CROSS-NNECTION.

Effect

Two participants are needed in this experiment, the performer talks about the ability of twins to
share information and connect to each other without any verbal communication, just using the
power of telepathy.
Each of them is given a deck of cards, red backs and blue backs for each of them individually.
The first participant is asked to deal the cards, stop and shuffle and cut the pack, continuing
doing so, while the other participant is asked to mimic the action of the first participant. The
first participant then asked to stop anywhere he wants and put the rest of the deck on top of the
tabled pile, the second participant do the same. Now each of the participants has mimic the
action of each other, the deck has been dealt, shuffled and cut. No one knows the condition of the
deck, the positions of the cards is determined by the random action of the two participants.
Now they are asked to cut the deck, they look at the card they cut to, and remember the card. The
deck is then shuffled, and exchanged for each other. Now each of them thinking of random card,
no one know what it is, only each of them what was the card they were thinking of, The
performer asks them to remove the card they are merely thinking of, and tabled the card in front
of them, the two participants do so.
Now we have 2 face down cards in front of the two participants, they are asked to turn over those
2 cards, the performer count down, 3, 2, 1 and go then they turn over the 2 cards dramatically
only to found that the 2 cards happen to be the same card, exactly the perfect matching cards,
the performer congratulates the 2 participants and conclude the experiment proving that the 2
participants has unexplainable telepathic ability

Background
I always like coincidence effect, especially with 2 decks, such as the classic do as I do, there are
so many effects using 2 decks that have coincidence as their main theme, but usually the
coincidence didnt happen on a personal level, usually the coincidence happen between the
performer and the participant. I want an effect that can be done for a couple, or at least for any

two participants, and the coincidence happen between them and not involving me, because my
style of performing is that I like effects that making the participants as the star of the show, this
effect is the kind of magic that I like, those 2 participants become the stars of the show at the
end, and the effect is completely hand off, all you need is directing the spectator through some
procedure.
Most of hand off card magic or self working card tricks usually lack in context of procedure,
usually the participants are given some instruction and they are following those instruction
without any context or purpose given.
In this routine, the action of dealing, cut and shuffling are given a context, one of the spectator
has to mimic the action of the other spectator, so in this manner the procedure doesnt seem like
a procedure but more like a part of the experiment, and the good side, it involved the 2
participants in deep personal level, especially if it is done for a couple, best friends, or any 2
persons which shared special connection. Now, lets go for the method.

Preparation
No special preparation for the deck is needed, this routine is almost impromptu, even it can be
done with borrowed shuffled deck. What you need is 2 decks of cards, actually you can use any 2
deck of cards, but I prefer to have 2 decks of cards with different colored back, for the purpose of
contrast.
The setup is very simple, and you can do this on the fly, or you can prepare it in advance. If you
bring your own deck of cards, you just have to setup the same card on top of each deck which
will be the force card. For example, the top card of the red deck is 5 of hearts, then the blue deck
has the same card on top which is the 5 of hearts.
If you prefer the participant to shuffle both deck in the beginning, you can ask both participants
to shuffle, after the shuffle they asked to put the deck on the table. You take one of the deck,
suppose you take the red deck, and spread the deck facing you, you can have the excuse to do
this for removing the joker, or for checking whether the cards are complete or not, note the top
card of one of the deck (example : 5 of hearts), table the deck, and then take the other deck
spread it again facing you, using the same excuse, or to show the participant that they shuffled
very well, showing the randomness of the shuffle, and in a casual manner, you cut the card that
you note before in the red deck (5 of hearts) and cut it to the top. Now the top cards of the red
and blue deck are the same.
In any case, you start the routine with the same card on top of each deck. My preferred way to do
the routine is to prepare both decks in advance, because I dont think the initial shuffle is
necessary, for later they will deal, shuffle, and cut and give the impression that the deck is

randomly arranged by their action and end in chaotic condition. Now lets proceed to the actual
routine.

Staging and Handling

Now, you have set the 2 decks in position, you are ready 2 perform. Ask the assistance of 2
participants, my patter is the ability of twins to communicate by telepathy between one another,
You know, in Stanford university, there was a research in psychology to discover the psychic
bond between the twins. They are interested in twins, because it seems that twins has a special
bonds between each other, lets say they can feel what the other feels even before they
communicating with each other, it seems that they can communicate without words, this
phenomenon happen because twins came from the same embryo, therefore they are sharing the
same nerve system, the same brain cells, the same system organs even the same DNA..
Today we will try an experiments, I need the assistance of the two of you, you will play the role
for the twins, let suppose you were twins, and we will test the synchronicity between the two of
you..
Give the participant each one of the deck, to add the illusion of randomness you can ask which
one the deck they want to use, it doesnt matter which deck goes to which person. Now each of
them take the deck and you ask them to put the deck in their hand in dealing positions (some
people like to shuffle the deck, or toying with the deck as soon as they are given a deck of cards,
to prevent this kind of problem because you need to preserve your stack on top, after they put the
deck in dealing grip, ask them to put the other hand on top, palm down, therefore sandwiching
the deck, and later follow your instructions, this is the psychology to give the control over you,
by asking them to do this, they are now restricted to shuffle/deal/do anything with the deck
prematurely).
Now, ask the two participant, Which one of you want to be the main subject of this
experiment?, suppose the first participant is the participant with the red deck, ask him to deal
the card into a pile one at a time neatly and slowly, note that only the first card dealt is important
because later this card will be the bottom card of the deck, in the same manner you ask the
second participant to mimic the action of the first participant, ask them to deal the card into a pile
slowly and neatly just as the first participant do.
After the first card dealt, and become the bottom card of the pile, the rest of the procedure does
not matter, you can do whatever you want, usually after they dealt some, I ask the 1 st participant
to stop where he wants, when he stop the 2 nd participant must stop also because the premise is
that the 2nd participant mimics the action of the 1st participant. Now ask the 1st participant to
shuffle the remaining cards in his hands, the 2 nd participant does the same. Ask the 1 st participant

to cut the cards/ grab some cards from the middle, and put in on top, the 2 nd participant does the
same. Now ask him to deal some more cards and stop, the 2 nd participant does the same. Shuffle
again, deal again, usually I do this stop shuffle procedure 3 times, and then end by asking the
first participant Do you want to deal some more cards or stop?, If he wants to deal some more
cards I ask him to do so, the 2 nd participant does the exact same action, after that I ask them to
shuffle the rest of the remaining cards and put them on top of the tabled pile. Now the force card
(in the example the 5 hearts) is on the bottom of the both red and blue deck.
Now we are in the perfect position for the Max Holden Cross Cut Force, we will force the card
on both participants. Ask both participants to cut the deck at any point (approximately half the
cards), Now in a standard cross cut force procedure, place the top portion (the one with the force
card) cross wise (usually I step the packet slightly diagonal) on top of the cut packet (the actual
bottom part of the deck).
Now all you need is a time misdirection, you will do this by recap what is happening between the
2 participant, usually I say something like this to the participant Do you feel like you have
synchronicity between each other?, I give them time to response for this question, then I say
Lets recap, You deal the cards and you stop when you want, you shuffle and cut the pack, I
cannot control when you want to stop, I cannot control how you will shuffle the deck, I dont
even touch the deck, everything is under your control, you do what you want, and the other one
follow your actions, exactly mimic every actions you did, but this is an experiment, this
experiment doesnt always work, maybe some people have greater synchronicity and some
people dont, Now for the sake of completeness of this experiment, I want you to look at the card
you cut to, This is where the Max Holden Cross Cut Force goes, mimic the action of taking the
top portion of the deck with your hand and seeing the bottom card of the packet, this will be the
force card in this case the 5 of hearts. Both of your participants do the same and they will force
the card on themselves.
Now, this is important, reframing the condition of the situation, I will say something like this
Now, youve seen a card, remember the card dont ever forget it, Forget everything else for
now, and just think of your card, no one knows your card except you, think of your card over and
over again, now put the packet down and shuffle the deck to destroy the evidence. Now you have
a card in mind, the card youre merely thinking of This is how I do to reframe the condition
from the card is peeked to the thought of card, for the rest of the routine you will refer the card to
the card youre merely thought of.
Now, I ask both participant to exchange the deck, this is for masking all of the action and
procedure so it will become harder and almost impossible to backtrack because a lot of action
happens altogether, And then I ask the participant to find the card they are merely thought of and
table the card in front of them face down. Both participants do so. Now I conclude, I do not
know, whether both of you have the power of synchronicity or not, maybe you dont or maybe
you do, we never know, I do this to lower the expectation of the spectator so the ending become

more dramatic and more climatic, Both of you did the same random action, even the universe
cannot control your action, here we have 2 persons, 2 thoughts, and each of you have a card that
youre merely thinking of the card is now sitting on the table, I dont want to touch it, I will
count 1, 2 and 3, at the count of 3 I want both of you to turn over the cards at the same time. You
count, and on the third count both spectator turnover the card and surprised because the card
theyre merely thought of happens to be the same card. Congratulate the spectator and conclude
the experiment by saying, Well, it proves that both of you shared a special connections and your
thoughts must be synchronized by a psychic bond from the universe, that was extraordinary
coincidence, and It only happen when 2 persons shared the same thought and energy, Maybe
both of you destined to be connected to each other, well, only the universe know. End of the
routine-

PICTURE-PERFECT
Effect

The performer introduce a strange looking box, and place it on the table, then he calls no
attention to the box and continue by talking about the history of playing cards, he says that
playing cards in the ancient times are used for fortune telling and cold reading. The performer
then give a sealed envelope to the participant to hold, and the performer stated that he wont
touch the envelope again until the end of the routine.
The performer ask the participant to cut and shuffle the cards therefore now the participant is
controlling the order of the cards, the performer said that the participants is now in control of
destiny. After randomizing the cards, now the participant is asked to cut the deck anywhere he
wants to and takes the card he cuts to, he asked not to reveal the identity to the performer, and
hold it to his body covered by his hand.
Now the performer asked the participant to think of a specific object based on his card, and the
participant do so. The performer now say that the object the participant thinking of is the
representation of his own personality, and now the performer do some cold reading for the
participant based on the object the participant thinking of, nevertheless the performer reveal the
object the participant thinking of, the participant is amazed, but this is not the end, the
performer now calls attention to the box sitting on the table from the beginning of the routine,
the performer says that a few days ago, he had a strange dream, in his dream he had an image,
an image related to the future, he says that inside the box is a picture related to his very own
dream , he then open the box, revealing that inside the box is a picture, the exact object the
participant thinking of
But it does get better, before the routine begin the performer stated that a week ago, a famous
fortune teller was giving him a sealed envelope, and the envelope is in the possession of the
participant from the beginning, it has not been opened nor tampered in anyway, the performer
ask the participant to open the envelope, and inside of the envelope is one playing card only, the
card that the participant cut to. Perfect ending

Preparation

R E D H O R S E IN A R IV E R

What you need is an ordinary deck of

cards, can be borrowed, and also you need and envelope, put 1 prediction card inside of the
envelope and seal it, in this case for example we used the 7 of diamonds. This card is important,
because by using this card we will force the image to the spectator, actually we can use any card,
but it can be confusing for you to remember the procedure (you will see later why), for the sake
of ease, I like to use the 7 of diamonds as the prediction card. I also prefer to use a different
backed card as the prediction, I usually use a red backed card so my prediction will be a blue
back card. Thats all you need, and you can also done this impromptu, if you like to do this
impromptu, instead of using the sealed envelope prediction, you can use the mate of the force
card as a prediction, for example if the force card is the 7 of diamonds, you give the mate of the
7 of diamonds which is the 7 of hearts as a prediction. Give it to the participant, and ask them to
pocket them and dont see the face yet, or in any case you can also use a written prediction, you
just need a pen and paper, you write down the prediction, dont let anyone see the prediction,
crumpled the paper and give it to the participant to keep. But, I personally like to use the sealed
envelope for dramatic reason. You also need the force card/prediction card to be positioned on
top of the deck. You can do this on the fly after another routine while the deck has been shuffled
by the participant, just cut the force card to the top, but if possible I like to start by setting the
force card on top beforehand. One more thing, you also need a strange looking box, any box will
do, in fact I usually use a gift box, and inside this box you put a photograph, the photograph is
the object the participant will be thinking of, the object that you later will force on the
participant. The image below is the force image (the force object) that you need to print on a
photo paper, I prefer the size of 9 x 11 cm, any size will do as long as you can put the photograph
inside the box properly. When all set, you are ready to go.

Staging and Handling

Begin the routine by introducing your strange looking box (any box actually), and just put it on
the table without saying anything, we dont want call attention to the box yet. Now patter about
the history of playing cards, for the sake of completeness I will include my patter which most
mentalist use when talking about playing cards, Do you know, during the ancient times playing
cards are used for fortune telling?... actually, playing cards posses special power, because playing
card was made as a symbol of the universe, the red cards and black cards, represent the day and
the night, the 4 suits, represent 4 seasons in a year, the value 1 thru king, if you added all of the
value of the 52 playing cards you will get a result of 364 and if you add the joker as 1 the total
will result in 365, which is interesting knowing that 365 is the amount of days in a year,When
people starts using playing card for fortune telling? Well, it was started in the Europe back in the
14th centuries, there was plenty of fortune tellers whom use cards as their medium, theyre called
Cartomancers.
After you finish pattering about playing cards, ask the assistance of a participant, and introduce
your deck of cards, also take your prediction envelope and give it to the participant for safe
keeping, say that you will not touch the envelope again until the end of the routine, the
participant can keep the envelope in his pocket or sit on it, anywhere he likes.
Unknown to the audience you have set the top card to your advantage which in our case we use
the 7 of diamonds. Now, direct your audience through the Shuffled-Ose False Cut, which
credited to John Carey (Keep Calm and Carey On, DVD), this procedure give the illusion of
participant handle the deck and shuffled them while actually controlling a specific portion of the
deck in this case the top stock of the deck. Hand the deck to the participant, and ask him to cut a

third portion from the top and table them, now ask him to shuffle the remaining cards in his
hand, then cut half of the remaining cards, table them, shuffle the rest and table them also. Now
the position is (assuming from your point of view) you have 3 piles of cards in front of you, and
you know will direct the participant to assemble the piles starting from the very left pile (the first
pile that was cut), followed by the next pile to the right, and finally the last pile on the very right.
Basically what you are doing is directing your participant to do the venerable Jay Ose False Cut,
in fact whats important here is controlling the top portion of the deck (because we need the force
card the 7 of diamond to be on top of the deck) while giving the illusion of participant shuffles
and cuts the deck.
Now you will force the top card to the participant, and my favorite method is the Cross Cut
Force by Max Holden, in this case we will use the classic cross cut force procedure, ask the
participant to cut the deck approximately in half, then casually put the bottom portion of the deck
(this is the actual cut portion) on top of the top portion of the deck cross wise (slightly diagonal),
do not call any attention to the procedure, I usually only talks, we will use the card later, and
then continue pattering, all we need is time misdirection. We will provide the time misdirections
by saying You remember, you set the destiny for this 52 playing cards, you cut and you shuffle
the deck it means that you determine the order of the cards, and today, this deck of cards will be
used to determine something about yourself, as they were used in the ancient timesby any
chances, have you visit a fortune teller before? Or maybe a psychic reader?..., After you
pattering and the participant give their response, it will give a plenty of time for misdirection,
now you call their attention back to the card, and in a standard cross cut force , you lift the top
portion of the packet, and now ask the spectator to take the top card of the bottom portion (the
force card) and give the force card to the spectator, I usually say that this is the mystery card (I
dont refer this card as the card you cut to), and I say that I want him to keep this card and note
the identity of the card, ask him to cover the card with his hand facing his body therefore no one
else could know the identity of the card, only him could see the card).
The mystery card is very important, because it one of the 52 playing cards that at this very
moment, present itself for you, and now we will begin a journey to reveal something about
yourself using your own mystery card.., this is the patter I use to begin the object forcing
procedure, After you have successfully forced the 7 of diamonds to your participant now you are
in a perfect position to force the predicted object. This is how the force go, I learn this object
force from a lecture by UK mentalist, Looch, but instead of using playing cards, he used coin
(head/tails propositions), if youre interested in Looch original method, download his Penguin
Live Online Lecture, it was taught there. And now, I modified the method to force the object
using a single playing cards, this is the exact method :
PHASE 1
The Animal Forcing Basically we will give the participant option to think of a two objects, in
this case animal, I use horse and turtle, the force object is horse, so I will say something like this

to the participant Now you have a playing card, remember its identity, now I want you to think
of a certain object based on your mystery cards, Look at your card again, careful not letting
anybody sees it, There are red cards and black cards, If you see the color red, I want you to think
of a horse, but if you see the color black I want you to think of a turtle, Because the card you
forced before is a 7 of diamonds, the participant will see a red card thus he will think of a horse.
Ask him to remember the object hes thinking of, picture it and lock it into his mind.
PHASE 2
The Color Forcing Now you have understand the principle, for the color we will force between
two color, red and blue, the red color is the force color, this is the patter I use Now, look at your
card again, there are number cards, like ace to ten, and face cards, as jack, queen, king, If you see
a picture cards I want you to think of a color blue, but if you see a number cards I want you to
think of a color red, The 7 of diamonds is a number cards, you will force the red color on the
participant. Note that I change the pattern, I use the force object in the second sequence during
the patter, (picture first blue, the number red) in order to make it harder for the participant to
backtrack and also not giving a specific pattern to the spectator. Same as before, ask him to
remember the color, picture it and lock it into his mind.
PHASE 3
The Place Forcing Same as before, this time you will force river or desert, the force object is
river, Look at your card again, look at the value, cards are divided into even cards and odd
cards, each cards represent a value from 1 to 13, jack is 11, queen is 12, king is 13, now if you
see an odd card I want you to think of a river, if you see an even card I want you to think of a
desert, You now successfully force a river on the participant, ask him to imagine the place in his
mind and lock it, dont forget it.
After you have forced those 3 objects ask him to put the mystery card in his pocket, now in his
mind the participant is thinking A horse, a color red, and a river Later the prediction will be
revealed as A red horse in a river and slowly you will reframe the image in your participants
mind as the predicted object. But before, you will reveal the image by using some pseudo cold
reading, It goes like this..
ANIMAL Youre thinking of an animal, it can be turtle, it can be a horse, it represents
something about yourself, a turtle, means that you are a person that put knowledge in front of
everything, deep down you are very calm, and you are a very wise man, you think about
everything slowly and analytical, a horse, on the other side means that you are a person that put
adventure in front of everything, you are a very energetic person, you like to do things that are
unusual, and you like to try new things, I think that now in your mind I can see and image, I
cannot see it clearly, but I think I see a horse, right? the participant say yes

Notice that in the revelation I only say about what the animal of choice means, I dont say
anything about the actual personality of the participant, because I think its a pseudo cold reading
and I dont actually able to do a cold reading, I do this in order to prevent the participant to
object my statement about his personality, by only revealing the meaning, the spectator will not
object my statement because I am not stating anything about himself, after I reveal the meaning
about the animal of choice I immediately go to the actual animal revelation, in this case, a
horse to emphasize that I dont actually read the person personality, I may begin by saying that
all of this might be wrong, this is just pure psychological, only him know the truththis lower
the expectation of the participant for you to truly read his personality accurately.
COLOR Youre thinking of a color, it can be red, it can be blue, a color represents how you
see the world, If you are thinking of the color blue, you see the world as a peaceful place, you
like to sit alone and you have a strong inner peace, you are very welcome and goes along easily
with anybody, If you are thinking of the color red, you see the world a competitive place, you
dont like to sit and relax, you like working hard and you like to think and innovate, you
sometimes dont get along with people, you like to put pressure on yourself and challenge
yourself.. now concentrate on your color, imagine it occupies your mind, I see the color red
correct? The participant shake his head and say yes..

PLACE The last thing, youre now thinking of a place, you can think of a desert or you can
think of a river, The place youre thinking represent how is your relationship with your loved
ones, If you are thinking of a desert it reflects that maybe you dont feel to be actively involved
in your relationship with your loved ones, you are a somewhat cold hearted person, and you
dont talk much but deep down you cared so much for your loved ones, but if you are thinking of
a river, it means that you somehow like to give something special for your loved ones, you are
kind of romantic and you like to talk a lot, you like spend times together with your loved ones
doing something that is special, enjoy every moment with your other half.. now picture the place
in your mind I see a river..? yes? The spectator will say yes
Now you have revealed all of the three objects, From now on you will reframe the image your
participant thinking of as a red horse in a river, you will conclude the experiments by saying
You think of a specific image that is represented by your mystery card, a red horse in a river,
interesting that a few days ago I have a very strange dream, in my dream I see a strange image,
that moment was kind of epiphany and I try to reproduce the image, I put the image in a
photograph and keep it in this box that has seated on this table from the very beginning, Now
you open the box, and show the prediction which is the photograph you print earlier.. A red
horse in a river.., Although this is somewhat illogical/ double climax, the premise is you read
the mind of the participant and reveal the image your participant thinking of and then you show
that you have predicted the image, if we think from a logical framework, If you have predicted
the image why you have to read the mind of the participant and reveal the image one by one?

After all you know the image all along.. but I personally think that this only matter in the mind of
the magician, in the participant mind they enjoy the process of revealing and also the double
climax is not a problem in the participant mind, In fact I think the photograph prediction is very
important because we are playing with an image that the participant are thinking, the first
revelation is a verbal revelation, and the second revelation is a visual revelation hence adding the
visual dimension to the climax of the routine.
For the kicker ending, you say that at the beginning you give the participant a sealed envelope
and ask him to keep for safe keeping, you emphasize that the envelope has not been tampered in
anyway and ask the participant to slowly open the envelope while he finished doing so, ask
him is there anything inside the envelope, the participant will answer that there is a card,
emphasize the singularity, one card and one card only, ask them to remove the card from the
envelope, and show the envelope empty, and dramatically show that the card in the envelope is
the exact matching card with the participants mystery card.. For the revelation of the predicted
card I usually say This envelope was given to me by a cartomancer, about a month ago, and she
asked me not to open to this day, she asked to open the envelope at this very day, this exact
moment and she said that today I will meet someone, and I will do a cartomancy reading for the
person and at the end of the reading thats the moment when the mystery envelope shall be
revealed.. now for the first time, tear up the envelope, make sure they are sealed, not tampered,
you sit on the envelope from the very beginning and I do not touch the envelope again, (spectator
open the envelope)Will you show everybody else the card inside of the envelope? (He shows
the blue backed 7 of diamonds) and for the first time, would you show your mystery card to
everyone else? (He shows his red backed 7 of diamonds from his pocket)well, thats how our
ancients use playing cards for cartomancy, and I think.. If we want to answer the question about
our universe we could always shuffled a deck of cards, and let the mysteries reveal themselves
for us. This final prediction I think is also elevate the climax of the routine because the
mystery card is kept for the participant from the beginning, I informed him not to tell/show
anybody the identity of the card, and during the forcing procedure I only ask him to note the
color/picture-number/and odd-even cards the card was never revealed beforehand, so it adds
the surprise element at the end when the exact identity of the card is revealed.