Next Meeting: 15 March 2025 | Theme: Annual General Meeting | Location: NLB Drama Center

HYPER ESP CARDS by Tenyo

Tenyo is specialised in producing clever and precision-made gimmicked magical apparatus.

“Hyper ESP Cards” is a deck of gimmicked ESP cards. It contains the following items:

25 ESP cards, consisting of 5 of each of circle, cross, wave, square, and star symbols. These cards are secretly marked on their backs.

5 double-faced cards, with each card having the same symbol on both sides, ie circle/circle, cross/cross, wave/wave, square/square and star/star.

5 double-backed cards.

1 double-faced card with circle on one side

and square on the other side.

Card case to contain the cards.

Small black ungimmicked prediction

envelope.

These items are what a mentalist desires in a gimmicked deck of ESP cards.

What makes the Tenyo “Hyper ESP Cards” different from other gimmicked ESP deck of cards is the special design on the backs of the cards. It is a simple design consisting of small dots uniformly spaced out. It does not look possible for such a design to contain secret markings. Yet, when you know how to look at the backs, you can tell which card is the circle, the cross, the wave, the square and the star.

You receive the deck of ESP cards, the small prediction envelope and a link to download 14 pages of printed instructions written in the English language by Richard Kaufman and Yukishige Kadoya. The instructions provide 6 effects. A brief description of each of the effects are:

1. X-Ray Vision – A spectator mixes the 5 different ESP cards and places one face downwards on the table. Simply by placing his open palm above the card, the performer can sense the correct symbol of this card. To prove that the performer is not reading the back of the card, another card is taken and placed inside the black envelope. Again, the performer can sense the symbol of this card.

2. ESP Symbol Prediction – 3 different ESP cards are placed face upwards on the table. A spectator freely selects one symbol. The choice of the spectator has been predicted in advance.

3. Divining a Chosen Symbol with Mind Reading – 2 spectators each freely chooses a card from an ESP deck. The performer can divine the identity of each card.

4. ESP Swindle – 10 ESP cards are used. A spectator decides how to mix up the order of these cards. Despite the random mixing, the full order of the 10 cards is shown printed on the back of the card case.

5. ESP Psychic – A spectator and the performer each takes 5 ESP cards behind their backs and mixes the cards. The performer takes one card and places it face downwards on the table. The performer influences the spectator to read his mind and places one of her cards face downwards onto the performer’s card. This procedure continues 3 more times – each time the performer places his card first before the spectator. One card is left with each person. Again the performer places his card first. But this time he places it face upwards, revealing the identity of his final card. The spectator turns her last card face upwards, and this matches the last card from the performer. Each of the other 4 pairs of cards are turned face upwards one pair at a time to show that they all match perfectly.

6. ESP Telekinetics – A set of 5 ESP cards facing upwards is mixed with another set of 5 ESP cards facing downwards. A spectator brings the packet of 10 cards underneath the table. She further mixes the cards unseen, including turning some small packets of cards over to further mix them in a face-up and face-down manner. When she is satisfied, she brings out the cards and spread them onto the table. The number as well as the actual content of the face-up cards match a prediction placed on the table before the performance.

Every performing mentalist will want a set of gimmicked ESP cards such as this set. It enables them to perform endless ESP effects. It will be difficult to find another set of gimmicked ESP cards that can compare with Tenyo’s “Hyper ESP Cards” in terms of price, the quality of the cards, and the secret marking on the backs.

The back design is the brain-child of both Toru Suzuki and So Sato. It may take a little while for you to get used to reading the markings on the back. Once you get the knack of it, you can use these cards to perform impossible ESP effects because the audience will not suspect you of reading the backs of the cards. They can even examine the cards themselves and will be none the wiser.

Although you may have your own ESP routines to perform, each of the 6 effects described in the instructions are good and strong tricks on their own. You may want to include any or all of them in your performing repertoire.

 

(Rated 5/5 stars)