Half Down

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One of my issues with the Classic Force and many other forces is that they happen too quickly. If the purpose of any force is to make the person feel like they could have ended up with any card, then speed is your enemy.

When I was first learning magic, there was this idea that you shouldn’t just force a card and then do some kind of crazy reveal. Like, you shouldn’t classic force a card and then show that the card is printed on the back of your t-shirt. “If you do that, then people will know the card was forced.”

Well… yeah…but maybe that should give you some clue that it’s not a good force.

The classic force, the riffle force and other forces such as these are good for getting a potentially random-seeming card into people’s hands quickly. So they have their place in magic. But when it comes to getting close to convincing them that this was a random, free choice, they’re not well suited for that.

For a sense of conviction, there needs to be some distinct choices made by the spectator. Saying “stop” as cards riffle by isn’t a choice. Nor is reaching out into a moving spread of cards. Those are actions, not choices.

Here is a technique you can add to any force. This technique offers them a genuinely free choice that seemingly would have an undeniable impact on how things play out.

Start by having the deck shuffled by the spectator. Take the cards back and cut half of the cards off the deck and turn them over face-up.

“We’re going to start by eliminating half of the cards and it’s your choice. I’ll even show you what you’re keeping or getting rid of.”

You now start spreading through the face-up cards. If you spot the card you want to force, cull it under the spread and skip to the paragraph with a bee at the start of it.

If you don’t see their card in the face up half, turn everything over and spread again and cull the card out here.

So you’ve either shown them both halves of the deck, or just the half that was face-up originally. You have their card culled out of the deck beneath the spread of face-up cars.

🐝 Pull your hands slightly apart, so the packets are fully separated.

“It’s up to you. Which half do you want to get rid of? The face-up half, or the face-down half? … You’re sure? I just want to be certain because at the end of this I don’t want you to think I somehow made you take either pile. Whichever one you want to get rid of, we won’t use.”

They reiterate their choice.

Path One

If they say face-down. You can cleanly just toss the packet aside.

Path Two

If they say face-up. You bring your hands together, placing the culled card beneath the face down cards, as you square up and remove the face up cards and go to set them aside.

Now pause. “Final chance. Are you sure you want to get rid of the face-up cards?”

  • Branch One - If they say, Yes. (And at this point I’ve never had them not say yes, I don’t think.) I cleanly toss aside the face-up cards.

  • Branch Two - If they change their mind and say they want to get rid of the face-down cards. I double-check with them. If they’re sure, I place the face-up cards under the face-down cards and then start taking the face-down cards in groups up four or five off the top of the deck. I turn these groups over and toss them to the table. “Okay. You’re getting rid of these and these and these and these.”

What we’re going for here is a situation where the packets are fully separated, the spectator makes their final choice, and the packet they choose to discard is directly tossed aside and eliminated. That’s what happens here 95+% of the time. The other 5% is still relatively clean, just not perfectly clean.

Now, let’s back up. If they say they want to get rid of the face-up cards, and then confirm they want to get rid of the face-up cards (Path Two, Branch One), you will be left with a face-down half with the force card face-up at the bottom. You can either half-pass it. Or turn it against your leg on an offbeat. Or you can take small packets from the top of that half, turn them over, and show the audience some of the cards that are still left in play, and place them underneath that half. Eventually you’ll end up with all face-up cards with your force card at the face (this will also happen at the end of Path Two, Branch Two). Obviously, you don’t want to bring too much attention to that, so you’ll turn everything over and give the cads a shuffle that retains the bottom force card.

From here you can go into a Cross-Cut force or pretty much any other force (even a classic force) with the remaining half-deck. If at the end, they say, “You somehow made me pick the 4 or Hearts.” You can bring it back to this clear moment of choice, e.g,. “Well, I don’t know how I could make you pick the 4 of Hearts. I mean, I didn’t even know what cards were going to be in play at the end. You shuffled and got rid of half of them at the very start. What if the 4 of Hearts had been in that half?”