4 ms·

British magician Darren Brown aired a TV special called "The System" revealing a foolproof method which allowed him to provide the name of the winning horse to

British magician Darren Brown aired a TV special called "The System" revealing a foolproof method which allowed him to provide the name of the winning horse to a lucky person who randomly responded to his newspaper advertisement in time for that person to bet on the race and win. He continued doing this with that person for six more races over six consecutive weeks - with that person betting their own money and winning each time, beating astronomical odds and winning quite a large sum. The bets were real, legally placed in advance on televised races at regulated betting parlors and the person really randomly responded to the ad without knowing Brown beforehand. For the last race Brown and the person met at the race track but for all the prior races Brown didn't even know when or where the person would place their bet. He really had no involvement or even contact, other than sending the name of the horse to bet on via email once a week. Of course, it's (sort of) a very clever trick. All is revealed in the show (now on Brown's YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR970Y10WNw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR970Y10WNw). I showed it to my kid who had recently asked me about a state lottery billboard claiming "Someone has to win!" and it proved to be an entertainingly effective answer as well as providing some good ways to think critically about gambling propositions.

segfaultbuserr 2y ago
Is a binary search involved in this "gambling system"?
- gmiller123456 2y ago
  You get so many respondents, you can give them all different combinations. Each race you disregard the losers, and when the population gets low enough you might miss a race, you just say "hey, I predicted x races, call Bob to confirm".
  - mrandish 2y ago
    Yes, that's basically how it worked. To be clear, Brown was careful to promote and run it for entertainment and not a scam. He made very clear up front that those choosing to participate were very likely to lose their money and insisted that the early bet amounts were minimal "fun money". The ever-shrinking number of those continuing to later rounds had made enough from earlier wins to offset the later eventual loss.
a12k 2y ago
I heard about a similar trick once in the framework of a scam, which may be the same (I'm not willing to watch this much youtube for the payoff), where out of the 1,000 people that reached out for answers to a 50/50 bet of some sort, they provided 50% of them one answer, and 50% the other. Out of the 50% that won, they provided 50% one answer and 50% another. Leading to a situation where eventually you had a small group of people who had received correct "lottery" or whatever answers five or six times in a row, priming them to believe the scammer had some major advantage. Then the scammer charged that last group of 15 or 30 some large amount of money to receive the last answer, and so on with the winners of that bet.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" had an episode, "Mail Order Prophet", that was this (66 years ago).
- vlovich123 2y ago
  That’s basically the scam. At the end he has her bet one extra time and she loses. Except it’s revealed that Darren Brown had swapped out her ticket for the winning ticket somehow. Very likely he just placed bets on all horses and then did a sleight of hand to give her the winning ticket before she opened it. In other words he spent $20k of the show’s budget placing bets on all 5 horses and gave her the $13k of the winnings that were reclaimed from having bought a winning ticket.
  - mrandish 2y ago
    That's not what happened nor is it how he accomplished the "trick". There's no slight of hand or trickery. Everything is fully revealed near the end of the special on YouTube (which I linked). She won every bet, including the last. He never had any of her tickets nor did he even see her place her bets. It's much simpler than that. Although the show appears in the beginning like it's a "magic trick" (though that is never actually claimed), in the end the audience is clearly shown how there's no trick at all. It's all simple probability and there really is no way to "beat the odds". Which IMHO is ultimately more entertaining and valuable than just some slight of hand or magic trickery.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
wnevets 2y ago
the social media version is to post all of the possible outcomes to a sporting event like the super bowl a year in advance, deletes the ones that missed then claim your a sport genius using the "correct" prediction made a year ago as proof.
- rvba 2y ago
  Or just change the date of the post (if possible)
IshKebab 2y ago
> All is revealed in the show He may have done it like this for real (I haven't seen the show), but just be aware that part of Derren Brown's magic is that the "reveal" is still part of the act. Often he claims to have done things using psychological effects but actually it's just traditional magic. Clever really because nobody believes magic really exists today, but plenty of people believe in stuff like hypnosis and NLP. It went kind of hilariously wrong for his "wisdom of the crowds" explanation for predicting the lottery - that one was too blatantly bullshit for most people and they screwed up the CGI fakery. This is another one that always stuck in my mind: https://youtu.be/sEmCQzueyEQ https://youtu.be/sEmCQzueyEQ (I watched it years ago and haven't rewatched it but IIRC he has a whole NLP explanation for what was clearly sleight of hand performed days ago off camera.)
- GrantMoyer 2y ago
  Plenty of people believe in NLP (Natural Language Processing), indeed.
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    In this context, "neurolinguistic programming".
- refulgentis 2y ago
  > Often he claims to have done things using psychological effects but actually it's just traditional magic. Lots to unpack here. :)

segfaultbuserr 2y ago

Is a binary search involved in this "gambling system"?

gmiller123456 2y ago
You get so many respondents, you can give them all different combinations. Each race you disregard the losers, and when the population gets low enough you might miss a race, you just say "hey, I predicted x races, call Bob to confirm".
- mrandish 2y ago
  Yes, that's basically how it worked. To be clear, Brown was careful to promote and run it for entertainment and not a scam. He made very clear up front that those choosing to participate were very likely to lose their money and insisted that the early bet amounts were minimal "fun money". The ever-shrinking number of those continuing to later rounds had made enough from earlier wins to offset the later eventual loss.

a12k 2y ago

I heard about a similar trick once in the framework of a scam, which may be the same (I'm not willing to watch this much youtube for the payoff), where out of the 1,000 people that reached out for answers to a 50/50 bet of some sort, they provided 50% of them one answer, and 50% the other. Out of the 50% that won, they provided 50% one answer and 50% another. Leading to a situation where eventually you had a small group of people who had received correct "lottery" or whatever answers five or six times in a row, priming them to believe the scammer had some major advantage. Then the scammer charged that last group of 15 or 30 some large amount of money to receive the last answer, and so on with the winners of that bet.

JKCalhoun 2y ago
"Alfred Hitchcock Presents" had an episode, "Mail Order Prophet", that was this (66 years ago).
vlovich123 2y ago
That’s basically the scam. At the end he has her bet one extra time and she loses. Except it’s revealed that Darren Brown had swapped out her ticket for the winning ticket somehow. Very likely he just placed bets on all horses and then did a sleight of hand to give her the winning ticket before she opened it. In other words he spent $20k of the show’s budget placing bets on all 5 horses and gave her the $13k of the winnings that were reclaimed from having bought a winning ticket.
- mrandish 2y ago
  That's not what happened nor is it how he accomplished the "trick". There's no slight of hand or trickery. Everything is fully revealed near the end of the special on YouTube (which I linked). She won every bet, including the last. He never had any of her tickets nor did he even see her place her bets. It's much simpler than that. Although the show appears in the beginning like it's a "magic trick" (though that is never actually claimed), in the end the audience is clearly shown how there's no trick at all. It's all simple probability and there really is no way to "beat the odds". Which IMHO is ultimately more entertaining and valuable than just some slight of hand or magic trickery.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

wnevets 2y ago

the social media version is to post all of the possible outcomes to a sporting event like the super bowl a year in advance, deletes the ones that missed then claim your a sport genius using the "correct" prediction made a year ago as proof.

rvba 2y ago
Or just change the date of the post (if possible)

IshKebab 2y ago

> All is revealed in the show He may have done it like this for real (I haven't seen the show), but just be aware that part of Derren Brown's magic is that the "reveal" is still part of the act. Often he claims to have done things using psychological effects but actually it's just traditional magic. Clever really because nobody believes magic really exists today, but plenty of people believe in stuff like hypnosis and NLP. It went kind of hilariously wrong for his "wisdom of the crowds" explanation for predicting the lottery - that one was too blatantly bullshit for most people and they screwed up the CGI fakery. This is another one that always stuck in my mind: https://youtu.be/sEmCQzueyEQ https://youtu.be/sEmCQzueyEQ (I watched it years ago and haven't rewatched it but IIRC he has a whole NLP explanation for what was clearly sleight of hand performed days ago off camera.)

GrantMoyer 2y ago
Plenty of people believe in NLP (Natural Language Processing), indeed.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  In this context, "neurolinguistic programming".
refulgentis 2y ago
> Often he claims to have done things using psychological effects but actually it's just traditional magic. Lots to unpack here. :)