Influence by Michael Chatelain

Can we influence things, events, or decisions – or can't we? With Influence, your audience experiences an astonishing, interactive demonstration that makes this question tangible. A red-backed card is placed face down in the center of the table. An audience member is invited to turn over the card at the end of the performance without touching it again. Afterward, you take out a blue-backed deck of cards, show both front and back, and confirm: It is a completely normal deck of cards, with every card being different.

The audience shuffles the deck themselves, takes out cards, and freely examines them. You transparently explain that the order of the cards is purely random, as the deck has been passed from one audience member to another. To rule out manipulation, you immediately put the entire deck back into the box – the order remains unchanged. The deck is held in the box only with your fingertips, and you pull out cards one by one, as slowly as possible. An audience member can say "STOP!" at any time. Then you take out the first card(s) sequentially – for example, the Queen of Spades – and show additional cards to demonstrate that a second later, a different card would have been visible. But fate has decided: The audience member stopped at the Queen of Spades. Remove the rest of the deck and show it. No duplicates, no other Queen of Spades!

If the prediction card visible from the beginning is identical to the card you just drew from the deck, you experience a true moment of wonder – because there was no manipulation, the deck was shuffled by the audience, the STOP command came from them, and the prediction card remains exactly the original card. Ask the audience member to turn over the prediction card themselves: It is the Queen of Spades. Incredible – or simply influence that makes sense. Read the strong points and convince yourself that INFLUENCE is truly extraordinary.

Strong points of Influence

• You use YOUR normal deck of cards.
• The audience member shuffles the deck themselves.
• The cards are immediately put back into the box without changing their order.
• Once the cards are in the box, no manipulation is possible.
• You pull out the cards individually in the order they were drawn – as slowly as possible, with STOP at any time by the audience member.