Atomic Deck

3/28 UPDATE: Lloyd Barnes and David have both removed their videos. See this article for details.

Yesterday, Lloyd Barnes released an hour long video on youtube “reviewing” Unbiased ACAAN, an ACAAN effect sold by David from the youtube channel Unbiased Magic Reviews. Theres a long section that describes the math that UMR uses to make the effect happen.

This drama is a continuation of the discourse surrounding the Atomic Deck. Sean Devine, another youtuber, released a scathing review of the Atomic Deck. Sean’s video more or less revealed the basic mechanic behind the product and Craig Petty, the creator of the effect has publicly called him out for doing so.

Craig Petty’s Atomic Deck released recently and there’s lots of hype and complaints. The product is an ACAAN effect. A big negative that people identified with the release is that it requires a phone. The flagship routine requires the spectator to go to a specific website to enter their choice of card and number. The website will then spit out a “percentage” which the magician needs complete the effect.

If you’re willing to require a phone, there’s a much easier way to achieve an ACAAN. Instead of having the website be some strange page that gives statistics about the likelihood of card-number combos, just have it be a random generator site. You can use the excuse that human’s are bad at generating true randomness. The spectator will be invited to go to the site and press a button that randomly chooses a card. The spectator is free to press this button as much as they like. Then once satisfied, the spectator presses a different button to generate a number. The spectator can even generate multiple numbers. The secret of course being that the numbers will exactly match the index in one of the stacks you’ve prepared.