When a magician walks onto the Penn & Teller: Fool Us stage, the goal isn't simply to perform a great magic trick. They're performing for two people who have spent their lives studying deception, sleight of hand, psychology, and virtually every method the magic world has to offer.
Magician Mike Super stepped up to that challenge with an ambitious prediction involving something nearly everyone has dreamed about at one time or another — winning the lottery.
Can a Magician Predict the Powerball?
Mike Super's routine revolves around an incredible premise: could he somehow know the winning Powerball numbers far enough in advance to actually purchase the correct lottery ticket?
Instead of simply asking someone to call out a few numbers, Super turns the selection process into part of the entertainment.
Six audience members become involved through balls being sent around the theater, adding another layer of apparent randomness to the proceedings. Even Penn & Teller get involved in the process.
That becomes extremely important.
Prediction effects become much stronger when the audience feels there couldn't possibly have been any control over the choices being made. The more random everything appears, the more impossible the final revelation becomes.
And Super has something waiting for them.
An actual lottery ticket from 2016.
The performance originally aired during the Season 4 premiere of Penn & Teller: Fool Us in 2017.
Mike Super Is No Stranger to Television Magic
Magic fans may recognize Mike Super from considerably more than Fool Us.
Super won NBC's reality competition Phenomenon, which featured Criss Angel, and later became a finalist on Season 9 of America's Got Talent. His television appearances have also included The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
Those experiences show in his Fool Us performance.
Rather than presenting the prediction as simply a puzzle for Penn & Teller to solve, Super builds an entire theatrical routine around the premise. The audience participation, comedy, suspense and increasingly impossible conditions all lead toward the final revelation.
That's an important lesson for magicians watching the performance: the method may create the secret, but the presentation creates the experience.
Watch Mike Super on Penn & Teller: Fool Us
Whether you're a magician trying to figure out how the prediction could possibly work or simply someone who enjoys watching impossible magic, Mike Super's appearance is worth revisiting.
And perhaps the biggest question isn't whether Mike Super could predict the lottery.
It's this:
If you really could predict the Powerball numbers a year in advance… would you use them for a magic trick?
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