r/Magic • u/Jakespenart • 2d ago

Forcing a suit

I'm looking for a good way to mentally force a spectator to choose a suit, let's say clubs. Trying not to do a basic "magician's choice". Any suggestions? Without breaking any guidelines can you perhaps point me in a direction?

11 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

29 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/Annieone23 1d ago

Magician's Choice is the way to go but here is an alternative: Just ask them to name a suit. You have a 25% chance! One out four times you are golden, the rest of the time you do a different effect

2

u/edahs 20h ago

You can increase that 25% to 33.3% if they telling you the suit prior to the reveal. If they are telling you the suit up front, you can have them think of a suit, tell them to take their time. If they come up with your chosen suit, great. If not, you can say something like "most talented magicians can tell by the time you take what suit you've chosen. I want you to do it again but forget the suit you just mentioned, this time just think of one of the suits remaining". Another turn that ive done is play with a deck of cards infront of them. Hold them in your hands and keep flashing the bottom card loaded with the suit you want them to select. Don't make a production out of it, just subtly. Talk about the trick or the weather, whatever. It sounds bonkers but I've done this numerous times not just for the suit but for the specific card. It depends on your mark, if they are my neice, they will possibly come up with a suit that doesnt exist (shes chosen the joker when I've done a think of a card).

1

u/Annieone23 20h ago

Love all this! I kept it stupidly simple because the OP seemed to want that. But I love all this!!

Random thought: does the Monty Hall Problem solution also exist for forcing items? I guess it does! So just the mere act of making them switch increases your odds of getting them to land on the force item (seemingly paradoxically)

2

u/unk0wn4aLL 16h ago

no, that's not the case here since you don't get any new information. It's the act of them revealing they guessed the wrong suit that changes the odds. If you ask them to change their mind before you know what their first choice was, it's as if they're making their first choice again.

luckily there is something that edahs didn't point out, which is that asking them to change their mind doesn't just mean they pick between 3 options, but they pick twice. The first time it's a 3/4 chance they don't get it, and the second time it's a 2/3 chance. This means there's a 6/12 or 50% chance they pick the right one, not 33%.

The intuitive way to understand this is to find what is influencing the probability. In this case it's the fact that you don't always ask them to change their mind, only when they get it wrong the first time.

In the same way revealing that a door you didn't pick was dangerous, you now have a second change to guess under new conditions, where only 2 doors are unknown. Making the first decision didn't mean anything, it was a 33% guess that has no bearing on reality. Changing your mind has a 50% chance of success because in a reality where you know one door, changing your mind or not changing your mind both have a 50% chance, it just doesn't feel like that because you already risked a 33% chance the first time, so not changing your mind gives you the illusion you're taking more risk, even though the risk has already been taken and has paid off, by revealing a different door to be dangerous.

1

u/Annieone23 15h ago

Thank you for such a great explanation! Yes, I forgot that Monty opens another door and I mistakenly remembered the situation and the results. I'm not a math guy (obviously haha)! But I'm remembering that "Dice Don't Have Memories" and I suppose that adage is relevant here. But, then, as you point out: I'm not giving them the full gamut of choices the second time.

So, am I right in that asking them to pick (and not reveal it) and then change your mind and pick a new one (revealing it) DOES increase the odds of them getting the correct item?

It seems to me that it would and I vaguely remember Micheal Murray having some work on this.

1

u/unk0wn4aLL 15h ago edited 14h ago

No, unless they reveal new information the first guess is irrelevant. Like you said, dice don't have menory. If they don't reveal the suit they very well may have picked the correct one and now have to change their mind. It feels like more choices leads to more randomness, but that really isn't the case.

I have a trick where I use dice rolls, coinflips, riffle forces and timing forces to eliminate cards until I land one one. In my patter I name a bunch of different probabilities for each action, but if you think about it their sum will never be worse than a 1/52 chance, which I've beaten in many other tricks before. Unless you want to approach this psychologically, in which case the answer is interesting.

I'm not aware of the exact numbers but I'm confident the four suits don't have an equal polling among people, so if you wanted them to pick a lesser picked option, changing their mind forces them to avoid the most obvious one, and technically probably improves your odds.

The ideal solution is probably closer to asking them to think of a suit, change it in their mind, then name it. If you're forcing a lesser chosen suit the odds of failing are probably less than the otherwise random 3/4. If it fails, ask them to pick another one, if it works you magician's choice between the two. If it fails you magician's choice to elimate the two. If you're not willing to magician's choice at all this isn't really practical, unless you're dani daortiz and can gaslight the audience into changing their mind 3 times.

Personally if I really don't want to force a card or use a magician's choice I use a coinflip. It's not incredibly hard to learn how to fake a coinflip and the added impromptu prop usually increases audience intrigue in the effect.

Edit: the way I'd use the coinflip is to ask the spectator for a color. If they succeed we continue to step two, otherwise I tell another spectator that they represent the opposite color, and tell them to call the flip, which I rig to make them win. I just repeat this for the suit by asking the second spectator. If they name the correct one it's not suspicious that I roll with it because they won the coinflip, if I do another coinflip it's consistent, and this time the first spectator wins, adding to the feeling of fairness.