I’ve been working on my own version of a card trick I’ve seen and am looking for ideas on the forced choice portion.
I have four piles of cards and four participants. I need participant #1 to end up with pile #1. Doesn’t matter who ends up with the others.
My current method is to ask participant #1 to “point” at a pile of their choice. If they point at pile #1 my job is done. I hand it to them and move on to the next participant letting them choose their own piles.
If participant #1 points at any other pile I pick it up and say “other than yourself, whom should I give this pile to” and hand it off.
I now ask participant #1 to “touch” one of the remaining piles.
If they touch #1 I tell them “you know the old rule, you touch it, you take it” and I hand them pile #1. I can then ask the other participants any combination of touch/point to distribute the other piles.
If #1 touches any other pile I again pick it up and ask whom to hand it off to.
With two remaining piles (pile#1 and another) I now ask participant to place and hold their hand on one of the remaining two.
If they place their hand on #1 I pause, nod, and say “yes, you may take that pile.”
If they place their hand on the other I pause then say “well, what are you waiting for, slide that on over to Bob” (last participant without a pile). Then I tell them they of course get the last pile by default.
Not sure of my methods here or if any/all of this is convincing.
Any better ideas on forcing a choice in this scenario?
Your idea seems a bit awkward to me. If the person picks pile 2, you say “give it to person #2”, and it’s smooth. But then the person picks again, pile 3, and you say “give it person 3”, and it’s still nice and smooth, and symmetrical . But then if the person’s next pick us pile 1, and you say “okay, keep it for yourself”, (while person 4 stands there idly and feeling abandoned)–that’s not symmetrical, and it stands out to the audience as looking suspicious.
How about if you only divide the deck into two piles. If the person picks pile 1, it looks totally random, and nobody knows you got lucky, and you move on with the trick.
But if the person picks the other pile, you then tell them “Okay…good for you–now pick up that entire pile, split it into three parts, and and and give each each part to each participant. See…you yourself are choosing who gets what, so we all see that it is totally random, and I can’t know which cards go to which person, right?”
You take a half step backwards, while the participant holds the limelight and the audience’s attention for a minute, and it all looks totally random and beyond your control
Then when you pick up the real thing -pile #1- and do the rest of the trick, nobody will notice the force.
Well, that’s my guess, anyway. I just made it up on the spot, and I ain’t no magician.
(Though I did go through a phase of watching Penn and Taylor on youtube, and reading the comments to figure out how it might have been done…)
This kind of force is pretty obvious these days. It’s worse when you need 1 of 4 items or sets to end up in someone’s hand. There are other methods like a trick bag to draw numbers from but that requires more than a deck of cards on hand, not to mention it just seems sketchy to involve another prop in a card trick. Not sure what else is involved in your trick. Are you using all the cards in the rest of the trick?
I was thinking the same thing. If player 1 picks a pile and gives it away, picks another and gives it away, then picks a third and keeps it, that looks suspicious.
How about something like this:
Ask player 4 to pick two piles. Slide the two piles he picks toward player 3, and the two other piles to player 2 (or vice versa). Player 3 chooses one of the piles in front of him, and 4 gets the other. Now player 2 chooses one of the piles in front of him, and you split them between 1 and 2.
You can force pile 1 to player 1, and it looks like the result of three decisions by three different people.
This sounds like a decent way to still do a “Magician’s Choice” (forcing) but have it cover four piles instead of two (as it usually does).
I think this may accomplish what I want. If I’m sitting across from players 1-4 from my left to right I ask player #4 to select 2 piles.
If one of the piles happens to be pile #1 I immediately slide both of them in front of player #2 and the other 2 in front of player #3.
If pile #1 isn’t one of the two chosen by player #4 I slide them in front of player 3 and the remaining two in front of player 2.
Either way I now have pile #1 in front of player 2.
From there I ask player 2 to choose a pile. If they pick #1 I immediately grab it away from them and slide it to player 1. If they choose the other I shove it towards them and slide #1 to player 1.
Then I just have to match the action I just took and apply it to player 3 and his two piles. Let them choose and either grab it away or shove it towards them, however I ended up treating player 2.
Essentially correct, but I was thinking of the same steps in a different order; #4, #3, then #2. Just seems more orderly to do it from left to right, instead of jumping 4, 2, 3, 1. You do run the risk that you might have to handle #2’s and #3’s choices differently, and someone could notice that. There’s also the chance that #1 will notice that they didn’t get to make any choice, and they might think the other three are working with you to force the correct pile to him.
…have Participant #4 be a plant?
If the show is good and people come back the plant will be spotted.