What are some good verbal forces other than just elimination?

Jun 9, 2019
29
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I'm guessing by elimination you would be meaning magicians choice? Imagine a deck red or black cards ok lets get rid of them, until you get to the card you want to force yeah?
Yeah, are there any other ways to force something verbal other than the magicians choice?
 

MickaelD

Elite Member
Dec 9, 2019
84
67
Equivoque (maagicians choice) is probably the most powerful way of doing it and sure fire
there are ways to force just about any other card using well placed and timed words
but we are not to provide any methods here.
also know that anyway of doing it without equivoque will only fire about 60-70% of the time.
try forcing a card out of a deck , switching for a OWD,
if it has to be done verbally then i suggest looking into Derren Browns material, he has stuff for
the 3D and JS

for all the other cards, this may interest you but again.... never a sure fire thing....
https://www.penguinmagic.com/p/6744
 

RealityOne

Elite Member
Nov 1, 2009
3,744
4,076
New Jersey
I’m trying to force a card

What is the context of the effect? Close up, parlor, stage? How is the verbally named card revealed? Etc.

Why I'm asking is that there may be better ways to force a card than using a verbal force. As @MickaelD said, there is not a verbal force other than equivoque that is 100% effective. Banachek discusses forces of playing cards in his Psychological Subtleties books (its volume 1 or 2) and Giobbi discusses in his book Confidences. Steinmeyer has some good work of using Equivoque which I remember being in Genii Magazine.
 

DavidL11229

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Jul 25, 2015
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Josh Burch

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Aug 11, 2011
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The Derren Brown material can be found on The Devil's Picturebook along with some of his other thoughts on the subject.

Most of these are not all that reliable. Daniel Madison has several as well in his book Anthology. They are interesting for sure but there are really only three ways to perform them.

-You can perform then in front of a large audience as a warm-up, interactive piece of magic. You then walk them through the force and ask for a raise of hands if it worked for them.
-You can perform it for a willing spectator and basically ask them to play along (If you pay attention to Derren's wording this is basically what he is doing).
-Or, my favorite way to do it is as an out or explanation of what you are doing. You might force a card using the l'Homme Masque force with the three of diamonds, (
) and then go through Derren's 3 of Diamond's force. This makes it look like you either already know the card (which you do) or are subtly implanting the card in their mind. You could also use this approach with an invisible deck as your out. You plop the deck down on the table and say, "I have committed to one card in the deck. I have turned it over..." You then go into the verbal psychological force.

When I say that these psychological forces are tough to pull off it is from experience. One of the most popular forces of this type is Dai Vernon's 5 Card psychological force as written up in The Encyclopedia of Card Tricks, and Expert Card Technique. When I worked for Rick Lax he performed this on Facebook exactly as written. The video was seen by thousands and as far as we could tell, it only really worked about 1 in 5 times (as good as chance).



When we talk about magician's choice or equivoque it's possible that you have not found the version that fits best for you. There are other ways to verbally force a card (or determine which card someone has chosen) and I'll mention them below as well.

A terrible example of magician's choice is used by Chris Ramsay on his At the Table Lecture and one of his most popular DVD's (I won't name the video so there's no blatant exposure here). If you saw his performance I can't imagine you'd walk away thinking it was very deceptive.

I use Jim Steinmeyer's version of magician's choice from time to time. He has written it up in several places. The way he narrows down the suit is brilliant. The way he narrows down the number is not so great in my opinion though I have used it a lot.

Joshua Jay's version as taught in Inferno is great. It's super deceptive and entertaining.

Kenton Knepper's Completley Cold method is a solid way to force a card verbally. It moves a little bit away from magician's choice. You need at least 2 people to do it. It feels super bold but it's not that bad.

Those are my favorite ways to force a card using magician's choice. Here are some other forces you might find interesting.

The Springboard Principle. This is taught in Michael Murray's book A Piece of My Mind. It's interesting. You will need to know another peek or force to make it work but man it is great.

I will use Dani Daortiz's classic force without a deck from time to time. It's a solid piece of magic! He uses it as an impromptu invisible deck effect.

My walk around opener is Flux by Pro Mystic (available here on Theory11) I use it to force a card. "If the coin is in this hand think of the color red, if it's in this hand think of the color black" and so on until we have narrowed it down.

I once heard of the George Sands prim number force used to force a card. It's not exactly a verbal force but it's a technical sleight of hand force either. You just need to place the cards in prime numbered piles as you go. (Credit to Andy of the Jerx)

If you only want to narrow down a few cards you should try Quinta by Phill Smith or possibly the PATEO force.

If you want to determine a thought of card without a deck, you could look at COG as well.

Also, Peter Turner's psychological card forces are pretty good. The mechanical ones are solid though they require the spectator to follow along with you fairly well.

Ran Pink has an effect called the White Room that is a way to psychologically narrow down the card someone thinks of. It's a great piece of mentalism.
 
Apr 3, 2019
64
19
Pesonally, I'm not a big fan of equivoque. I never use verbal forces, they are physical as in they require a deck but they are psychological and can be called "think-card". Everything I use is from Dani Daortiz. I have Reloaded by him. He has some phenomenal psychological techniques on the 3rd DVD. These include some ingenious techniques for direct forcing and phishing whereby the effect is that of complete freedom. In his other set Utopia, he teaches his Classic Force, Stop Force, Number forcing, etc. but I don't have it, so I can't speak for that.
NOTE: I know you're asking for verbal forces, but remember, its the effect that matters. And with these, it's just as strong. You can't get rid of the whole deck for these forces, but again, the effect is the same.
Anyone familiar with Dani's work will back me up.
 
Jun 18, 2019
540
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West Bengal, India
Well, when I first found out that non-verbal forces existed, I had a lot of fun predicting that an audience member chose red (or blue) or the third object out of four and the number 7 XD XD XD XD
(For the unaware, you're welcome)
 
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