The Secret of Derren Brown's "The System" -- A Friendly Wager

I will give out free copies of Derren Brown's biography if I do not correctly predict the secret behind The System, Derren's new TV special. Read on to see how to qualify for the free book. But first, my prediction:

The Prediction

In my prior entry I made some predictions about what Derren Brown's upcoming special, "The System," might be about. In a comment to that entry, Zing kindly pointed me to a press release which reveals the following:

Derren Brown has a system for winning at the horses. In this one-hour special, the maestro of mind control anonymously tells a single mum from London which horse will win at the next day’s races – again and again – culminating in a final, massive bet…. As Derren reveals: “I took a random member of the public and I told her which horse would win in a certain race; when it did win she was intrigued and I did it again and again and she started to bet more and more money according to my system. She's scraped together every last penny she could find and she is risking it all on one final race. Is it really possible to predict every time which horse will win? Welcome to The System."

After reading this passage, I realized how Derren could accomplish the feat of correctly predicting horse races. I wrote up my prediction and posted it in a comment. Here is the essence of it:

The woman referenced above will receive predictions from Derren about which horse will win at the tracks. She will receive several consecutive predictions, and each prediction will be correct. She will therefore come to believe that the person giving her the predictions has a system for predicting future winners. She will then have to decide whether to stake her entire financial future on the outcome of his next prediction by betting her life savings on a race.

But Derren's accurate predictions will not be as miraculous as they seem. Say there are six horses in a typical race (I know nothing about horse-racing, so my choice of six is arbitrary). Derren Brown will send race "predictions" anonymously to a large number of people (thousands, probably). His predictions will be random, so that one-sixth of the recipients receive each of the predictions.

Consequently, one in six of the prediction recipients will find that the prediction was correct. Derren will then contact these "winners" with predictions for the next race. And he will repeat this process, contacting only the winners each time, until he gets down to a single person who has received numerous correct predictions in a row.

He will then give her a prediction on the next race. We all know that the final prediction will have only a one-in-six (or however many horses there are) chance of being correct, but after receiving several correct predictions she might trust DB's ability to pick winners. We will have to wait and see.

Obviously, other Derren Brown tricks will be featured in the program, but this will be the big one. I do not have any inside source of information. I have not received any tips or anything like that. But after reading the above press release, I am quite confident that I have figured out The System.

I am not going to simply wait to see if I'm right, though. I am willing to make a bet.

Putting My Money Where My Mouth Is

Currently, I am in the process of writing an unauthorized biography of DB. This was not my intent when I began this blog, but as I researched his life, I became sufficiently interested to write a full-length biography.

If I am wrong about my prediction, I will give a free copy of the e-book version of this biography to the first 100 people who leave a comment on this blog entry. You do not have to leave an actual message – just your e-mail address. The comment must be left prior to the January 25, 2008 broadcast of The System. [broadcast date has changed to February 1, 2008]

I obviously cannot e-mail you the free e-book until it is released. I expect it to be completed (and available for purchase on this blog) no later than March 25, 2008, but I cannot guarantee that date.

This little wager hopefully will make the wait for Derren Brown's new special even more suspenseful.

[UPDATE: So obviously I won the bet. But I did eventually write an e-book about Derren Brown, which you can read about at my Mind Stunts blog entry.]