A Self-Working Lottery Prediction: Learn It Now!

A magician walks onto the stage looking calm, collected, and sexy AF. They hold two books in their hand. One of the two books is about the history of lotteries and the other, more excitingly, is about how to win the lottery. After delivering a compelling speech on how impossible it is to actually win the lottery, the magician invites a spectator onto the stage.

The spectator gets to choose either of the books, and they hold their selected book clamped firmly between their outstretched hands. The magician tells them they must make one more choice. It’s an important decision.

When you play the U.K. national lottery, you can choose numbers up to 59. The spectator on stage is going to choose one random number, and they’ll have plenty of time because it’s an important decision.

It’s also a decision they’ll spend the rest of their life questioning — wondering what would have happened if they’d chosen differently.

Next, the magician turns to the audience, throwing the second book down to a random spectator near the front. They stand up, hold the book before them, as instructed, and open it to a random page and remember the page number. When they’re satisfied, they throw the book to someone else in the audience. A total of five lucky audience members do the same and are left standing up.

So that’s six random numbers selected by random audience members, and one spectator stood up on stage. I think we know where this is heading.

The audience returns the book to the stage, and the magician explains they’d already finished reading that book. It’s the other book they are yet to finish reading —the one that’s currently being held tightly by the spectator on stage.

“I haven’t read far into the book. Perhaps halfway through,” the magician says, “I keep my position in the book with a bookmark,” he pauses, “well, it’s not really a bookmark — it’s a lottery ticket.”

You hear the audience murmur as people realize what's about to happen. The magician steps towards the spectator and asks them for the first time to name the number they chose at random aloud. They name 48.

The magician gently takes the book from their grasp, and opens the book about halfway, maybe 100 pages into the book — sat there between the pages is the lottery ticket. The magician doesn’t touch it; instead, they gesture for the spectator to remove it and read the printed numbers to themself.

The spectator gasps, and then they smile.

Magician: Is your number printed on that ticket?

Spectator: Yes!

Magician: And what’s unique about your number?

Spectator: It’s circled with a pen.

Magician: Can you read all of the numbers aloud?

Spectator: 08, 12, 27, 48, 54, 56.

The magician addresses the standing audience members.

Magician: If you heard the number you chose, please sit down.

All five audience members sit down.

Thunderous applause.

Audiences love lottery predictions, and so do I.

I love the lottery prediction, popularised by Nate Staniforth and since performed by many big-name magicians. Also, I wouldn't say I like the remote method. I’ve been there when it’s failed, and it’s sucked. My advice is to use a lovely hardwired lottery printer with an assistant and skip any kind of remote small sketchy printer.

But an assistant isn’t always available, and the backstage space isn’t always there, and my obsession with this magic effect continues. I think it’s because predicting the lottery is so goddam relatable. It’s an impossible, printed prediction. We all know how hard it is to win the lottery, and all want to win it. We all know how difficult it is to fake a genuine-looking lottery ticket.

There is a small plot hole in the concept of predicting the actual lottery. If you can really predict the lottery, shouldn’t you be a billionaire by now? But I love using a lottery ticket as a vehicle to predict the actions of an audience member. It’s a great, relatable device and it leaves the audience excited — as though the ticket they just created might win this week.

This post’s tossed-out lottery prediction is my favourite self-working method. There’s a basic version (which I believe is more than enough) and an extended one. Both rely on solid magic principles. You can perform both by yourself with confidence.

Overall, I just like the fact that a magician can pack one book in their case and perform a printed lottery ticket prediction, and even leave the real ticket with the client.

Basic Routine.

I’m applying the tossed-out deck concept to a lottery routine. You hand out a “how to win the lottery” book (books like this exist, by the way), and six spectators select and remember random page numbers. When the book gets back to you, you pluck out your makeshift bookmark from its first page — it’s a lottery ticket.

When a spectator reads out all six numbers printed on the genuine lottery ticket, all six spectators confirm their number is on the ticket.

You have likely seen Gazzo, Wayne Dobson, or John Archer perform the trick. It’s a perfect effect often used as an opener.

The method relies on a mixture of a broad force and dual-reality.

The Broad Force

A broad force narrows many outcomes to a select few. Whereas your usual card force might make a spectator choose a specific card like the ace of hearts from a full deck, a broad force might only narrow the selection to one of the aces.

The lottery book is specially printed such that the same six-page numbers repeat. Every page appears different when you riffle through the book or watch someone open it nearby. It seems this way because the pages are different— only the page numbers repeat.

When the spectator opens the book to a random page and remembers the number in the top right corner, they only have six options: 12, 27, 48, 54, 56.

You can use a small booklet with sixty or so pages and repeat each page number in chunks — meaning opening the book near the middle would force the spectator to page number 48. Or, you could use a bigger 600-page book and instruct the spectators only to remember the first two digits of the page number.

The book, How To Win The Lottery With The Law Of Attraction: Four Lottery Winners Share Their Manifestation Techniques, happens to only be 75 pages. A small book like this would suit the routine.

Dual-Reality

As we're using a broad force, there’s a chance multiple spectators will choose the same numbers.

That’s not a worry — due to the clever use of dual-reality. The spectators in the audience never say their number out loud. Instead, they just confirm it’s on the lottery ticket.

Asking them to sit down simultaneously is an excellent way to confirm once after all the numbers get called.

The audience at large assumes that each of the six numbers belongs to an individual audience member. They don’t believe that multiple audience members chose the same numbers.

All you need is this custom lottery prediction book, and one genuine lottery ticket you could even hand out to an audience member to keep. It’s lovely.

I told Lloyd Barnes about this method and after he spent ten minutes trying to convince me it was “too good for the newsletter,” he offered a good note: you could ask each audience member to read aloud the first word on the page as a way to confirm no two spectators are choosing the same page.

I like this because it oddly gives more justification for using the book to get to the page numbers. Every word can be different because it’s only the numbers that repeat.

Four letter words like walk and talk could signal to the magician that the page number ends with 4. The same code for each of the six lottery numbers could apply. This means after you finish the lottery prediction you have the option to read the minds of one or two of the spectators who were the only ones to choose a word of a specific length.

Extended Routine

If you want to take it one step further and spend a little more...

In this version, a second book is in play and one of the numbers is freely named and actually circled by a pen on the final predicted lottery ticket prediction.

This addition also uses two lovely tried-and-tested magic principles.

Equivoke

This is not necessary — but I quite like the idea of using equivoke to hand out the books at the start of the trick. This means when you ask the spectator to name one of the books out loud, regardless of how they respond you will always hand them Book A.

If they name Book A: OK, we’ll use book A and you can keep book B safe.

If they name Book B: OK, you can hold onto book b.

At first glance it’s unnecessary, but I think it gives the impression that you would happily hand either book to the audience. This is useful for deflecting suspicion over the true method — it’s a nice “nothing to hide” mentality.

Multiple-Outs

The way you get the freely named number on the printed ticket and circled is by buying 59 lottery tickets and circling 59 numbers. There are only 59 outs needed because you’re forcing the other numbers with the book in the audience.

For the numbers that are already included on the ticket due to the broad force, you simply add a random number instead and circle the correct number for the out.

But how do you retrieve one of 59 lottery tickets in a speedy and unsuspecting manner? Well, for this, I turn to a method devised by Joshua Jay for a different trick altogether. The trick is called ACAAP and it’s worth seeking out. It’s in his DVD Talk About Tricks.

All 59 lottery tickets are within the pages of the book. You just need to turn to the right one. You can easily riffle through the big book without revealing the other 58 lottery tickets.

You might wish to place each lottery ticket at its corresponding page number. So, if the spectator names number 34, you can simply turn to page 34. That would work. I recommend going one step away from their number.

You could double their chosen number. Such that the lottery ticket with the number 34 printed and circled upon it rests on page 68. This means the spectator on stage will never notice the importance of the page you turn to, as it will not exactly match the number they named.

It also means that the lottery tickets are spaced out within the book, with additional pages between each one, rather than being on all of the first 29 pages. This further reduces the change of you flashing the other predictions.

That’s the trick.

I should quickly credit Alan Rorrison, who is the first person I know who presented a lottery ticket as a bookmark within a book about lotteries. I like this trick a lot.

Comment your thoughts and advice and let me know if I should print a batch of these how to win the lottery gimmicked books.

I’ll leave you with this unsurprising Amazon buyer review of the real book titled How To Win The Lottery With The Law Of Attraction: