Learn About Your Props…

There are some amazing tricks in magic, one of them is the lottery prediction. It’s the answer to the question everyone gets (even if you aren’t a mentalist), which is “can you tell me the winning lottery numbers“.

There are a lot of solutions, and the best I think is Cesaral’s CUPP. The cool thing about that is at the end the audience is left with a physical lottery ticket they can keep. Right now I think there are several that use a picture of you holding the lottery ticket. Honestly I don’t think this has the impact of a physical ticket, because the easiest way for an audience to guess how it works is actually how it works.

This picture came across my facebook feed of someone doing a digital lottery prediction:

Here’s the problem with it. He’s using a prop (lottery ticket) that everyone is familiar with, but he’s using it wrong. Tons of people play the lottery, it’s a very popular game and because of that people know the rules. In Powerball you can only play numbers up to 69 for the first five numbers. That means that the 85 on that ticket would be impossible to play. Then the last number, the 99 is in the power ball position, which you can only play up to the number 26.

There have to be people who notice that. It’s a simple thing to fix by giving people a number range. I did the lottery prediction in my show for a couple of years, it’s not hard. That little bit of realism makes the trick soo much stronger.

That’s something that drives me nuts, when someone uses a prop to customize their show, but they know nothing of the prop. Look at how most people do the mismade flag…it’s very disrespectful to the flag.

If you use a prop that is something in real life, learn about it!