What's Your Failsafe?
/One rule I have when I perform is that I always do whatever the person I’m performing for asks.
For example, if they say, “Can I look at the coins?” I let them look at the coins.
But what if they’re gimmicked coins?
I’d still let them look at the coins.
To me, it would be less embarrassing to let someone examine gimmicked coins than to say, “No, you can’t look at my coins,” and then awkwardly stuff them in my pocket.
Now, it probably goes without saying that because I have this rule, I generally avoid tricks that would fall apart if someone casually asked to examine an item that has a lot of heat on it. So no, I’m not constantly handing out gimmicked coins. I just wouldn’t bother doing a trick that relies so heavily on the audience not asking questions.
That said, one way a spectator can screw me over—thanks to this rule—is by asking to shuffle a deck that’s set up for a particular trick.
This doesn’t happen a lot. But it does happen to me a few times a year, including last week.
I always let them shuffle. Sometimes you get lucky and their shuffle is so sloppy you can salvage the setup. Other times, you need to pivot.
In the past, I’d rely on my large repertoire to save me. While they shuffled, I’d flip through the tricks in my mind and pick a new one on the fly.
These days, I think it’s better to have a single go-to trick ready for exactly this situation. A failsafe trick. So now, the moment someone asks to shuffle (destroying whatever I had planned) I can shift immediately into my “Failsafe Trick” presentation as I hand them the deck.
There are two big benefits to this.
First, it gives you more confidence. You don’t need to scramble.
Second, the ease and comfort with which you pass over the deck makes the request feel inconsequential. That in itself may make people less likely to ask in the future—they’ll just see it as a pointless detour.
Of course, your Failsafe Trick has to work from a shuffled deck and ideally not require much mental energy, since you won’t be specifically prepared to do it when the moment arises.
I’ll share what I’ve been using in a future post on the subject. But I thought it might be interesting to collect others as well. So if you have a trick like this in your back pocket (or this post has inspired you to think of one), send me an email and let me know what it is.