Brainstormer is an over-looked GEM of mental card magic, and I found out about it in a pretty random way; I found a close up case that belonged to Morley Budden, who owned Kaymar Magic when I first worked there. Inside was this deck, but no instructions, and I recognised the other tricks in the case as being favourites (including Psycho Dice and the Kick!) so I knew it would be good, but no idea what it was.

Then, years later, I happen across a single sheet of A4 instructions for a trick called ‘Brainstormer’, and I recognised the set up as being the trick from Morley’s case!

I contacted Mark Leveridge about producing the effect, which seemed fitting as it was a favourite of Morley’s. I secured the rights to the routine, and then thought that I’d tweak the handling to make it a bit simpler and cleaner.

Then, Mark emailed me to say ‘Oh, you have old instructions – this is how I do it now…’ and the handling was PERFECT. It’s clean, simple, easy, totally fooling and fast to reset – quite simply, a perfect card trick.

The trick includes the special deck and full explanation on video, plus a bonus so you can repeat the trick with different cards.

In effect, a double blank deck is split between you and a spectator. You both take one at random, and imagine a card on the blank surface, and cut the cards back into your packets.

A magic gesture later, and when you spread your packet, your named card has appeared printed in the centre! That’s pretty amazing, but then of course, your spectator spreads their half – and their freely named card has also become printed!