Close Up Classics - The Invisible Deck on AGT!?
I speak to Mike Jacobson on why he decided to perform the Invisible Deck on AGT
Recently on America’s Got Talent, magician Mike Jacobson performed an effect that every magician has done before or has sitting in their drawer.
I’m referring to the Invisible Deck, an effect where you and a participant mime selecting a card and replace it upside down with an invisible deck of cards, you then make the deck appear and show that the once invisible card they chose is indeed upside down in your very real and visible deck of cards.
Join me as I look at makes this trick deck so strong and how can it still be done on television, with Mike’s thoughts when it’s been performed so many times before.
History
But first, a very quick history lesson because even though the majority do not care, it’s still important to know what came before so it’s not lost in this age of social media and flash headlines.
The Invisible Deck was originally known as the Ultra Mental Deck, created by Joe Berg in 1936. Eddie Fields then came up with the invisible deck presentation in the 1940s and the name and presentation has stuck ever since, leaving the Ultra Mental Deck name behind.
So, if you hear either name, just know they’re the same effect.
What Makes It So Strong?
Magicians carry a deck of cards because you can perform almost an unlimited variety of tricks with it, sometimes to the detriment of the poor participant watching if you don’t know when to stop. So why would you carry a trick deck that does only one effect?
Dai Vernon once said, “A good magic effect should easily be described in one sentence”, and whether you agree with this quote or not, in the case of the Invisible Deck, you can easily describe it as “my thought of card was the only card upside down in the deck!”.
The effect is clear and allows for multiple presentations, you can play it seriously as a mentalist demonstrating your predictive knowledge before, they knew what they were thinking or playfully while pretending to shuffle and select cards with all the jokes and gags. It seems impossible to be able to accomplish such an effect as you barely handle the deck outside of spreading the cards, compared to a pick a card trick which people often attribute sleight of hand as the modus operandi. It can be used in part of a bigger routine like in Cody Fisher’s Killer Prediction for stage or John Guastaferro’s Invisible Opener, combining the invisible presentation with coins and rubber bands as a close-up opener.
Often times after doing a set at a gig, people will say they enjoyed the Invisible Deck effect the most, with comments like “you didn’t do anything!” or “That card one was really good”.
Mike Jacobson on America’s Got Talent
When Mike Jacobson did the Invisible Deck on AGT1 recently, I was curious as to why he chose that effect to perform for the judges on television, so I reached out to him.
The producers of the show were looking for magicians and had seen Mike’s performance of it on Ellen DeGeneres’s show2, which was part of a segment on audience talents. What blew my mind was that this performance was from 2010, (although recently uploaded to Ellen’s channel this year) so on the back of this television appearance the producers reached out and demanded Mike perform the same effect on AGT.
Mike being the professional decided to come up with an interesting twist and extra layer to the act.
The twist being the addition of Howie’s signature to the back of the named card, which if you know how an Invisible Deck works would have involved A LOT of preparation, but if you see the reaction, it was definitely worth it. The extra layer was the addition of Joshua Jay’s Inferno, taking the routine from using a whole deck to just one card. If you wanted further proof of the strength the Invisible Deck has, Mike had performed it first and ended on Inferno, but the reaction was so strong that in the edit they switched it around to end on the Invisible Deck!
Mike has now ensured he’ll never stop performing the Invisible Deck and that you never know where opportunities can arise from, you just need to be ready.
Does This Mean No More Invisible Deck for Us?
Now that Mike has done it on television and people worldwide have seen it on social media, does this mean we can’t do the Invisible Deck anymore?
Magicians see so much and perform a lot of magic that we forget the average person hasn’t seen much or in some cases, never seen a magician in person before. Just because it’s been done before doesn’t mean we can’t do it at all, if anything, it should encourage us to perform it more, or start performing it if you haven’t in a long while. There is a case for doing magic no one else is doing, but at the same time, we owe our audiences the strongest magic we can conjure up, and if a trick deck can accomplish that, I say we do it!
Be prepared to do magic that people may have seen on television or online, or at least a variation if you have one. Audiences ask this not because they want to work it out, but because they want to experience the reaction they saw digitally, in their own current reality.
Whether or not you look down on the Invisible Deck, be like Mike who says,
“I know a lot of magicians are above ID, and I’m so here for it”
3 Things Worth Sharing
I’m going to try starting a new segment sharing small magic related things I enjoyed and am doing throughout the past week. This might branch off into its own post if I find more stuff each week so let me know if that’s something you’re interested in.
Jack Paton and Samuel Pratt released this banger of a video recently through Noel Heath’s channel. What starts off as a typical cardistry video escalates into a visual feast of colour changes and ridiculous sleight of hand.
In a few weeks I’ll be starting a residency at a local bar with the aim to keep patrons around longer. I’m looking forward to that and finding effects that would suit a loud environment so I don’t lose my voice. If you have any suitable effects, let me know in the comments.
Rory Adam’s One Ahead (affiliated link) publication inspired me to start writing, recently he released a podcast episode going through the big stories of the last month including an interesting Uri Gellar story to kick things off. At the end of the podcast he told listeners to share it, so that’s what I’ll do.