Yes, this is yet another specialty deck, combining two fairly well-known principles. (If you have
Chris Kenworthey's wonderful Mastermind Deck, you're halfway there. Chris helped Brent with the
concept.) Penn & Teller figured it out on Fool Me, but trust me, unless your audience is full of
magicians who are familiar with super tricky stuff, you are going to kill people with this.
Seriously, as the old expression goes, you could almost start your own cult with this effect,
because it looks supernatural. The card is chosen by Spectator A, you shuffle the deck and PUT IT
DOWN, then Spectator B picks a number, and voila, the card is at that number. (And no, it doesn't
use R & S, which would be the obvious solution.)
Of course, despite the rave reviews here,
there is some minor carping about its not being ANY card, the handling of the reveal, the
one-trick-pony aspect of the deck, the price, etc. Don't listen to those jerky naysayers. This is
a reputation making routine.
with the exception of adding a few additional cards that can be freely shown, I am struggling to see why/how this is different or better than the same effect achieved with the mastermind deck. Without divulging anything, can someone help me with what I am missing?
This is just a new routine with the Mastermind Deck. If you have a Mastermind Deck this is all you need. If you do not already have one this is worth it. Although not sure what a Mastermind Deck cost these days. The routine by Brent Braun is very good, and worth purchasing if you need the deck!
A $40 deck that forces ONE card only? Really? What am I missing? When the hype dies down this will end up at the bottom of the trick drawer for most.
For what it’s worth, I have a Mastermind deck and this, but I greatly prefer Position Impossible. While the same effect could be achieved with both, the PI deck’s extra feature makes it much more disarming. I bought both of these decks looking for an improved way to perform Derren Brown’s routine called Extreme Mental Effort. While both decks can achieve this effect, the additional freedom granted by the PI deck to show full faces of cards makes it far stronger. A couple times I’ve had people want to grab for the Mastermind deck to examine the cards. I haven’t yet had this happen with the PI deck. The handling feels a lot more open and free with PI because of the extra feature. The instruction with PI is also valuable. The Mastermind deck only comes with a booklet with a basic routine. Brent’s handling, especially the switch for the ungimmicked selection, is easily worth the extra $10 (Mastermind deck is $30).
I bought two of these decks, hoping that they would have different force cards for repeat performance. No luck there, they were the same card, but I didn’t bat an eyelash cause I’m going to use these a lot, and when the first one wears out, I don’t want to run the risk that they aren’t being made anymore. This is my favorite gimmicked deck since the invisible deck.
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It may not have fooled Penn & Teller, but it's startlingly good.
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