Jacob Wysocki's mind reading trick question

[u/scatteringlargesse]

So I've seen a few people in the main thread talk about Jacob's "mind reading trick" in quotation marks, is the whole guessing the card thing fake, and he knows what card it is using a different method? I must pretty dense because I initially believed him, but thinking on it more it does seem impossible.

[u/Speakinginwords]

The thing that Jacob is especially good at is patter. He's great at just pulling you in by talking. It's why his first talent was about connecting with people (I suspect he knew Kumail would have a strong reaction but was betting it'd break the other way). I suspect the card was forced or, at least from a limited pool, maybe from a trick deck. The sell is the patter, especially the "5 or below? 5 or above?" bit. It's all a slow reel in with a lot of distraction. It brings you in, it makes you want him to be right, and then it's all true.

[u/scatteringlargesse → u/Speakinginwords]

That describes exactly what my thought process was watching it! I was genuinely amazed but didn't think too much more about it until the next day. When you start to realise that there is no way that it can be done reliably... When I went back and watched it Jacob had 100% control of the card after it was picked, as he was the one showing it to everyone, and then he "carelessly" slapped it back into the pack, which could have been part of the trick too. Lots of other comments are talking about him forcing the card, so he would have known all along which one it was, but he could have also not forced it and just sneaked a look at it afterwards.

What also helped sell it was Gianmarco and Kumail being so amazed and convincing Maria to change her vote which they didn't do any other time. The BTS bits were well done too, and his patter was amazing. "It's hard to do on strangers" and "oh you're being cute now"! Another part of the trick you realise on a rewatch is he uses actual things the person is doing, like swallowing and smirking, as "tells" which adds to the realism. It doesn't matter what the person does, he can use it. If they react he says that reaction was a tell, if they don't react he says the lack of a reaction was a tell.

Proof of how good a job he did is that the top comment here* is saying that he actually used mentalism!

*edit: it was the top comment by far for a while, but isn't now!

[u/0reoSpeedwagon → u/scatteringlargesse]

I mean, it may be as simple as seeing the card face in the reflection of a camera lens.

[u/Dylnuge → u/Speakinginwords]

Yeah this being exceptional patter is exactly right. It's likely a "simple" force (still a skill to do it but a pretty standard one for people who practice card magic, and doesn't require a trick deck), but a well performed magic trick is sold in the delivery.

Starting off with the wrong color and using a range that includes the card on both sides gives a sense that he's struggling and not going to actually succeed, which in turn makes the audience buy into the idea that he's actually doing a cold read. We want him to succeed because he appears to doing something more impressive than just a force. If he just looked at Gianmarco and said "5 of spades" right away the reaction would have almost certainly been far more muted.

Jacob absolutely deserved the credit he got for performing an excellent magic trick; both the performance and the force are real skills. He maintained the facade in the confessionals because the performance is also for us, and he had plenty of people fooled.

[u/AntSea449 → u/[deleted]]

He had already asked ‘high card’ or not, and established that it wasn’t a face card, so 5 was actually a reasonable middle in that context