I ask him whether he wants to change his mind but as you know, no one ever does! I then slide that negative card to me. But that is obviously different from all the other choices where he selects cards by sliding them.
Is there a better way to make it look like the volunteer has actually chosen the card, particularly since I can see from the backs of the cards which one is positive and which one is negative?
I actually do have a pretty good solution to this, as this is the trick that I do with the Evoke deck as well. If you’re interested, you can find the trick described in the Evoke instructional video.
See, that’s a joke, the instructions are 10 hours long and sifting through that would be a nightmare. The trick is 19 minutes into part four of the instructions, presented by Peter Nardi.
Basically, the spectator picks out five positive and five negative emotions, and you use them to do a version of the 10 Card Poker Deal. I like it a lot. It’s easy to remember and simple to perform.
During the performance, cards are placed on the table and the spectator pulls cards towards themselves and pushes cards away. They have, of course, taken the positive cards and pushed away the negative. (Or, you can make it so they do the opposite and be like, “Man, you’re fucking miserable, aren’t you?”)
There’s a final moment in the performance where there are two cards left for them to choose from, one positive and one negative. At this point, Peter Nardi does something that I consider strange. He just puts the cards in the correct pile and doesn’t consult the spectator at all. That’s one way of handling things. In the same way that pushing your wife off a cliff is “one way” of handling marital problems.
Let’s try to think of something better. They do talk about using equivoque for the final card, but they’re stuck in that 2nd Wave equivoque thinking. “Point to one. Okay, I’ll keep that.” Or, “Point to one. Okay, that’s the one you’ll have.” This type of equivoque is so uninspired that Peter thought it was better just to deal out the cards himself. I don’t blame him.
I will give you a way to handle this with equivoque in tomorrow’s post, it’s a bit of equivocal language that I’ve been using for a while now with a lot of success, and it can be used beyond this trick so it deserves its own post.
But for now, here are three other ways to handle this point in the trick.
Method #1
This first way is kind of “cheeky,” which isn’t a word I use much, but the idea comes from Ian Rowland in his section of the instructions, and he’s properly British, so I think “cheeky” works. Another word for it might be “bold.” Here’s how you do it.
“Okay, we’ll do these last two differently.”
Pick up the final two cards in your hands.
“Take one.”
If they take the one you want, you’re done.
If not, you say, “And touch the face of the card and try to pick up on the energy of the card.”
You look at their face while they do this.
“And now do that with the other card.
They touch the face of the other card.
“Oh wow. Okay, that’s fascinating. I didn’t know if that was going to work, but you gave off a bunch of strong microexpressions with this one. If I had to guess, you were subconsciously picking up good energy from this one [the one they hold] and negative energy from that one [the previous one they touched].”
I turn over the one on the table to show a negative card, and have them turn over the one in their hand to show a positive one.
This might feel questionable, but you can immediately follow up by showing they took the other four positive and pushed away the other four negative cards, so they don’t have a lot of time to call bullshit on it.
Method #2
This is purely a mechanical method.
“We’ll do this final one blindly. I’ll mix these up and hold them under the table.”
Take a card in each hand, and put your hands under the table. Drop the cards in your lap as you go, paying attention to where the positive card is. Continue moving your hands under the table, but keep a lot of space between them, so your hands are nowhere near each other. This is to come off as being “fair.”
Have them hold their hand over the table, hovering over each hand beneath, and have them pick the hand that’s “holding the card they’re getting positive energy from.”
Pull that card out slowly (leaving the other hand in its place under the table) and grab the positive card from your lap on the way out. Slide it across the table to your friend.
Only now do you remove the other hand from under the table, picking up the remaining card on the way.
I like to look at that card and give a small smile, like, “okay, good job.” The idea being I have to look at it to know the one she left was negative.
Method #3
This is one of my favorite ways of handling this moment.
“We’ll do this last part differently.”
I turn my back and have my friend pick up the remaining two cards. I ask if one is positive and one is negative. They confirm that’s the case.
“Okay, set them both face-down on the table, but remember where the positive one goes. Let me know when you’re done.”
When they do, I turn back around.
“I’m not going to make eye contact, because I don’t want you to give anything away physically. Instead, I just want you to focus and send your energy my way and try to see my pushing the positive one towards you and pulling the negative one toward me. I want to see if you can influence me to do that, just with your thoughts and energy.”
I hold my hands over both cards as if I’m picking up energy or waiting for some psychic instructions. I let the tension build and move my hands slightly back and forth as if I’m getting a feel for which cards feels right to push forward. After half a minute or so, I say something like, “Ooooh… that’s it,” and I slide the positive card toward her. As if the definitive answer to what she wants me to do just broke through.
This shouldn’t work as well as it does. But I’ve gotten really strong responses from this moment. They were imagining me doing this in their head, and then I did it.
It recasts this final moment of what is really just my own actions and makes it a moment of their “influence.”
It works really well and, I think, likely has uses with other tricks.
Tomorrow I’ll discuss a purely equivocation based solution to this issue that has uses beyond just Evoke. I call it, “Whichever You Want.”
