{"id":7372,"date":"2025-08-21T19:15:51","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T19:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/?p=7372"},"modified":"2026-02-07T21:11:32","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T21:11:32","slug":"prior-commitment-simulator","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/prior-commitment-simulator\/","title":{"rendered":"Prior Commitment simulator"},"content":{"rendered":"

Simon Aronson published a great card trick titled Prior Commitment first published in his book Simply Simon<\/strong> in 1995<\/strong>. This book is a collection of Aronson\u2019s original card magic and includes detailed explanations of his principles, including the Undo Influence<\/em> that powers Prior Commitment<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior Commitment<\/em> was performed on Penn & Teller: Fool Us<\/strong> by British mentalist Graham Jolley<\/strong>, and it successfully fooled them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I wanted to modify the trick so that it would be easy to setup and also be able to change the prediction numbers. The trick described by Aronson used the prediction numbers 18 and 43, which represent the positions in the deck where the spectators selections end up. Instead of the positions I wanted to use the number of cards to deal to arrive at the selections. In the case of 18 and 43, my prediction would be 18 and 25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I asked an AI to write a simulator that would let me play with the starting positions of the Jokers and see what the prediction numbers would be. That code is “PriorCommitment.html<\/a>“<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using that simulator I decided that using a faro check to split a deck exactly at 26\/26 would let me place one joker. Since the other Joker would be higher in the deck that gave me the position of the second joker at location 28. Then to place the first joker at location 10 I simply have to thumb over nine cards and put the joker in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With those starting locations the trick’s predictions are 17 and 26. (this was the year Jonathan Swift’s satirical novel, Gulliver’s Travels<\/strong>, was published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or perhaps Howard Carter’s discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1924 that generated widespread excitement and continued to be a major archaeological story could be used as a patter topic. Then the positions would be 10 and 30. Split the deck at 26\/26 and place the a joker under the top two cards of the lower half and put the second at location 10.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am not going to describe how to perform the trick. You can find that in Aronson’s books or do a youtube search.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterthoughts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I also perform this without the jokers. My prediction in 17 and 25 which I simply write down on a slip of paper. I place breather crimped black kings at positions 20 and 27 in a deck of 52 cards. Then after the spectators selections I simply cut to the crimped kings so they end on the bottom of the cut of portions. Reassembling the deck as required by the trick put the selections at the positions to be counted to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After-afterthoughts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to do this trick with a borrowed deck that did not have jokers. So I played around and came up with this. I wanted to set two key cards easily so I choose to use locations 10 and 27 for the keys. I use a faro check to see the card a location 27. Then I spread through the deck looking for a card above that key that will be easy to remember, such as the mate or the card that comes before or after it. For example, if the key at 27 was the four of diamonds then I would look for the four of hearts, or the three or five of hearts. I cull that card to the tenth position and then am ready to perform the trick. In this case the prediction values are 17 and 25.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a bonus, if you then do a perfect out faro the two cards end up next to each other.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Simon Aronson published a great card trick titled Prior Commitment first published in his book Simply Simon in 1995. This book is a collection of Aronson\u2019s original card magic and includes detailed explanations of his principles, including the Undo Influence that powers Prior Commitment. Prior Commitment was performed on Penn & Teller: Fool Us by … <\/p>\n

Continuar leyendo “Prior Commitment simulator”<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_eb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,159],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-magic","category-self-working"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Bob","author_link":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/author\/admin\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7372"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7372\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7761,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7372\/revisions\/7761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/robertjwallace.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}