VIDEO: How to take someone's wallet, just by asking

Magic is entertaining. People wonder in amazement or desperately ask “How did you do that?” when magicians create illusions of the impossible, such as pulling rabbits out of hats or disappearing on stage.

Recently, I came across a British magician named Derren Brown who specializes in mind magic.

I have never seen mind magic performed before, and was interested in a YouTube video of him playing chess against four grandmasters, four masters, and one amateur.

In the video, he states at the beginning that his chess sucks. However, he is able to obtain a plus score against the group, winning four, losing three, and drawing two. How does he do it? Magic, of course!

After seeing this video of Brown using his brilliant mind skills, I decided to watch another video on his magic. This time around, Brown uses hypnotism. He goes around a town and is able to convince random people to give him their wallets and belongings. All he does is ask them for directions and then the simple question, “Can I grab your wallet?”

While I was watching this video, I kept muttering to myself, “Wow, how does he do that … this has to be fake.” Brown claims that he does not use stooges and honestly tells people whether his tricks are real or not. In the video I watched, what he did was actually real and I have only a very vague idea of how he pulled off those scams.

Brown is a magician who has been around for a while but is not very well known outside of the UK. He has many other videos of him performing hypnosis, manipulating people’s minds, and reading mediums. So if you want to see some really cool mind tricks at work or relax after doing a stressful amount of homework, watch the might and magic of Derren Brown.

VIDEO: Derren Brown beats nine chess players simultaneously