Santiago's Secrets
Free Choice
I M A G I N E ...
You shuffle an ordinary deck of 52 ungaffed playing cards; then two spectators each cut it.
You ribbon spread the cards face up, then face down, in front of your two spectators.
While doing so you talk about the numerous ways magicians physically force a card on a spectator.
You, on the contrary, will try and influence your spectators to make a certain choice.
A coincidence? Or rather a subtle influence?
Yet they will get a totally free choice!
A spectator is invited to slide a Joker in between of any two cards: a totally free choice.
The first card will determine the value of the chosen card, the second one its’ suit.
Such as not to get to a subjectively predetermined playing card. Fair?
Oh I forget to tell: before he even touches the Joker you predict the card to be chosen on a piece of paper, fold in and drop it into a crystal glass, never to touch it again.
The deck is separated at the point where the Joker was inserted between the two cards which are set aside, the glass on top of them.
You write your second prediction and drop it into the glass as well.
You reassemble the deck and invite spectator two to lift off a pack of cards and to count them under the table in silence.
You now show him about 20 cards, asking him to remember the card at the position equal to the number of cards he lifted off.
“ What is your card?” He says, for instance, the Two of Hearts.
What is the card “composed” by the two cards chosen by the first spectator. A 2 of … and a …of hearts combined to the: Two of Hearts as well!
You touch the stem off the glass only, dump the two billets on the table and invite the first spectator to read out your first prediction: “ I will try and influence you to choose the Two of Hearts”
Then the second spectator opens and reads his prediction: “ Congratulations, you choose the same card, although you could have lifted off any other number of cards.”
“Did you at any given moment feel that I forced you into a choice?”
“Is this a pure coincidence?”
“or….please (spectator 2) keep your prediction to the light…what does it say?”
Spectator 2 reads what he sees in the watermark of his paper:
There is NO FREE CHOICE.
The deck of cards I designed especially for this effect not only allows you to know at a glimpse of the back of any of the two cards chosen by the first spectator which card they add up to but as well to determine the exact number of cards lifted off by the second spectator(*), leading to the position at which you show him/her the card composed by the first spectator.
And then there is the predictions on the two billets… how could you know UP FRONT…?
Very, very easy thanks to what I will call the CrystalClear Billet Switch NO dexterity required at all…you do not touch the billets anymore.
(*) remember the deck has been freely cut by the spectator
