Presenting Coincidences, Part 2

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When was Part 1? Back in 2018. But you don’t have to re-read that post. This is a separate idea for presenting coincidence effects. This ties into some of the ACAAN discussion from earlier posts.

Coincidence can be an intriguing premise for a magic effect—but not if it's offered as the explanation for what just happened.

“You named any card. He counted the change in his pocket and it was 14 cents. Wouldn't it be a crazy coincidence if the card you named just happened to be the 14th card in the deck?”

That doesn’t land as anything more than the lowest-effort framing you could offer for the trick.

The way I prefer to present coincidence effects is by focusing on whatever it is we’re doing to generate coincidences. Some ritual. Some substance. Some technique I heard about that supposedly causes coincidences to manifest.

This can be any sort of Imp you want to create.

For simplicity, let’s say it’s an incantation. You and your friend repeat this chant, then begin actively looking for signs of coincidence.

“Think of a number between 1 and 10,” you say. You both say yours aloud—but they don’t match.

“Name a song,” you suggest, flipping on the radio. Not even close.

“Hmm. Okay. Name a card,” you say, picking up a nearby deck. “Five of Spades. Alright... let’s try this. Got any change in your pocket? How much? Fourteen cents? Okay, count to the 14th card. What?! Seriously?!”

We can’t pretend that a card appearing at the position in a deck that matches the change in someone’s pocket is somehow meaningful. It’s not. And using it as your specific demonstration of the power of coincidence would be silly.

But if it happens after a ritual intended to generate coincidences? That’s different. It doesn’t matter what the coincidence is. What matters is that there was one. That’s enough for the moment to feel charged.

They might not remember the specifics—the card or the coins. But they'll remember the old Israeli incantation you taught them. Or the weird spray bottle filled with “coincidence serum.” Or the crystal with an alleged “coincidence radius” of eight feet.

If you focus on the coincidence itself, your trick lives or dies by whether that coincidence feels relevant enough to matter. And most coincidence tricks don’t.

But if you focus on the thing that generates the coincidence, then any coincidence becomes endowed with meaning. You don’t need something profound to happen. You just need something to happen. And the audience will fill in the rest.

They get to imagine a world where serendipity can be summoned. They won’t believe that premise—but their mind will still entertain it. “How else might this thing be influencing reality?”

By contrast, if you focus solely on the coincidence, there’s nowhere to go from there. No one is charmed by a world where a bill’s serial number happens to match the cards in a bridge hand.

The coincidence doesn’t carry the effect. The generator does.

That shift in framing unlocks a whole category of effects that might otherwise feel too slight or irrelevant to perform. It lets you take the meaningless—and make it matter.

Mailbag: Lucid ACAAN

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When I was a kid, I used to sleep with my schoolbooks under my pillow the night before a test. This is what I did instead of studying. My theory was the information would seep into my head by osmosis. I actually did pretty well in school, so we can’t definitively say this didn’t work.

This concept has infiltrated a few tricks I’ve created that happen overnight, similar to the Lucid ACAAN. And it is sometimes a little factoid I share to lead us into such a trick.

Below is some of the feedback I received since last week’s post.

I just wanted to take a moment to say how completely blown away I was by the Lucid ACAAN. There’s something magical, strange, almost mythological about it… and at the same time, it works in such an incredibly elegant way.

But what really struck me — and where I think you absolutely nailed it — is that, with this approach, you’ve finally created an ACAAN that laypeople will actually love. Like, genuinely. It’s not just “a coincidence”… it’s the kind of thing that makes someone stop, stare into space for a few seconds, and wonder if they just experienced a quiet little miracle. With this story, with this structure, the effect becomes absurd — in the best possible way. This is exactly why I’m such a fan of your work.

The whole thing is so well-constructed it feels... I don’t even know. Surreal!

I seriously can’t wait to try it out.

Thanks for creating something so unique, so theatrical, and so personal. —DM

Thank you 🙏

I know this isn’t the ultimate anytime-anywhere ACAAN, but even if you don’t use the full presentation, I think there are elements in it that can strengthen any version of the effect—especially in how it’s framed.

I’ve written more about my thinking on the ACAAN plot in a post called Fizzling ACAAN, but the core idea is this:

If you want the effect to stick, you have to weight the presentation more heavily than magicians typically do. The trick should feel fantastical—something that goes right against the edge of possibility.

Most performers lean into statistics: “It’s pretty unlikely your card would be at your number. And look—it is! How unlikely!” But coincidence, on its own, isn’t always that impactful. It only hits when it feels personal—like running into your college roommate while you’re both visiting Paris after not seeing or speaking to each other in a decade. That kind of coincidence lands because it’s yours.

But a random card at a random number? That doesn’t mean much.

So instead of emphasizing improbability, I try to offer the audience something impossible. Something strange. Something worth wondering about.

That’s at the heart of the Lucid ACAAN. But that general concept can be applied to any version of the effect you do.

Amazing!

To lay person, this would seem mind-blowing!

And the best part for me is ... I don't have to buy anything! I already have Xeno. But I don't use it.

I bought it a few months ago & once I got it, it just didn't resonate with me. Maybe I don't fully understand how to use it.

This Lucid ACAAN of yours will make me try to work with Xeno again. —MP


Bravo.

Lucid ACAAN elevates a mundane magician effect 100 fold with a solid hook and structure.

Xeno continues to be a powerhouse utility app.—LT

I’ve said it before, but I consider Xeno to be Marc Kerstein’s most underrated app. Perhaps the most underrated app in all of magic.

He’s mentioned to me that he’s likely going to give it an overhaul and update in the future to make it even better, which is something I’m definitely looking forward to. But it will probably be more expensive then, too. If you don’t have it, I’d get it now while it’s still relatively cheap.

Then use the search box on my site for Xeno to find the different uses I’ve talked about for that app.

Here are some alternative handling ideas that people sent in. Personally, I’m very happy with the methodology as I described it. There’s no sense that the order of the cards is ever changed, the spectator deals, the spectator turns over the card, it’s easy, and it’s invisible.

That being said, certain methods feel better for certain people, so here are some other ideas to consider:

Thanks for sharing Lucid Acaan, I had a thought which I wanted to share. The dealing process has some similarities to Andrew Gerard’s Extraordinary Proof on the Paul Harris TA dvds. Whilst Andrew's effect is definitely a table version. It has a couple of nice psychological touches that appear to prove  the fairness of the procedure. Combined with your presentation, it would remove any sleights other than the cull. You essentially end up with an image that all the card has come from centre of the deck.  —TB

I just wanted to share this with you, it's a way to position the top card to whatever number is needed in a very clean manner. You have to deal, but you can do it slower and cleaner than the way Paul does it in the video. 

Since in the original handling you need to touch the cards anyway, I think this is pretty darn good. —AFC

Re: The Lucid Cull Alternative

Another alternative would be to spread to the needed card, and then go one further, and put that down as if it's the card you think the person chose.  That card becomes the object of focus so you can do anything with the deck.  Then you can discard that choice however you want (decide to change your mind, fail then try something else, fail and do a top change, whatever).

In the attached video, the blue-backed card is the actual target card.—CC

And, lastly, a crediting note:

I first encountered the switching move used in Lucid ACAAN in “THE DUNBURY DELUSION IMPROVED” 

This effect is credited to Charlie Miller and appears in Alton Sharpe’s Expert Card Conjuring which was published in 1968.

The move is described on pages 50-51. Charlie also used a similar failure ruse as misdirection. The effect is classic.

The application of the sleight in Lucid ACAAN is well timed and appropriate.—RJ

Aloha 🌺

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Thank you for the site so far, it is, pound-for-pound the best writing about magic in the modern world. And it's one of the only resources for the non-professional performer.

I have to say, I have been surprised by the number of things that you've written that sound like something I wrote somewhere, or said to someone, just recently. Don't know what that means, exactly, but there it is.

—Curtis Kam, October 21st, 2015

This was Curtis Kam’s first email to me, sent about a decade ago. I think I joked with him afterward that saying, “Your writing is brilliant—it sounds like something I’d say,” is a bit like saying, “Your body is fantastic… and so similar to mine!”

Curtis was a regular reader and early supporter of the site. He would write to me a few times a year to give some insight into something I’d written about, or just to say he enjoyed a particular post. He was a bit of a rarity: known primarily as a coin magician, yet fully aware of how underwhelming and meaningless coin magic can often feel. That kind of self-awareness is uncommon (and valuable).

Curtis passed away just recently. Others are better positioned to speak to his contributions to the art—and to the kind of person he was. But I wanted to pause the regularly scheduled posts to take a moment and remember him.

Here’s a post inspired by one of his emails: The Curtis Kam Judo Switch

And below is my review of his final Penguin Live lecture, excerpted from an older issue of the Love Letters newsletter.

Dear Curtis Kam,

Hey, brother-man! How’s it hanging? Decent. Decent.

I wanted to write to you about your recent Penguin Live lecture. I have to be honest with you—I only begrudgingly watched it. I just really don’t like coin magic, generally. It’s like the worst parts of all magic tricks: long, multi-phase routines; the same thing happening over and over; no real purpose to any of it. It’s rare for coin magic to get the kind of reactions I’m looking for when I perform. But if you like polite applause, then buddy, you’ll love coin magic.

“This coin turns from silver to copper.”
<clap clap>
“Now this one does.”
<clap clap>
“And finally this one.”
<clap clap>

Mildly impressive tricks done repeatedly is almost the definition of a coin routine. Here’s the thing… if that first moment got a big response, that’s all you’d do. You wouldn’t repeat it four more times.

Then there’s this dumb thing people in magic say: “People like tricks with money because people care about money.” Like… okay. I guess it’s true that people care about money. But I don’t think they give a shit about your pocket change, dum-dum. The concept of money in general doesn’t automatically drive people crazy. How do you think anyone survives working in a bank? You think they’re just flipping out every time they deposit someone’s cash? “Oh my god! 140 dollars!”

People care about their own money. They don’t care too much about yours. Would you do cigarette magic with pregnancy tests just because pregnancy tests mean something to people? That would be weird.

Coin magic might benefit from being more of a novelty for some people. Other than pulling a coin from behind someone’s ear, coin magic isn’t something most non-magicians are familiar with—not the way they are with card magic. So that might win you some points the first time or two you show them a coin trick. But when we’re talking about performing long-term for friends and family, the novelty wears off, and quickly the effects all blend together in people’s minds. Which is exactly what we’re trying to avoid.

But you know all this. I feel like your work has evolved to address these issues. And your lecture had a number of tricks that break the typical coin magic pattern—and the ones that don’t are at least playing with the form.

There was one trick in particular that I really enjoyed. I’ve made a couple tweaks to it that I think make it cleaner—and maybe even a little more interesting. And that trick is…

Curtis Kam’s third Penguin Lecture is over two and a half hours long and contains 12 tricks.

Before I get to my favorite one, here are a few other effects in this lecture that I really enjoyed:

CoinRoll: This is a coins across routine, but instead of the coin traveling invisibly from hand to hand, it travels in the form of a small silver ball that rolls from one hand to the other. So, you start with three coins in your left hand, and an empty right hand. You close your hands and a little silver ball rolls out from your left hand, across the table, where you pick it up with your right hand.

Now you have two coins in your left and one in your right. (No silver ball is in sight.) This is repeated two more times until all the coins have gone across.

I was just bemoaning coin tricks where the same thing happens over and over. Well, for this trick, that might be necessary. It’s such an abstract idea that the first phase won’t be as appreciated as it should be. You need to give them some time to wrap their minds around the concept first.

I don’t know that I’ll ever perform this, but if so I would likely do it as a follow-up to a standard coins across. I might not even perform the standard coins across myself. I might show them a video of someone else doing it. Then as a “peek behind the curtain” I will perform this trick and say that either I’m “slowing down” the procedure so they can see how it’s really done.” Or that I might say that I’m working my way up to be able to do it as quickly as it’s done in the video so the silver ball is never seen.

The Lawyer’s Tale: This is a weird coin logic puzzle type thing with a finish that I think is magical. But I can’t be 100% sure. I don’t know how normal people will react to it. It’s a grower, not a shower. It’s a “thinker.” I think your audience has to be not too dumb, but also not too smart for this one to really hit home. I fall right in the sweet spot for this, so I found it weirdly intriguing.

You might watch this and say, “I don’t get it,” or, “That’s obvious,” depending on how much smarter or stupider you are than I am.

The impromptu version is better than the gimmicked version, in my opinion. Which is good, because while this isn’t the sort of trick I would prepare to perform, it’s the sort of bar-bet/trick/story that I could see myself performing when out with people and we have some time to kill.

Science Project: This is a vanish of 12 coins at once—6 quarters and 6 half dollars. It uses some additional “arbitrary” items. But the particular items he chose all have a kind of “romantic” element to them and I think it sort of adds to the magical-ness of the effect.

✿✿✿

The trick that I was drawn to most from the lecture is called The Impossible Is Now.

Here is how it’s described on Penguin’s site…

A coin, a ring, a dollar bill, and a trick in which the audience is told when the magic is happening, but they don't believe it until it's not happening anymore.

So now you know what the trick looks like.

Okay, no, you don’t.

But I’ll tell you what the trick looks like when I perform it, which is somewhat different from how Curtis does it.

When I’m out with someone, I tell them I want to give them a gift.

I pull out a little wrapped present from my bag. It’s about the length of a cigarette.

“Actually,” I say, “There are two gifts here. There’s the physical gift wrapped up here. And then there is the mystery of this gift.”

I have the person I’m performing for remove their ring (if it works for the trick), or I’ll take off one I’m wearing.

“This is the mystery part,” I say. And I thread the present through the ring and have them slide the ring back and forth along the present. “It might not seem like much of a mystery, but it will.”

I ask them to pinch one side of the present. I slide the ring off the other side and set it aside.

I make very clear my hands are empty, then I take the little present from them.

I rip off the two ends and let them drop to the table.

I hold one end of the wrapping paper, which starts to unroll. (It’s a piece of wrapping paper about the size of a dollar bill.) It unrolls and the object inside reveals itself. It’s a half dollar. (Something that, obviously, can’t fit through the ring.)

I then give them the half-dollar to keep. A “lucky” coin as the second part of their present.

✿✿✿

Okay, so when Curtis does this he takes a dollar, rolls it up, pushes it through the ring, then unrolls it to show a half dollar is now in the bill.

While I was taken by the trick when I first saw it, there was something about it that didn’t sit right with me. After a little thought, I realized what it was. If you’re making the half dollar “magically appear” in the dollar bill, then the part with the ring doesn’t really matter. Because you could have made it “magically appear” after it went through the ring. Does that make sense?

I think the reaction is less clean than it could be. “I saw him roll up the dollar and there was no coin in it. And that coin can’t fit through the ring.”

With this “Little Gift” presentation, you’re telling them there’s something inside the wrapping paper. In this case the reaction is a little more straightforward. “That thing in there couldn’t have been in there.”

Beyond that, I think the gift presentation is just generally a little more interesting.

And it feels cleaner to me. Your hands are absolutely empty. The present is sealed. They’re holding onto the gift. There’s nowhere for anything to be other than inside that present.

This trick requires a gimmick a lot of you already own. And you’ll need a regular ungimmicked coin to switch in.

I’ve been carrying this around in my computer bag while I’ve been testing it out. I roll the little present at home and seal up one of the ends with tape. When it looks like the opportunity to perform this might arise, I load the present and seal (or reseal) the other end.

Ideally I’d like to carry this ready to go at a moment’s notice, but I’m not sure that would be good for the gimmick. I’ll have to test if the gimmick still works as it should if it’s inside the package for a day or a week or whatever.

Curtis Kam’s Penguin Live 3 is available for $40 from Penguin Magic.

Lucid: Cull Alternative

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I love your Lucid ACAAN. I definitely want to try it soon but I don’t have a good cull. The thing that people sometimes recommend is to spread the deck then break the spread at their card, gesture, and then reassemble the deck with their card at the back. I sometimes get away with that but I’ve had people bust me on it too. Any thoughts? —IS

Yes, what you’re talking about is this…

As an alternative to the cull, people will spread, cut at the card they need, gesture, and then put the cards that were in front, behind the other cards.

This can look like you’re doing what you’re doing: cutting the deck.

A few years ago, I had a non-culling friend who had the same issue—getting busted on this cull alternative a couple of times. I gave him the advice I’ll give you below. I just texted him to ask if it’s been working for him, and he said he hasn’t had any issue since he started doing it this way. So, anecdotally at least, it works.

I have found that people have a much harder time tracking things if you change multiple aspects at once.

What I mean is, in the gif above, we’re just changing the position of the two packets. This is something that’s not too difficult for people to pick up on, even if they’re not truly paying that much attention.

But if you also change the orientation or the polarity of objects, it is much more difficult for people to casually pick up on the fact that something definitely changed.

So instead of spreading the cards and then putting them back just by reversing the motion with which you spread originally, change something else before you put the packets back.

Here, for example, the card are spread, there’s a gesture, then the packets go from vertical to horizontal before they’re reassembled.

You’ll want to do it in a way where it looks natural and flows with what you’re saying, of course. The idea is just that with more going on, it’s harder for people to discern the packets have shifted.

In the Lucid ACAAN, you would also be asking a question at this time, so I think they’re even less likely to notice anything.

That being said, this might be a good routine to practice your cull regardless as, ideally, they should be under the impression you couldn’t know what their card is. So the notion that you might be moving it around is something that should be less likely to occur to them.

"I Guess Everyone Thinks..."

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One of my least favorite responses in a mind-reading or prediction effect is: “Well, I guess everyone thinks of the number 59.”

I get it. For some spectators, it’s easier to assume everyone names the same random two-digit number than to believe the mystical premise I’ve set up. But it’s still annoying.

When asking someone to think of a card, many magicians say: “Think of any card in the deck.” Then they’ll amend their instructions by saying, “Now, a lot of people go for the Ace of Spades or the Queen of Hearts, so don’t pick those.”

What I don’t like about this language is:

  1. It feels restrictive—like I’m telling them what not to pick.

  2. If they were thinking of one of those cards, now they feel like I called them out for being a basic bitch.

  3. It makes it sound like I’ve been doing this a lot, when, in most circumstances, I want this to seem like something I’m just doing now with them for the first time.

Here’s the language I use instead…

With Playing Cards

“Think of any card in the deck. You can go with an obvious one like an Ace or Queen, or something totally obscure.”

With Numbers

“Think of any two-digit number. You can go with something obvious like 13. Or a ‘funny’ number—[I make air quotes]—like 69. Or something totally obscure.”

With Anything

“Think of a house pet. You could go with something obvious like a dog or cat—or something less common.”

Why This Language Works

First, it makes it sound like all the options are open to them.

Second, it doesn’t give them time to settle on something before I label that option as “obvious.”

Third, it nudges them away from the examples without saying “don’t pick this.”

Fourth, and most importantly, it kills the “everyone must think of that” explanation. You’ve told them what the obvious choices are. So now they’re going to dig for an obscure one. And because they’re actively prioritizing obscurity, they can’t then tell themselves, “I guess everyone thinks of that.”

And if someone does choose one of the options you name beforehand, it’s because they think it will trip you up. “Ah—he said everyone thinks of ‘Dog,’ which means he probably doesn’t want me to think of Dog. So I’m going to screw him up by thinking of Dog.”

So they can’t fall back on “everyone picks that”—you already said that, and clearly left the door open to pick something else.

Either way, it feels like their decision—whether they leaned into the obvious or deliberately swerved away from it. In this way, they're making a free choice of how to proceed before they even make their final choice. And that freedom reinforces the illusion of total unpredictability—even when you end up nailing it.

Lucid ACAAN

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Imagine

I’m meeting up with my friend Giana tomorrow, so I call her in advance to ask if she can help me try something.

“Do you have a deck of cards at your place?”

She finds one. I ask her to shuffle the cards, place them back in the card case, and then slide the deck under her pillow.

“I don’t want you to open the cards again until I see you tomorrow.”

I have her think of any card in the deck. “I just want this card to exist in your mind, so make sure you remember what it is. If you need to write it down somewhere, that’s fine, but make sure you put it in a place no one else can see it.

I have her go to a website where each card is paired with a description of a surreal image. She reads silently through the one linked to whatever her card is.

For example, she might read something like this:

In the desert at dusk, a sleek red fox approaches. Its eyes are glowing lanterns, and inside them, you see moments from tomorrow.

I ask her to read it a couple of times, then try to remember some of the imagery. “If you happen to think about it before falling asleep, that might help. Not required—just see what happens.”

Before we hang up, I add: “Also, if when you wake up tomorrow you happen to remember anything about your dreams tonight, do your best to hang onto those thoughts. You can write them down if you need to.”

The next morning, I text her a quick reminder to bring the deck of cards when we meet up.

That night, she comes over. We grab dinner and hang out for a bit.

As the evening winds down, she asks, “Hey—what’s the thing with the deck of cards?”

“Oh, right,” I say, and nod toward her bag. “Grab the deck.”

She pulls it out and hands it to me. I remove the cards from the case. “You never looked through the deck at all after you shuffled them, right? So you don’t know where any particular card is?”

She confirms she didn’t.

I give her the deck to hold.

“And those are in the same order they were when you slept on them? You haven’t changed anything?”

She agrees.

“Okay, I’m going to try and explain this, but I only know the basics—and I’m not even sure if what I know is accurate. There’s not much of a record of this stuff.

“So, in Prague, in the 1960s they were working on some experiments that were about… well, the only way I can think of them is as like a kind of reverse dream interpretation. So, like, the way we think of dream interpretation is that you’ll have a dream, and there will be some weird imagery in the dream. And then you’ll wake up and you will try and fit that imagery into understanding some aspect of your life. There are books on dream symbolism, but obviously it’s not exactly science.

“What they were doing in Prague was the opposite. Instead of taking some random imagery from their dreams and trying to apply it to the real world, they were focusing on some surreal images while awake and hoping to get concrete, real-world information in their dream state. They were seeding their dreams with these visuals.

“I think they were using it for some military purpose—something connected to remote viewing. Like, they had a way of linking specific dreamlike imagery to specific targets—weapons or troops or something—and by concentrating on this imagery while they were awake, the remote viewers could unconsciously retrieve actual location information about where those things were. The idea was that your dreaming mind might do some kind of pattern-matching your waking mind couldn't.

“I don’t know if it ever worked. I doubt there are records of that part. But this thing with the playing cards—that was a preliminary test. And apparently it survived.

“They developed a deck of imagery—one unique, surreal scene for each playing card. The theory was: if someone focused on a particular image before sleep, then during their dreams, they might receive a number. A number between 1 and 52. The exact location of the card they were thinking of.

“So… do you remember getting a number in your dream last night?”

“No,” Giana says.

“Do you remember anything from your dream.”

“Not… no. I think there was a clown in it?”

“Hmm… okay, well concentrate on that image of a clown and I want you to let a number between 1 and 52 come to your mind. Don’t tell me what it is, just let it come to you.”

She nods. After a moment, I say, “Got one?”

She does.

“Deal that many cards into my hand.”

She starts dealing. She stops a little before halfway through the deck.

I take a peek at the top card. “Were you thinking of a black card?”

“No,” she says.

“You weren’t thinking of the 4 of Clubs?” I ask.

She shakes her head and smiles. We both know what that means. We went through all that effort, and it didn’t work.

“Well, that’s good. Because this is not the 4 of Clubs. What card did you think of last night?”

“The 9 of Diamonds.”

“And what number did you think of?”

“Twenty-two.”

I gesture toward the pile in my hand. “Turn over the 22nd card you dealt.”

She does.

It’s the 9 of Diamonds.

She opens her mouth to speak—but stops.

I can see her mind working though things. It’s her deck. She shuffled it. She put it in the case. She never told me the card or the number (not until just now). She dealt the cards. She turned over the card. With no objections gaining traction, her mind stalls.

“That’s wild, right?” I say, watching her try to form a theory.

She asks to see the site again.

In the desert at dusk, a sleek red fox approaches. Its eyes are glowing lanterns, and inside them, you see moments from tomorrow.

We try to find a connection to the 9 of Diamonds in this imagery. “A lantern flame is kind of diamond-shaped,” she says.

Maybe it’s a reach. Maybe it’s not.

But without a clear explanation for how I could have done this, she’s left to at least consider this option:

That a surreal image—implanted in her mind the night before—somehow reached through her dream and gave her real information from the waking world.

Method

They Never Name Their Card

The website they’re sent to is a Xeno site. (Here.) Thanks to Marc Kerstein’s brilliant app, you can see exactly which card they’re focusing on—without them ever saying it out loud.

They Never Name Their Number

It doesn’t matter. When you meet up, you take the cards out of the case. As you casually spread through them and say something like, “You don’t know where any particular card is in the deck, right?”—you cull their card to the top.

They Deal The Cards And Turn Over Their Selection

You ask them to deal the number of cards they’re thinking of into your hand. They can deal one card or all 52. It doesn’t matter.

The card they were thinking of is now on the bottom of the packet in your hand.

There are a number of things you could do now. You could do a Bottom Change, a standard Bottom Deal, or a One-Handed Bottom Deal and give them (supposedly) the last card they dealt.

I prefer something easier and, for me, better.

I square up the cards in my hand, but I jog the bottom card to the right, while I peel up and take a peek at the last card that was dealt.

I now name the opposite color of the card I know they’re thinking of. “Was it black?”

This suggests that it didn’t work. And if they are hyper-focused on the deck, it gives them a reason to let down their guard a little bit. I just wait them out. As soon as they look away from the deck even slightly, I pull out all the cards above the bottom card to the left. I now tilt up the formerly bottom card, peeking at it similarly to how I just did with the top card. “It wasn’t the 4 of Clubs?”

I now drop the card on top and I extend my hand towards them, held flat.

Here’s the exposed view of what that looks like if you’re looking at the hands as it happens. In real life, the “move” is invisible if they’re not staring at the deck. (Even if you just look at the top of your computer screen or phone after my friend first looks at the card, you won’t really seem him do the switch out of your periphery. And you know what to expect.)

If you want, you can have them now name the card they thought of and the number they dealt. But if you prefer to claim that those things were never said out loud, you can simply have them turn over the card.

Personally, I think the build-up is better when they name both pieces of information. By the time they do, the card is already resting on top of the packet in your open palm—clearly not in a position to be touched or changed.

This combination of technology and simple sleight-of-hand is nearly impossible for non-magicians to untangle.

And the premise justifies everything.

This is not an ACAAN that you’ll do on the spur of the moment. But because of that, what you get is a trick that comes off as more than just a quirk of statistics or a demonstration of sleight-of-hand. Instead, you have something that bypasses probability and feels like a genuine impossibility—because the premise itself is surreal enough to defy explanation.

And you've given them something far more engaging than “One time I named a card and a number and the card was at that number.” I feel this story is more worth remembering and telling.

Mailbag: E.D.A.S. Evolution

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We seem to be living in the golden age of decks of cards that are made to look like other things. Legos, magic eight balls, karaoke tunes, roulette, memory games, and so on and so on. 

Do you think you caused this with your EDAS concept, or is it just coincidence, or did you just so happen to hop on the bandwagon a little ahead of its curve?

I don’t recall there ever being such a fixation on making decks that masquerade as other things until very recently and now it’s like every other trick that comes out is exactly that. I’m not complaining, I like it and it’s great for EDAS, but I’m curious what you feel your involvement has been in this. —MH

One day I was telling a magician friend of mine that I think I’m the most widely read voice in magic. I mean, if you tallied the total number of words actually read, who else in the magic world comes close?

Then I took it a step further: “You know,” I said, “I’m probably the most widely read author in the history of magic.” Not because I have more readers than someone writing for a mainstream audience. But in the niche of writing for magicians—in that narrow little corner—there might be more minutes spent reading my stuff than anyone else, ever.

As I was patting myself on the back, my friend brought up a Facebook group devoted to magic. I don’t remember the name, but I think it’s the biggest one. Anyway, he was scrolling through it, and I was reading along over his shoulder. Each post was dumber than the last. Dumb people, performing or talking about dumb tricks, in dumb ways. The way they performed, and the things they valued, were exactly the same as they were 20, 50, even 100 years ago.

So, yeah—I don’t think I’ve had any real influence on magic. Other than probably shifting the conversation towards casual/social performing, which hardly anyone was writing about before I started this site. Before that, most people wrote like their audience was made up entirely of guys table-hopping at the Magic Castle.

(I do understand that—for some people—my writing has been incredibly influential in shaping their approach to magic. But that’s a small group.)

So, no—I don’t think the E.D.A.S. concept created the current glut of non-playing-card decks you see everywhere. That feels more like a byproduct of how easy it’s become to design and produce custom decks these days.

But that does bring me to a change—or, more accurately, a refinement—of the E.D.A.S. concept and philosophy.

An E.D.A.S. display should prioritize actual decks of playing cards.

Decks that each have a curious story behind them.

After that, I think it makes sense for your E.D.A.S. display to include other card games that aren’t standard playing cards.

And after that—and long after that—you might consider including decks that aren’t playing cards or card games at all.

Currently, I only have two of those in my display: Evoke by Craig Petty and SNAPS by David Jonathan and Dan Harlan. They kind of stand out as the exceptions. And I plan to never have more than three “non-game” decks on display.

Why?

Because having a collection of interesting playing cards makes sense.

Having a collection of playing cards and card games makes sense.

But if your collection includes things like a karaoke deck, a deck of Lego structures, one with movie posters, and one showing different Rubik’s Cube orientations… then what are you saying?

“I collect small, stackable, curated data rectangles, in unrelated thematic categories, printed on cardstock."

That doesn’t make much sense. And because it doesn’t make sense, it starts to feel like all these decks were custom-made for magic tricks. Which, of course, they were. But we don’t want to emphasize that.

While any of those tricks might be fine when introduced individually, I don’t think they work when you’ve got a whole shelf full of them. That’s not really in the spirit of an E.D.A.S. display. (You get to define the spirit when you’re the one who created the concept.)