Review: Thoughtless by Peter Nardi

With "Thoughtless," Peter Nardi offers a powerful mentalism routine that will boggle spectators' minds. The effect uses two decks of cards and effectively bends reality with a hypnotic theme. The trick is also easy to learn and perform.

The Routine

You bring out two decks of cards, a red and blue deck. The spectator selects a deck, let's say the blue deck. You give the spectator the blue deck and have him hold it aside.

You openly display cards face-up in the red deck and a spectator names one of the cards that he sees. This card is removed from the deck and placed aside. When the spectator takes the blue deck out of his pocket, he finds that there are only 51 cards and the matching counterpart to his freely selected card in the blue deck is missing.

When the named card from the red deck is turned over, it is found to be the missing blue-backed card. And when you turn over the rest of the red deck, all of the cards are blank.

The card is freely selected and the gimmicked cards do most of the work. There are no difficult moves or palming. There is a single sleight, but the misdirection at this point in the routine is strong so there's little heat. The kit comes with a DVD that thoroughly explains the effect along with two gimmicked decks - everything that you need to perform the trick.

Interestingly, "Thoughtless," in plot, is a lot like Peter Nardi's own "E.S.Perfect" routine, but with regular playing cards and not ESP cards. I like "Thoughtless," but you do need to carry around two decks of cards (Nardi also teaches a less impressive single-deck version on the DVD). E.S.Perfect, on the other hand, is equally baffling and as a packet trick, is easier to carry around.

MSRP: (US) $39.5

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