Impulse by Looch

The traditional wisdom is that mind-reading and mentalism should never be mixed with playing cards. Enter Looch, a mind reader and mentalist from the UK who shatters that wisdom with Impulse.

Impulse is Looch’s approach to performing direct mind reading with a marked deck of playing cards. In this project, you will learn five professional routines along with all of the details and psychology that Looch uses to destroy his audiences. The routines require almost no sleight of hand and are designed so that even knowledgeable magicians will be unaware you are using a marked deck. If you have never worked with a marked deck before this project will give you the crash course you need to start wrecking audiences right away. If you are experienced with marked cards you will appreciate the layered principles and deeply fooling approach that Looch takes. This is Impulse by Looch.

Effects:

Body Language
A pseudo poker presentation in which the performer claims to be able to read the body language of their audience. The cards are mixed and shuffled by the audience. A card is freely selected, and then the performer reads the tells to name the card in a completely hands-off routine.

Pseudo Mem-Deck
The performer claims to be able to memorize an entire deck of cards in just a few seconds. The deck is genuinely shuffled by the audience, then a single unknown card is removed and placed face down on the table. The performer then glances at the deck for a few moments and then is able to say how many red and black cards are remaining in the deck, how many cards of the specific suit, and then the values, finally successfully naming the only card not in the deck which is the one selected at the very beginning of the effect.

Tracker
The deck is shuffled into a random order by your audience. A prediction is made on a business card and set in the open. The magician and the spectator deal cards in synchronicity, and eliminate cards while making the same actions. The cards are further eliminated in a free and fair procedure down to one card that matches the prediction made at the start.

Reaper
The performer gets a sense of two of their audience through a couple of innocuous questions and then proceeds to use that information to influence a series of choices. A prediction is made on the back of a business card and set aside. Cards are shuffled, dealt, and randomly chosen, one card for each spectator. The cards exactly match the predictions made by the performer.

The Dealer
In a demonstration of an audience member’s intuition, they are invited to freely name a random card. They shuffle the deck and then deal down through the cards and eliminating them until only one card remains. This extremely free routine feels totally random but his a diabolical system that makes it feel as casual as washing your hands.