How ‘master mentalist’ Lior Suchard stole the show at the cricket

LIOR Suchard had viewers scratching their heads when he correctly predicted the cricket score. He uses a genius trick that anyone could master.

HOW on earth did he do it?

Master mentalist and mind reader Lior Suchard left cricket fans gobsmacked after correctly predicting the result — right down to the final score — of Sunday night’s Twenty20 cricket match between Australia and India, more than 12 hours before the match began.

He also left Channel Nine cricket commentator and self-confessed sceptic Mark Nicholas speechless when he correctly guessed the name of someone important to Nicholas’ childhood, live on air during the game’s halftime break.

The feats lit up social media on Sunday night.

Today, Suchard, 34, explained a little of the mystery.

The mentalist (a mentalist is someone who in broad terms has highly developed mental or intuitive abilities) — who has been used as a consultant on shows like Aussie Simon Baker’s mega hit The Mentalist — says there’s no ‘black magic’ to his art.

And while he’s banned from casinos worldwide because of his intuitive skills, he can’t give you the lotto numbers.

About 80 per cent of Suchard’s talent as a mentalist is learnable and logical, he says. The other 20 per cent is a little harder to explain.

“It’s not that I know what you are thinking right now,” said the Tel Aviv-born Suchard, whose childhood hero was Israeli magician, illusionist and self-proclaimed psychic Uri Geller, and in 2007 was named by Geller himself as his successor.

“I don’t know what people are thinking, but I know how they think. I am analysing the messages they give me, verbal and non-verbal, and coming to a conclusion.

“I have been doing this since I was about six or seven years old.

“In broad terms it is maybe a combination of the power of channelling my own mind, and a super awareness of body language, a study of the minds of others, thought influencing, and predicting.”

He has studied psychology, body language, and a form of neuro linguistic programming.

(NLP — in general terms is an approach to communication, personal development and psychotherapy which focuses on detecting certain patterns of human behaviour — verbal and non-verbal, to predict or process or certain behaviours).

Lior Suchard with Michael Slater during the Twenty20 match on Sunday night.

“But my way was more underground,” he said. “What I do is not black magic or anything like that.

This reporter was coincidentally present in the Channel Nine commentary box on Sunday night when Nicholas and Suchard met for the first time, ahead of the segment that went to air.

There were no cameras, and as Suchard spoke to a clearly-sceptical Nicholas, there was no smoke and mirrors.

The pair chatted briefly before Suchard asked Nicholas to think of a two-digit number.

Telling Nicholas to not tell him the number, Suchard wrote something on a piece of paper, which he then folded into his hand.

Giving the pen to Nicholas, he asked the cricket commentator to write down the number.

Nicholas wrote the number 74, for all to see.

Suchard then unfolded his piece of paper to reveal the words: ‘Mark will say the number 74’.

Nicholas was not the only one who was gobsmacked.

By now — everyone, including this reporter, had seen their scepticism hit for six.

Suchard then asked Nicholas to write down the name of someone from his childhood who inspired him in a cricketing, in what was the foundation of the segment which eventually played out live on air.

Lior Suchard encourages cynics to attend one of his shows. Picture: Bob Barker.

HOW HE WON OVER MARK NICHOLAS

Suchard finds it easier to explain the ’74 scenario than the name-guessing.

“There is no hypnosis involved — what I do is I create suggestions in people and influence things,” he said.

“What I did with the number 74 with Mark was influencing. The number was not his choice, it was my choice.

“I influenced him with words, with thought, with body language (his own and Nicholas’) with the movement, with lots of elements together.”

In a nutshell, it seems Suchard influenced with verbal and non-verbal cues to make Nicholas choose the number 74. Nicholas’ subconscious must then have looked for a link to the number — which in this case turned out to be the peg-number of where he kept his belongings as a schoolkid — to make him think it had all been his idea.

But the number, not the memory came first. And it came from Suchard.

That acute combination of 20 per cent indefinable and 80 per cent heightened observation is a touchstone of Suchard’s shows.

He was seven when he realised he never got the guessing game of ‘which hand is the coin in?’ wrong.

“I always knew where the coin is,” he said. “So for me it was backwards — most people learn how to do a something, then do it.

“For me it went intuitively — I could do it and then I learned why and then studied and found ways to enhance it.

“I believe people with the right mindset could have 80 per cent of the skills I have — they could be learned. But for the rest — it’s like everybody could learn to play the piano, right?

“If I learned for 10 years. I would be very good at piano, but it doesn’t mean I will be Mozart.

“It’s like the difference between a good basketball player and Michael Jordan.

“At my shows I do the coin guess and I promise $1000 to the person if I miss where the coin is. I’ve never had to give up the money.”

HOW HE PREDICTED THE CRICKET RESULT

The bolder predictions, such as the result of the cricket are harder to explain — but Suchard says they rely heavily on intuition and positive thinking.

“I actually haven’t predicted something like that for about six or seven years,” he said.

“When I told my promoters I wanted to do here in Australia, they were scared — they said ‘if you get this wrong, nobody will come to your shows’, but I wanted to take the chance.”

“I concentrated a lot the night before. I didn’t sleep the night before, to be honest.

“I studied a little bit of the rules of cricket because I didn’t know how it was played and that’s it.

“I studied the game, I looked at the statistics, I asked about a few of the guys, came to a conclusion, and wrote that down.”

The envelope was given to Channel Nine sports reporter Yvonne Sampson on Sunday morning, and was in her possession until the match was finished on Sunday night.

Suchard correctly forecast the final score and the winner.

“Although I said Australia would have five wickets and it was three, so that’s a small mistake.”

Suchard’s feats lit up social media and were great publicity for his current Australian tour, but he’s adamant sceptics are his best form of publicity. He has long welcomed the cynics.

“I don’t care. If you believe, great, if you don’t that’s also great — in fact, get a front-row seat because if you are sceptical, you are my unpaid publicity,” he said.

One industry not prepared to gamble on his talent is the gaming industry.

“I am banned from casinos worldwide,” Suchard said.

And why can’t he just guess the correct Lotto numbers and retire?

“The lottery is a computer-generated result. It has nothing to do with skills, nothing to do thoughts, with people thinking or doing something or playing or emotion, so there is nothing I can do about the lottery unfortunately,” he said.

Originally published as How ‘master mentalist’ Lior Suchard stole the show at the cricket