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The Blackjack Room by Josh Zandman With contributions from: Greg Arce, Neil Tobin and Richard Osterlind

Additional Effect: Back to the Future 2

The Blackjack Room By Josh Zandman The Prediction: A prediction is sealed in an envelope and held by an audience member the entire presentation. No switches. The Game: On stage: a table, 5 chairs and a deck of cards. 5 players (spectators) come up to play a hand of blackjack. Cards are shuffled by a random player and re-cased to avoid any tampering by the performer as he explains about blackjack. No false shuffles. No Sleights. One player deals a face-down card to each player followed by a face-up card. The Kicker: All players are given the option to switch seats. The Climax: The performer tells about a vision he had that morning of a person playing blackjack and receiving the same hand, over and over again from the dealer. He then names out loud that exact envisioned blackjack hand, total and card names and states he also wrote down a description of this person in a sealed envelope that an audience member now holds. For the first time, the players are instructed to look at their facedown card. One player has that exact hand.

The audience member holding the envelope, now opens it and reads it aloud only to reveal a detailed description of the player with the exact hand the performer had envisioned, earlier that morning!

~~~

Method: The Blackjack Room uses the ʻtarget numberʼ principle with permission and created by Ted Karmilovich. This, in my opinion, is one of the strongest methods for a prediction routine for any mentalist to know. It is a brilliant masterpiece of deception. It doesnʼt get much better than this! To begin you need to pick a person who will be your target. During your pre-show pick someone, preferably a woman as they have notable features and describe this person by writing down on a piece of paper something like this: “The person who will have the same exact blackjack hand that I envisioned this morning, will be wearing a blue dress, glasses, has brown hair in a pony tail and I believe her name is Sara.” Of course you will describe your target accordingly. Next you need to pick 5 force cards. For the sake of explanation and simplicity, letʼs use Ace-5. Take these cards, Ace on top and leave them in the card case while the rest of the deck is on the table. Now when you re-case the cards after the shuffle you will have the 5 force cards on top, in place and ready to be dealt out. When the cards are dealt, each player will receive a force card in

the order you stacked them in the case. When you instruct the dealer to deal from left to right, the players will have: Face-down force cards A-2-3-4-5 Each player now has a face-down force card. Next you would have the dealer deal a face-up card from left to right to each player. Each player will have a forced face-down card and a random face-up card: Random face-up cards K-7-5-Q-A You now know the exact hands each player has and most importantly, your targetʼs hand. All you need to do is add your targetʼs cards together. If your target switched seats when you gave the players the option to do so, then you still know her cards! Remember to only offer your players to switch seats before you say your envisioned blackjack hand. When you get to the point in the presentation where you say out loud the blackjack hand you envisioned that morning, you are really just calling out the cards that your target has in front of her. Even if she switched seats, you still know the hand laying in front of her. Just call out that hand as your envisioned hand. For example, letʼs say your target was sitting in seat 4 (according to the layout example above). You know her hand totals, 14 with a Queen and a Four. So you would say the envisioned blackjack hand was a 14, a Queen and a Four. You want to make sure you not only say the total, but the exact cards as well.

To confirm what actually happens: Your written prediction doesnʼt say the actual cards your target has. It only states a description of the person who has the exact hand you envisioned. The exact hand you envisioned that morning and call out is the exact hand your target has in front of her, on the table. Itʼs a paradox really. ~~~

Presentation: On stage you will have a small table and 5 chairs. You can do this with more or less people, but Iʼm using 5. On the table you will have the card case with the 5 force cards inside and the deck of cards on the table next to the card case. * You donʼt have to be on stage to perform this. Choosing your players is important for two reasons: One, you need your target to be one of the players and two, you want this to seem as random as possible. To solve this do the following: Crumble up a piece of paper into a ball. Begin by choosing your target as the first player and ask her to help you choose 4 other random players by throwing the crumbled up paper ball to a random person in the audience. Then that person will do the same and so on. Your audience will not remember you picking the predicted target as a player because at this point there are no expectations and nobody knows whatʼs going to happen yet. What they will remember is 5 players were randomly chosen. Invite each player on stage and have them sit in any seat they want. Ask one of the players to be the dealer and to shuffle the cards as much as they want. After heʼs done shuffling, show your

hands empty and put the cards back in itʼs case. Explain that we will use the card case as a make shift Dealers Shoe (Credit to Banachek). This totally justifies the use of the card case and now your force cards are loaded on top of the deck. Next, talk a little about how blackjack works, “Each player receives a face-down card and a face-up card. The player with the highest hand, closest to 21 wins. But this isnʼt a normal game of blackjack. Instead this is more of an experiment.” Turn to the dealer and ask him to please deal one card face-down to each player including himself, starting from left to right. You now know that starting from the left the face-down cards are: A, 2, 3, 4, 5. Now have him deal one card face-up to each player in the same manner. The knowledge you now have laid out before you is all you need to make this miracle happen. You know the exact cards each player has and most importantly, your targetʼs hand. You can now offer the players to switch seats if they would like. Even if they do you still know your targetʼs hand, because you know the names and positions of each face-down card. At this point your players donʼt know what each of their blackjack hands are. This is when you explain your vision. “This morning I had a vision. I saw this person playing blackjack and the dealer kept dealing this person the same hand over and over again. It was such a strong vision that I wrote down a description of this person and sealed it in an envelope. A member of the audience has been holding this envelope the entire time. (Turn to this person in the audience) please stand up.” Notice in the patter I say ʻpersonʼ instead of ʻmanʼ or ʻwomanʼ and this is because you donʼt want to make it too direct about who your prediction is

about. If you say ʻwomanʼ then why would you have men come up on stage as players etc.. Itʼs your choice if you want to start the presentation by letting everyone know you have a prediction and show everyone as you hand it to an audience member. I prefer not to as it adds to the mystery of whatʼs going on. Just give the prediction to an audience member before you start your show. Then when you say you have a sealed prediction that someone has been holding the entire time, it surprises your audience and makes it more exciting. Continue, “The cards that this person kept on getting were a Queen and a Four. (Of course you say whatever the cards are that the target has.) For the first time, will each of the players please look at their face-down card. Does anyone have a hand that totals 14? A Queen and a Four perhaps?” Your target will raise her hand. “Please stand up.” This in itself is very impressive! Now comes the best part. Turn to the envelope holder and say, “Please open the envelope and read it out loud.” As he reads the prediction it will explain in detail the woman standing on stage. This is such a huge climax with a very nice visual ending. ** Itʼs important to realize what has just happened. Youʼve predicted the person, who you will learn from later, the information they hold and then make it appear as though you predicted it in your original prediction. Once you grasp this concept your mind will be flooded with ideas.

There are many top performers who use Tedʼs target principle and I ask you to please respect that and not release this information. Use it in your performances and enjoy it. Please donʼt post anything close to the method on the forums. When you realize the power this method has on your shows, I can only hope you wouldnʼt want it to be spread around carelessly.

Additional Routine and Suggestions By Greg Arce

Greg was very kind to share his thoughts on The Blackjack Room. His routine is great and offers more possibilities for a high impact ending. Instead of putting 5 cards in the box, Greg suggests leaving 10 cards. Now you will know the exact hand each player has before itʼs dealt which means one very big thing; you can write the exact hand (Or put duplicate cards) in an additional envelope. Also, the players can now have both cards dealt facedown when the dealer deals the cards. So basically, you would have a prediction stating a detailed description of the target who will have the cards the performer envisioned and another prediction that shows the exact hand. To do this you need 5 envelopes, if using 5 players, each with the 5 possible hands. One hand is written in each envelope. Put these in your pocket(s) so you know which is which. When your target chooses her seat you now know which hand she has and then you would pull out the correct envelope and hand it to an audience member to hold.

To reveal this prediction say, “Before any cards were looked at I handed you an envelope. Is that correct? (They agree) Inside that envelope are the exact cards I envisioned this morning. Please open up the envelope and show everyone the cards.” They will match your targetʼs cards. Being that the deck of cards may feel smaller because you took out 10 cards to leave in the case, you can just add 5 more duplicate cards to the deck to make it feel more full. After reading Gregʼs routine, a thought occurred to me that you could write the same target prediction inside each envelope. This way you only need one prediction which would include the written target prediction and cards or you could just write both down. Greg also mentions that you could use a multiple index wallet or make a multiple out envelope so then it can be visual on the table.

Additional Suggestions By Neil Tobin

I love this following idea from Neil who was also very generous in contributing his ideas. In addition to the five face-down force cards, add two more cards to the bottom of the force stack that have the same value as each other (i.e., pair of Kings). This way, the target and another player will have the same value card faceup which will add greater suspense to the revelation of the predicted hand.

Neil and I both agree that when the face-down cards are dealt you should be turned away from the table and have the players cover their card quickly as to avoid any suspicion of marked cards. Using marked cards would seem like the only way to accomplish such an effect and we want to eliminate that option. And to further negate this theory, Neil suggests giving the deck to the target as a parting gift at the finish of the presentation. I would like to thank Neil for bringing up the idea of using Banachekʼs patter about using the card case as the dealing shoe.

Additional Routine By Richard Osterlind

Here is another nice routine by Richard who was also very kind in offering his thoughts. This routine will end with two climatic predictions like Gregʼs routine, but instead of using an index, the use of a nail writer is used to write in the prediction of the targetʼs hand. So we have two predictions: One in the audience for the target and the other on the table for the blackjack hand. The table prediction will read something like, “The vision I had this morning ended up with a blackjack hand of ___. The face-down card was a ___. The 2 blanks you fill with the nail writer. Thereʼs plenty of time during the presentation to nail write because youʼre filling in the info before the face-down card is

even known! Then the target prediction takes all the heat off the first prediction.

Back to the Future 2 By Josh Zandman

The Effect: Two small, blank slips of paper, a pen and a deck of cards rest on the table. (You donʼt need cards. This can be done with words in a book for example.) Performer picks a card and writes it down on the spectators slip. The slip is placed in the spectatorʼs cupped hands. Spectator picks a card and itʼs visually written down on the performers slip and placed in the performerʼs cupped hands. No Switches. “What if I could go 1 minute into the past in my mind, at the time the names of the cards were written down and switch our slips of paper so we now hold the card names we chose for ourselves?” You mention that if you could accomplish that then both of our slips would now be switched. At the same time you both open your hands and the slips of paper have unexplainably switched places!

~~~

Method: This is definitely more ʻmental magicʼ but I love that stuff. First you need 2 slips of small paper. The only set up required is that you write KING (or any card you choose), on the back of one of the slips. This will be your slip of paper and will be placed, blank side up on the table in front of you. Place the second blank slip in front of where your spectator will be sitting or standing. Now youʼre ready to perform. ** If you would like to hand out your slip for examination after the effect, then I suggest your write KING on a third slip of paper and leave it in you pocket. Have her shuffle the cards and explain youʼre going to try a time travel experiment. Take the cards and say that you will pick a card first. As you pretend to look for a card, youʼre just noting the top card. Letʼs say itʼs an ACE. Tell her you found one and call out, KING. Take her slip of paper as to write this card down. Take the card case and use it to lean on. This will hide what youʼre about to do. You will now do a miswrite and write down, ACE. She thinks youʼre writing KING and at this point she has no reason not to believe you. When youʼre finished, ask her to hold out her hand and place the slip Face-Down on her hand. Quickly tell her to cover it with her other hand. She is left with a slip of paper facedown, cupped between her hands with the card you will force on her in the next step. Now force the ACE on top of the deck. You can do whatever force you like. Show her the card so you both are seeing it and then openly without hiding anything, write ACE on your slip of paper. Put this slip, ACE side up in your hand and cup it with your other

hand. Itʼs important to show her what youʼre writing, but without being so obvious about it. This will make her think that she actually saw you write your card down on her slip as well. All you need to do now is for both of you to turn over your hands so the names will switch. Say, “Your card is face-down, so turn your hands over like this...” As I show them what to do, Iʼm actually reversing my word so when I open my hands it will now show KING. This is a great little move to do a ʻturn overʼ without being suspicious. Finish by going through the patter and then make sure you both open your hands at the same time. It creates a nice visual. Show her your slip, but quickly put it in your pocket, the same pocket that has the other slip. She will most likely want to see it, so just pull out the other one with just, KING written on it. What should throw off the spectator is you wrote on her slip before she even picked a card. So the notion of you writing her chosen card is taken away. Remember, they donʼt know youʼre forcing a card. When you pick up their slip to write on it, you should casually show both sides blank, without making it obvious. She will also think yours is blank as their is no reason not to at this point in the presentation. ~~~

Credits

Thank you to Ted Karmilovich for giving me permission to use his target method in The Blackjack Room. Besides being a genuinely nice person, Ted is one of the greatest thinkers and creators in mentalism. When his book does come out, it will no doubt bring mentalism to a new and exciting level. Those who have had the pleasure to meet Ted and witness his creations, Iʼm sure would agree. Thank you to Banachek, another great thinker who I look to for inspiration, for letting me use his patter in reference to the card case being the dealing shoe which can be found in his PreThoughts manuscript; published under Steve Shaw. Itʼs such a simple and brilliant way to justify using the card case. Banachek also published the in-case-stack as well in Pre-Thoughts. Thank you to Greg, Neil and Richard for lending their suggestions and routines. Their contributions are always very much appreciated and I can always count on these guys for their great advice and knowledge. Thanks to all of you who continue to support me and I hope you enjoy performing The Blackjack Room! Best, Josh Zandman