Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4022D0C2D4AB65BC

"Derren Brown, a British illusionist and mentalist, showcased a horse racing betting experiment called "The System" in a 2008 Channel 4 special. In this program, he demonstrated a method that appeared to guarantee winning bets on horse races. The process began with Brown anonymously sending a woman named Khadisha a series of correct predictions for five consecutive races, leading her to believe in the infallibility of his system. Subsequently, she was encouraged to stake a substantial sum on a sixth race.

The underlying mechanism of "The System" involved initially contacting 7,776 individuals, dividing them into six groups, and assigning each group a different horse in a six-horse race. After each race, only the group with the winning horse progressed, while the others were eliminated. This process was repeated through successive races, reducing the number of participants exponentially, until only Khadisha remained, having experienced an unbroken series of wins."

That's a version of a classic financial-advisor scam.

It operates on a similar mechanism: a set of predictions is sent to large number of marks. Roughly half the predictions are in the money, the set of marks is reduced with each successive round to those who's previous "predictions" were accurate. At the end of the cycle, there are only a small number of marks left, but they're given the option to subscribe to future predictions for a handsome sum. Of course there are no further predictions....

There's also the apocryphal physician's trick of predicting a baby's gender (back when this wasn't trivially determinable in advance). The doctor would verbally give their prediction, and write it down in an envelope. Occasionally the parents would recall a different answer, but opening the envelope would confirm the gender of the infant.

The trick of course was that was was written was the opposite of what was said. When what was said matched the delivery the envelope wasn't opened, so the secret was safe.

This is based on an old scam, the core idea isn't Derren Brown's.

But what a nice execution. I really liked how be complimented the core idea with a bit of sleight of hand in the last episode, turning the mark from a victim into a winner.

it bugs me to an unreasonable extent that he finished one person short of 7777.

The system and the fact that he executed it though is genius.

> it bugs me to an unreasonable extent that he finished one person short of 7777

Perhaps (likely?) he himself should be counted too, so 7777 in total.

7776 is 6^5, that's the amount he needed to find a single correct 'winner' since each race would only have 1/6 chance.

7776 is 6^5. The exactly right number for the trick to work.

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