Magic Review - Identity by Richard Sanders
The Good, The Bad and The Rest of this Great Card Effect
I do a lot of card tricks, probably too many to be honest but I enjoy them so much I want to share the magic of pasteboards with others as much as possible. But to share the magic of cards, I need to make sure I’m sharing effects that are strong and actually good! Which is where an effect like Identity comes in.
Created by Richard Sanders, essentially, it’s a card effect where the participant draws a card, you then draw “magic marks” on the back of another card and then proceed to move those magic marks from one card to another, finally moving it to the participants chosen card. As a kicker, you ask what the participants name is and upon shaking the card, the “magic marks” change to their name.
So let’s take a look at the Good, the Bad and the Rest of Identity by Richard Sanders.
The Good
I gravitated towards this effect because I was looking for something that would leave a big and impossible impact to those I’m performing for.
There’s nothing more personal than someone’s name, and having their name show up on their card without you having known their name until the moment before the change never ceases to get big reactions for me. Richard Sanders teaches multiple versions of this effect, from a short routine where you go from the magic marks straight to the name change reveal to the longer routine which I prefer to do as it builds up the effect and really catches them off guard when the name appears. There’s also a cleaner variation taught, which while it would look cleaner, I feel is overkill, but good to know for those who want that option.
This effect uses a gimmicked card, which you may also have, but if you don’t it’s not difficult to obtain one and is a great example of getting some strong magic out of one extra card. There’s a version taught that doesn’t use a gimmicked card as well, but you lose some clean displays as a result, but like the overkill version it’s good to know and shows you how in-depth Richard has gotten with this effect to flesh out so many variations for you to peruse from.
The Bad
Some people might not like that it uses a gimmicked card, especially one that you can’t allow to live inside the deck like you could a duplicate card. I got around this my keeping it in the plastic sleeve of the card box, and when I’m ready to do the effect, during the time the participant is drawing on the card, I load the card by slipping it out of the plastic and onto the top of the deck.
Another minor bad point is that the effect uses up a card each time you do it, and it’s immediately not useable for further effects since it’s signed on both the front and back. With other signed card effects, usually the face of the card is signed, allowing you to do numerous effects with it, but with Identity, it’s a one and done effect. I’m fine with this as it’s usually my closer to cards and it’s often foolish to follow it with something else after the reaction you get from it. This effect is usually part of my Red Deck set1 where the cards are often signed, mangled and given away and the effects are not dependent on having a full deck.
The final negative I’ve encountered is that the first couple phases where the magic marks jump from card to card in various ways as taught by Richard don’t garner as strong reactions as the routine progresses. This might be a personal issue of mine where audiences often seemed more perplexed at how these marks are moving from card to card and not going “wow” like I thought they would. They’re often going “wait, what just happened!?” and then when the marks jump onto their signed card, they finally react with a “wow”. So that’s something to be aware of if you think you’ll get a consistent reaction throughout the routine.
I think the reason for this is that they have no relation to these magic marks I’ve drawn or the cards the marks are jumping onto, for all intents and purposes, I’m just a magician showing off what these marks can do. I will have to look at how to reframe these initial few phases appropriately before the finale, but if you have thoughts yourself, please share your experiences!
The Rest
If you are familiar with magic, you know with an effect like this where a person’s name you didn’t know beforehand magically appears on the back of their signed card requires some pre-effect work.
Richard goes through how to accomplish this and while it might be initially worrisome whether the payoff would work or not, I’ve not had any troubles with it and even in the case where I do already know the name, the effect still works. I’ve had an occasion where I performed the effect for a man’s birthday, and his name was Alan, which can be spelt many ways, so when the name Allen showed up on the card, everyone still reacted well since it was phonetically his name, before telling me that wasn’t how it’s spelt which while deflating, was worth the risk. That is something to be aware of, and even more so with unfamiliar names, but the good thing about card magic is that the audience don’t know what trick you’re going to do, so if you don’t feel like performing Identity at the time, you don’t need to.
Personally, I have moments early on in my set to help me decide whether I want to do Identity or not, so I’m not thinking later when I have my cards out “what trick should I do??”. This also means that this isn’t a trick you can do in every setting, but you can definitely do it in most settings.
It’s decent with angles for the most part, when you’re performing the routine, you just need to watch your angles when you’re drawing the “magic marks” and doing changes, which is standard card magic angles.
Cleanup is pretty simple, as they are reacting it’s not difficult to return the gimmicked card back to the deck so you’re ready and clean for the next group. Although I have on occasion forgot about the card, left it in the deck and somehow had someone pick the card leaving them confused, but I just take the card, put it in the card box and have them select another card and they forget about that moment altogether because I don’t make a big deal about it.
This is one of my favourite card effects to perform for a people as it always gets great reactions, there’s a bit of build up towards the climax if you do the full version but I believe it’s worth it, as audiences don’t expect their name showing up. If you have questions about the effect, feel free to comment, otherwise the only way to get the effect these days is directly from Richard Sanders at this website.
I have three sets I usually perform with, a Red Deck set, Blue Deck set and Mentalism set. Some of which I write about in the following posts: