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Andy Moss Special user 713 Posts |
In this original effect it was often the case that two or three cards would match with their mentally counted positions and you would have to fish (more often than not) to get to the exact card.
The following presentation reduces this risk considerably. "i want you to imagine that I have a deck of cards in my hand. Now I am going to take out all the cards that are of one color. What would you like that color to be? Red or black? It is completely your choice." "Now think of any card from this bunch of chosen cards. Do try -if you can- to think of a really obscure and unpopular card. One that I would not guess at in a million years. In your mind's eye count the number of pips on the card you are thinking of." O.K we have now ensured that the person is highly likely to be thinking of ace to ten in a color known to us. (Picture cards are not by anyone's definition "obscure unpopular" cards and picture cards also do not have pips that can be counted.) We may then hand a physical deck of cards to them to be thoroughly shuffled and mixed up. Whilst they mix the cards we may turn our back/put blindfold on. (We might even do this effect at a distance over the telephone or internet.) The person is then asked to physically extract the card that they are thinking of from the deck and then to place it face up on top of the rest of the face up deck. They are then asked to transfer an amount of cards equal to the pip value of the card they are thinking of from the bottom to the top of the face up deck to be placed on top of their card so as to "bury" it. "Let us recap what has happened. Whilst my back was turned you shuffled a deck of cards ensuring that I could not know the positions or identities of any the cards. You then freely thought of any card. This card is now buried somewhere in the deck. I could not possibly know either the identity of the card you are thinking of nor where it is in the deck." The performer keeps his back turned whilst the person is then asked to go through the face up deck taking a card off one by one and naming them aloud from start to finish. "As you go through this freshly shuffled deck I will try to listen to the tone of your voice to see if I can get a feel for the card you have in your mind." All the performer needs to do is to ignore the first card named by the person and to count silently in their head one to ten from the point when the person names the identity aloud of the second card. Continue to count to ten in your head for the next nine cards. Ignore all cards from that point on as they are not at all relevant. Simply note which pip values among the ten cards (cards called out by the person in physical positions 2-11 in the deck) match with the position you are counting in your head.This will be the card (most of the time there will be only one)the person is thinking of! If an ace matches with the mentally counted position two then it might be safely disregarded if there is another card that also matches it's mentally counted position, (as an ace is not an 'obscure' 'unpopular' card). However if it is the only card that matches it's mental position among the ten then logically it must be the card the person is thinking of especially if it matches in color. Could someone please clarify what the various probabilities would be for success with this presentation? The definition of success is where (either with one match or more) we do not have to fish down to the exact card but immediately know the card the person is thinking of. Let us say for safety that the force range is 1-10 so that we may include the outside possibility that a person might be thinking of an ace. Remember that we have already subtly ascertained the color of the card they are thinking of at the oft.Thus 20 playing cards might potentially be in the mind of the person. Any guidance would be gratefully received. My knowledge of probability is unfortunately weak. Many thanks.Andy. |
Andy Moss Special user 713 Posts |
Quote 'If an ace matches with the mentally counted position two then it might be safely disregarded if there is another card that also matches it's mentally counted position,'
Sorry I meant magician mentally counted position ONE (=2nd physical card named by the person). |
WilburrUK Veteran user 389 Posts |
I think that by eliminating half of the cards that may match in any position you've reduced the chances of a false match in the 9 "Wrong" positions from about 51% to about 30%
if you're confident that they won't pick an ace, then you've reduced the chances of a false match in the 8 "Wrong" positions from about 47% to about 27% |
Andy Moss Special user 713 Posts |
Many thanks Wilburr for your help. I tried to reason the probability out for myself but became confused because of the following.
19(if we minus the person's card) potentially matching by chance in 9 (if we minus the one 'correct' position)'wrong' positions. Yet even if we get two cards/values that match we still have a 50% chance that these two cards will consist of a black and a red card. Thus in 50% of such cases no fishing is necessary as we will be able to eliminate through color. In the unlikely event that three cards match then even then there is still a 33.3% chance of the same being the case. Say two reds and a black and we already know the person has opted to think of a black card. No need for fishing again. Of course in the event that the odds work against us (with two or three matches where we cannot eliminate to the one card through color)it is easy enough to lead with a false guess (even/odd for example)and then hit correctly for the suit and value of the remaining correct card.It will hardly seem like fishing. This is a simple underrated effect. What I like about it is that it is completely impromptu and everything seems so random and impossible. |
Andy Moss Special user 713 Posts |
And......even we we make a random false guess with two or three cards of the same color we may still statistically hit it by sheer chance either 50% or 33.3% of the time!!!!
This effect may be called the 'Simplicity' telephone test but the odds sure ain't simple to get a hold of |
WilburrUK Veteran user 389 Posts |
Andy,
Just to be clear, the numbers I gave were the chances of there being at least one named card whose value matches the position (in addition to the selection, whose value is certain to match its position). You're right to say that even if that happens there's a chance that you'll make a lucky guess. I think you'd find it simpler to get your head around this by considering the cards with the correct value but the wrong colour as simply not a match (rather than considering them as correct and then trying to work out the chances that the colour doesn't match). So for each position there are exactly 2 cards that would be considered correct. It's true that the odds aren't straightforward, in fact I calculated them in 2 completely different ways just to satisfy myself that the answers I was giving were accurate. |
Andy Moss Special user 713 Posts |
One final thought occurs to me that a potential presentation might be made to serve us better using astrological symbol cards (the twelve star signs plus nine planets and sun and moon). The tarot major arcana have associations with the astrological signs and so we could add another layer of deception and use tarot cards instead of astrological cards. We associate the astrological sign with the tarot card and the tarot card with the house the sign is in.
Somehow I suspect that Christian Chelman or Alain Nu ? has already run with this idea so I will say no more! |
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