Random Musings

Remember I wrote last week (here) about J C Sum and “Magic Babe” Ning’s bold attempt at predicting this week’s 4D results?

Well, the results were finally revealed tonight.

See AsiaOne article (here).

Well guess what…they were correct!

It’s 5853!

Kudos to them!

Score another one for our local magicians.

But remember I mentioned my doubts as to how they would pull it off?

As in, that I couldn’t imagine a third scenario other than i) they fail spectacularly, or ii) they win themselves a ton of cold hard cash?

Well, apparently what transpired was none of the above!

To quote from the AsiaOne article:

“At an event at St James Power Station tonight, the two magicians opened a chest that was locked and suspended mid-air, revealing the number combination – 5853.

A check at the Singapore Pools website matched their combination to the first prize for Draw No. 2965, Wednesday’s draw.

The winning number was first predicted and sealed in a red envelope on Friday.

It was then placed in a see-through and tamper-proof acrylic chest which was suspended 3 metres above ground in front of The Boiler Room.

Additional closed-circuit cameras and security personnel were deployed over the past few days to ensure that the chest was not tampered with.

During the sealing off of the numbers, Ning said that they planned to gamble with at least $100 for this draw. Since their prediction was correct, they could have won a maximum amount of $250,000.

However, after revealing tonight’s number, the two illusionists disclosed that they had not placed any bets on 5853 as the winning number.

Instead, they had bought the numbers 0000.

Ning revealed at the show that this was in a bid to discourage gambling.”

Interesting huh?

I certainly didn’t preempt such a scenario.

But it’s cool nonetheless.

Obviously I don’t know how they did it…but I have to point out that J C Sum and “Magic Babe” Ning have all along taken great pains to stress that this whole stunt is a “psychological illusion”.

Take whatever you want away from that term.

As to what people will say about the little “twist” that they provided, I don’t know.

All I would say is the duo have done an amazing job to further cement their status as Singapore’s premier magic act.

However, obviously from a perfectly objective point of view (as in, from a layperson’s perspective), I can’t help but say that the “revelation” to the trick was perhaps a tad disappointing, due to the fact that the ticket that they bought was intentionally not a winning number.

I know that because we Singaporeans are a cynical lot, there will be a lot of people who are going to say stuff like “Cheh, it was not a REAL prediction after all! If it were a REAL prediction they would have bought a genuine winning ticket!” or stuff like that.

It just leaves a slightly sour taste in the mouth.

(I had already pointed this out in my previous post – that anything other than the two most likely scenarios would be interesting…but may not be all that satisfying. The stunt certainly has great build-up and all that, but the “revelation” was always going to pose a big problem.)

But bear in mind, because of the position they put themselves in, a third scenario was always going to be risky and may not satisfy every single critic out there.

Nonetheless, a word of congrats to the fantastic duo for doing what they did.

Not many people in Singapore, or in the region, can do what these guys are doing right now.

Lastly, you’ve got to give them a TON of credit for donating $10,000 to the Children’s Cancer Foundation…even though they didn’t win a single cent from the lottery!