Experts cast doubt over his casino roulette stunt - could it be magic?
Last week, famed psychological trickster Derren Brown attempted one of his most daring acts yet: he planned to walk in to a casino with £5000 of one viewer's money, somehow clock the speed of a roulette wheel, place a bet and walk away with £175,000.
Did he pull it off? Of course not. For a start, there's some doubt as to whether it was even a real casino. If it were, there's no way Brown would have got away with taking cameras in - smuggled or otherwise - since security is so tight. And quite how he could have positioned a camera above the roulette table would leave even a conjurer puzzled.
Also, it's been suggested that any real casino would have been happy to allow Brown to attempt his stunt - with no prize at stake, of course - in exchange for the free publicity. Could it be that the casino 'somewhere in Europe' was in fact a closed studio filled with stooges?
Indeed, we've seen filming for demonstration purposes in real casinos before. The BBC's Real Hustle staged a fantastic episode where the team, led by ex pro gambler and current casino consultant Paul Wilson, worked through various rouses - mainly sleight of hand, card counting and the like - to show how complex and difficult it is to cheat the house.
Brown's plan was to use speed detection skills - honed impressively with the help of a speed camera, some moving traffic and, inexplicably, Radio 1's 'Big Dog' DJ Tim Westwood - to sense how fast the casino roulette wheel was spinning, then use that to work out where it would come to rest.
As it happened, he got it wrong. But only by one pocket. The viewer, Ben, whose money Brown had spirited away with the power of suggestion, was left not with a winning stack worth £175,000 but instead left the show with a bank account £5000 lighter than it was at the outset.
This in turn lent weight to the argument for Brown's stunt being real. If he had gone to the trouble of filling a fake casino with fake players and fake roulette games, wouldn't he have gone all the way and faked a victory?
Perhaps Brown's biggest trick here, as with all the shows in his recent Events series, is to underwhelm his audience and yet still keep them guessing - keeping the debate running long after the credits roll.
Posted by Dan at 09:30 AM
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