Price will go up to $20 on June 20th, 2024.
Note: For those of you who own Rain Man and Rain Man Again, this uses a completely different method.
Imagine:
The magician and the spectator are seated together at a table. The magician introduces a deck of cards, which he hands to the spectator - they are asked to examine and shuffle it thoroughly. Once they're done shuffling, the magician takes back the deck and holds it. He says, "I want you to generate a random number between 1 and 52. Of course, I could have you name one, but then you may think I psychologically influenced you towards a particular number or that I relied on you to think of a popular number. So to eliminate such ideas, I want you to generate a number by cutting off any amount of cards from the top of the deck and then secretly counting how many you cut off by spreading through them in your hands." The spectator cuts off some cards from the top of the deck the magician is holding - the rest of the cards are set aside (the magician's head is turned while the spectator performs the cut and the count).
Next, the magician (while still turned away) tells the spectator to bury the cut-off portion somewhere into the middle of the remaining portion so that there is no evidence left as to the number of cards they cut off. They do that. Then, the magician turns back around to face them, and asks them to further shuffle the deck. They can overhand shuffle or riffle shuffle (or both) - it's up to them.
The magician takes the shuffled deck from the spectator and spreads through it face towards himself in order to memorize it (without disturbing its order). Once he's done that, he hands the deck back to the spectator in a squared, face down position (and still in the very order in which they shuffled it). The spectator is then, for the first time, asked to name their randomly generated number. And, at that point, after a brief moment of thinking, the magician tells them the card at that number and some of the surrounding cards as well. The spectator counts down themself to check if the magician's memory is correct ... and indeed it is.
Some important conditions of note:
- The spectator can shuffle the deck at the beginning of the effect - this is the main advantage in this effect compared to Rain Man and Rain Man Again.
- When generating the random number, the spectator has a completely free choice as to where to cut the deck. There isn't anything to force the point at which they cut.
- While the spectator is secretly counting the number of cards they cut off, the magician doesn't peek behind him - he only turns back around after the deck is reassembled.
1st edition 2024, PDF 6 pages.
word count: 1813 which is equivalent to 7 standard pages of text
