A followup to Jerry’s “Doubling Down“, told through an account of Which Hand. This is the climax of our JISM posts for the time being.

This took place at a surprisingly lively afterparty for a magic show, and a bunch of us were relaxing in the green room. There were perhaps a dozen magicians that put the show together that night, from helping backstage to performing. I was easily the youngest person in the room and I felt a bit looked down on. It wasn’t my show, but I did perform one piece of it. It went over well, but I childishly felt determined to prove myself. I wanted to show my fellow cohort of magicians something that would stump them.

A put-together version of Doug Henning said “Show me something man!”

I chose to perform Timon Krause’s Which Hand. It was relatively unknown at the time, and I was one of the very first to learn it. The conditions in which to perform the effect were not perfect, but I decided to attempt it anyway. Today, I might use Aidan O’Sullivan’s Which Hand Project to aid in performance under these conditions. Incidentally, this is still available, unlike Timon’s.

“Do you have a coin, or a folded card, or just something you can hold in your hand?”

“I have this rock actually, long story.”

“Okay, that’s fine, we’ll play a game.”

I will not share my personal presentation or story that I use for Which Hand. It involves a horse. When I get to it, it’ll be on the blog, but this story is about something else.

Anyway, we play Which Hand, and I get the first round wrong. The method wasn’t working. I know why in hindsight, and you don’t have Timon’s Which Hand anyway, so don’t worry about it having a fault. It was a bit awkward, because at this point most of the people in the room had begun to kill their conversations to watch the performance.

I tried to recalibrate for the next round and did my best not to falter in any way. I guessed again, and was wrong. In my mind, I was devastated. But when I looked around the room, I started to notice chuckles and smiles. Almost as if they were reactions. I was confused, but asked the Doug Henning wannabe if I could have a couple more chances to get adjusted to “reading” him. He agreed.

This time, I had accepted in my mind that I was completely fucked and started to rummage around my mentalism toolbox. Out of hanging statements, Robson’s Nose Knows popularized by Annemann, two-way outs, and all the other things that came to mind I decided to utilize the best tool of all, a 50/50 guess.

I guess again… and I am wrong again. At this point, people are laughing and shouting “How!” “Burn him!”

The guy I was performing for told me to stop playing around with him, and asked how I was doing it with bare hands and borrowed objects.

Instead of risking a 4th round, I ended it there and played it off as a silly joke. I realized it was equally as good as guessing right every time. Later on, I managed to do Which Hand correctly and had a 100% hit rate time and time again. Not only did that add credibility to the previous performance in which I missed 100% of the time, but it removed any sense for the participant of constraint in the method that might’ve existed in a regular performance.

Upon reflecting on the performance and reading Jerry’s brilliant Doubling Down principle, I realized you can utilize it to create mind-shatteringly clean phases in certain effects.

The only thing is, you wouldn’t want to guess correctly in a stunningly clean manner and then follow up with less impossible conditions without a justification.

So if you succeed the first time, when you’re attempting the second time don’t change the conditions at first. Say you’re having trouble, that their guard is up now that you’ve gotten it right once, and change the conditions then.

If you fail, obviously it’s much easier to justify walking in the room or turning around and looking at their hands.

The way to think about it is almost like an equivocation. You’re not doing equivoque in the traditional sense, but in the way you perform. If you are wrong, the trick goes one direction. If you are right, it goes in another. You can either use it to create a clean outcome or as a safety net if you were to make a mistake.

I’d say, if you are planning to make use of this principle, place it wisely in a set or sequence of tricks. You don’t want to have a trick that incorporates misses back to back with a trick that utilizes Doubling Down. Then it’ll look like you just miss all the time like an idiot.

Enjoy, and stay jazzy.