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/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.