Tuesday, July 7, 2009

"pSnype" What An Idiotic Title!


To dig a little deeper into the failure that is Kevin Parker here is "pSnype" aka psychic sniper a 17$ download or more if you buy the DVD.

The Effect: You give the spectator a deck of cards which they can cut as many times as they like, then peeking at the top card (whilst you are turned away). You turn back around and tell them the name of their peeked-at card.

Now I learnt how to read dealers speech. Naturally the "cutting", not the "shuffling" of the deck gives away the method. And yes it is. Si Stebbins to the rescue.

As mentioned in the comments, a friend gave me the "download" for free, so I could take a look at it. Horrible. It is shot with a low quality cam. And Parker himself poses with sun glasses, as if he is the coolest thing that ever walked the earth.

He claims to have come up with this stacked deck himself. Well Stebbins' system is +3 to each card. Parker's version is +4. So I see no justified claim of intellectual property.

Then he explains what verbal approaches he does, so the spectators do not shuffle the deck. In the live performance a few minutes later we see the spectators actually shuffling the deck. (Parker just got lucky, that the trick didn't mess up.) So his verbal precautions did nothing. That means the entire first part of the video was pointless. 

The whole video is a pain to watch. I cannot do it in one sitting.

You get better results if you just force the card. This whole "pSnype" is totally overpriced and Parker did NOTHING to make any of this his own. 

The Great Karma once said: "There is a difference between stealing and reinventing the wheel. And that is awareness of magic history."

My theory: Parker is not stealing, he has no sufficient knowledge of magic, yet he feels totally eligible to market and sell magic. 

And that is a clear sign of loser, making clear once more why he deserves to be WMF.

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