Keywords: Beyond ESP 2, Osterlind ETMMM, ESP Deck

Short intro: 3 years experience of close-up informally to friends and strangers. Prefer to perform for strangers coz' friends don't get entertained much since they know it's a trick. Decided to focus on mentalism now. My first mentalism close up to a friend went like this...

I told her that I want to do a mentalism test or demonstration and need her to help me. Need to have the same wavelength first, so asked her to think of a red flower, a country starting with D in Europe and a big grey four-legged animal. Rose, Denmark and Elephant. So told her that we have created that same wavelength though the answers were obvious.

Started with "telepathy demo". Told her I'll rearrange some cards and she has to guess. Did a Out Of This World (Paul Curry version), but on the 6th card, told her that she was wrong on one stack and placed that wrong card into the correct stack. Ended up the act with her aksing how I did it. I noticed that doing something sooo perfectly will always get a negative reaction, so I told her that she did it all. When she said that it's impossible to have all right, I told her that she did have a mistake on the 6th card. This time she believed the demonstration.

Second was the Four Ace Production from cutting the deck into four (ala Sick Aces from Ellusionist. Sorry I dunno the real name and originator). This, eventhough perfect, I pushed the idea of 'coincidence intuition' and it was believable to her to be authentic test.

Seeing that perfection causes more doubts, I started off with the "Beyond ESP 2"'s first trick. Showed her the five ESP cards, told her to choose one that describes her the most. Laid another 5 ESP cards on the table. Eliminate one by one by giving cold reading that isn't her (e.g. You feel your life not yet complete, therefore the circle is not you), and finally settling on two cards (the cross and star). Told her that she's at a crossroad on decision making and at the same time, she likes to be recognised or popular. Since her mood is good today, she chose the Star and this one really was authentic and I got my first real reaction of surprise.

Then I did the Marked Thought (Mason) from Osterlind's ETMMM Disc 1. She placed five coins on the 10 pairs of cards. I actually had only 4 of the pairs correct and the other wrong. Her reaction was great! She was totally surprised at her "prediction intuition".

Then I asked her to place five ESP cards on the table, and I will try to match them. The first three I made it match and the other two not match as I acted distracted by people around me. And sure enough, she saw that I got 3 right out of 5 and stated that I was distracted or else I could have gotten them correct. (She actually begins to believe I have some mental ability by now).

Then I ended it off with Predict-Tac-Toe (Gardner/Thompson/Osterlind) from Osterlind's ETMMM Disc 4. Had actually prepared a camera to take a photo of me holding the tic-tac-toe prediction with the date of two days back. Then had that photo developed and placed in an envelope. Told her that the real reason I wanted to do the demonstration is coz' I had a dream two days back, and it was so real I decided to draw the tic-tac-toe game that I played with her. Started the trick, and at the end told her that I'm shaking coz'... passed her the envelope. This trick kills. I believe the build up to this effect really made her freak out! If a single guy were to do this to a single girl, I think this trick will create a relationship. Anyway, I'm married, so when she asked "What does this mean?? You dreamnt of it and it became real!?", I had to counter with "It's just a dream. I have these kind of dreams occasionally and wish to share with her when such dreams come up. I wonder what would happen if I said "I've never had a dream come true before!" Ended up the demonstration asking her three questions in which we came up with different answer to break the mental link brainwave between the two of us.

In Summary, I think that when showing to a friend, a mentalism effect is stronger when there are sprinkles of mistakes. At least you don't suddenly become a superhero overnight! I think that Beyond ESP 2's ESP Deck is superb!! But at the price, it's rather expensive AFTER you already know the secret and wish to just purchase more 'deck only' as a refill. Also, it's nice to know I can use the OOTW and Four Aces Production as a "intuition" demonstration, because the magician hardly touches the deck.

Sorry for the very long post.

I think that part of of the strength of what you did, was to let the spectator "do the magic".

And certainly since they are not trained mentalists, they would not expect ot right 100% of the time. So it adds to the credibilty of the effect.