- What's going on everybody?
I am trying to act cooler than I am.
I'm Alex Pandrea, welcome back.
Alright what we got for today?
We are going to talk about
the Bicycle inspired playing cards.
So this deck right here
was just released maybe a few weeks ago
and a lot of people are talking about it,
as a standard day to day deck
that now they're going to use,
which really excites me because
it was a hit or miss with this.
The idea came about many years ago
and I didn't know exactly how
people were going to take it.
Are they going to just think,
oh he just put two bicycles
on the back of cards,
as everybody seems to do these days.
But there's more to it than that.
So the story of the Bicycle Inspires,
first and foremost, came
from the word inspire.
I think the word inspire is
very, hate to say inspirational,
it is one of the powerful
words that I sort of live by,
especially when it comes to magic.
Magic should be inspirational
for the people watching.
No matter what type of magic you do,
whether it be serious type of magic,
maybe mentalism, if you do comedy magic,
doesn't matter what genre of magic you do,
it should be ultimately,
inspirational for the people watching.
You know when thinking about my magic,
maybe even five years ago,
all I wanted to do was
be the person who was cool at the bar,
you know hanging out,
doing a couple of tricks,
and now, more and more,
especially over the last couple of years,
after seeing so much
magic around the world
and hanging out so many great people,
I was really inspired to inspire others.
The reason why it is
Bicycle Inspire is because,
when you think about Bicycle,
Bicycle the brand has been
around for more than 100 years.
And it's brand right now,
we know it just for their,
mainly for their rider backs, right?
And it kind of became a commercially used,
every day product that,
if you use Bicycle decks,
especially rider backs,
you got used to it,
and there's no feeling behind it anymore.
Now for me, feeling is everything.
You have to put feeling
into everything you do.
So, when even having a deck of cards
and doing a simple trick,
it doesn't matter the trick,
you have to have a feeling when
holding that deck of cards.
It's going to make your
performance better.
It's going to make you want to be better.
And that's just really how I feel.
So in any deck that I do design,
whether they be the knocks,
as creative as they are,
or any other one,
I want a feeling when I have
the deck of cards in my hands.
With the Bicycle brand,
really, in my opinion,
has no feeling behind it,
because it's so overly
used and so commercialized
and really the rider back doesn't,
besides the little angel on the bike,
it doesn't really have
to do with that bicycle.
The bicycle, right, image,
that can mean so much.
That bicycle image can mean
a lot to people, right?
Think about it like this,
and I'm sure some of you
might even relate to this.
When you were little
and you started to
learn to ride a bicycle,
what happens often times?
You don't get it the first time,
you don't get it the second time.
You get on that bicycle
and maybe you fall.
But guess what?
You pick yourself right back up
and you get back on that bicycle
and you move forward right?
And it's this concept of never giving up
and getting back on the bicycle
and following your dreams
to whatever they may be,
caused me to link the feeling,
this feeling that I'm talking about,
with the Bicycle brand.
Now working together
with Bicycle, with USPC,
I've worked with them over
five, I think six years now,
and we created a strong relationship
and I wanted to bring
that back to this brand,
that everybody has loved
for over 100 years.
And that feeling right
there, is very strong.
It could lead to different emotions, so,
on a very simple level,
that was my thought
into putting two bicycles
on the back of cards.
Now, I have here, follow your dreams,
to keep in mind when you do grab this deck
and you see that image of that bicycle,
you know never to give up
and follow your dreams.
As long as you know that,
now you have a feeling that goes
when holding that deck of cards
and, hopefully, that will
transcend into your magic,
into your card stuff
and make everybody smile.
One thing I am super excited about,
I don't know when this
happened or how this happened,
but USPC, thank god that
you fixed the tab that goes
because, I swear to god
I've bruised my fingers,
ripped my nails apart so many times
trying to peel away
this goddamn cellophane
and I could never do it, right.
For years and years
and it drove everybody crazy.
But, guess what, look at this.
That's amazing, I love this.
Boom, boom, now we can get
into the marking system.
Alright, the Queen of Hearts,
this is a little secret that
you might have over missed
if you do have this deck look through it.
The Queen of Hearts has a
reveal on the back of itself,
and it actually says, Queen
of Hearts, right there.
So there's a cool effect
that we're going to get into
of how to do that.
The idea of this deck
is to be a standard deck
you would use day to day
and have them be marked.
So, when you have decks
of cards that look odd,
people can question them
and what people know,
they don't know about gimmicks
or anything like that,
but they do know about marked cards.
So, it's very important,
especially like things like the
knocks and things like this,
that they can't be marked
and so you put a marking system in there
and then they are marked, boom.
In their face!
So, let's take a look at the
wheels of the actual bike.
I'm going to bring this in just like that.
Now, I don't know exactly
how clear this is going to be
for the camera, because you
have to look on the wheels
of themselves just in case,
if you go to the bluecrown
dot com link below,
you can see the marking
system right there.
The spokes themselves, which are
the lines inside the wheels,
are going to make up the marking system.
Now it's very, very easy.
So if you have a watch on
your wrist check it out,
if you have a clock on
your wall, look up at it.
And you'll see that it goes,
12, one, two, three,
four, five, six, seven,
eight, nine, 10, 11.
Right and then it goes back to 12.
So there are 12 lines to
make it easy to follow,
12 lines on each of these.
Now all you have to do is
look for the thin line.
The thin line will tell you
exactly what the marking is.
On the left one is going to be the value:
whether it's Ace, two,
three, four, five, six,
seven, eight, nine, 10,
and Jack, Queen or King.
And on the right one,
it will be clubs, hearts,
spades, diamonds, for the suit.
So in this case, if I'm looking at it,
I know 12 would be on the hour 12,
then going one and then
two and then three, four,
five, six, so on and so forth,
so I know that it's not
12, not one, not two,
but look, that three, again,
I don't know how clear this is on here,
the three is thinner.
So I know it's a three.
Now I go to here and I go,
clubs, hearts, spades, diamonds.
Diamonds is the thinnest.
So starting at the top, clubs,
hearts, spades, diamonds,
on the right side.
So remember, it's only
four on the right side.
Now I know, it's a three of diamonds.
And sure enough, it's a three of diamonds.
We get to a very
interesting one over here,
because this one, you see that,
I don't know again if you can see but,
there are no markings on the actual one,
so that means, it's a value of 13,
which is the King.
Jack would be 11, 12 is a Queen,
13 is a King.
So we know that this is
a King, just like that.
Okay, now, this is the first
time that I'm revealing this
because I didn't want to in the beginning,
but I felt like it's
such a cool little thing
that I had to do it.
I have a secondary marking
system that I built into this.
And the secondary marking system,
is actually going to be at the corners.
The upper left hand corners.
No matter which way you turn it,
it'll still be in one of
these corners of the card
and that's going to
tell the marking system
only for red or black.
The inner white part, so that
is the white, inner border,
it's either going to be
sharp or round, okay?
Sharp, which is on top here
and round, which is here.
Now, if it's round,
it's going to be black.
If it's sharp, it's going to be red.
Okay this one is round so it's black.
This one is round so it's black.
This one again, round, black.
Red, red, red, okay, so on and so forth.
Now that we know the marking system,
that's cool in itself,
but we have to use it somehow.
And we really have to use it,
in a way that would make sense.
Now, you don't want to just literally
go through the cards and say,
this is the three of hearts,
this is the whatever, right?
And I'm sure you all know that
but, trust me, I've
seen some killer effects
with marked cards and, by
killer, I mean horrible
and you just don't want the obvious method
to be that they're marked cards okay.
So you have to construct
whatever routine that you do,
in such a way that marked cards
are completely the last thing
that they would think about.
Makes sense, good.
This is what I used to do when
I was, I think 10 years old
and I had a bridged sized
marked deck of cards
and it was horrible right?
And I would have the card selected,
place it back into my hand
and I would stare down at it.
Ten of hearts, right?
And I think that's literally what I did.
And, obviously, that itself
is not good, in my opinion.
You could do that, feel free, post videos.
That in itself can still be
good, if you layer it correctly.
So, the way that I would do it,
and I suggest you guys test
out your own different ways
of layering something very simple,
is to do the following.
Have a card selected.
Tell them that it's important
that you take out a card
that means something to you.
Okay because I'm not going
to be able to do this
and this might not work,
if it doesn't at least
mean something to you.
So, saying things like this,
make you stand out, automatically,
from the pick a card, find
the card type of magician.
Saying things that can
totally have no meaning
and only meaning to the
spectator, is very powerful.
So I say it's very important
that you go through
and if it doesn't feel
right don't take it out,
but when it does, go ahead, take it out.
And I don't even tell them
to place it in my palm,
I would just turn around with
my hand stuck out like this
and when you're ready.
Because you don't want the
verbal, put it into my head,
to come back, and if they,
because magicians all the time,
now I'm going to do this,
now I'm going to do this.
There are ways to do things
without saying what you're doing, okay?
And one of the ways,
if you don't want this part remembered,
if you want to read the marking,
you just literally hold
out your hand and you say,
when you're ready, okay.
And I just do this, okay.
And now, I make a remark about the card
based off of the any sort of cold reading
that you want to give them.
Based off of, it could literally
be bullshit that comes out
of your mouth right now.
I would say something
before I turn my head.
Now, just knowing you for
the short amount of time
that I do, I feel like
you're a warm person, right?
You're kind to people.
Would you say that?
And then I turn around
and you just say something that
could be somewhat flattering
and they'll have a reaction;
they'll answer; they'll say, yes or no.
And then I come down and take a peak
at whether it's red or black, okay?
Good, so once again,
head turned, hand out, nothing there,
as she's going to place it here,
you start saying, you're
the type of person
that blah, blah, blah, whatever, whatever
and as you turn like that,
you would say, would you agree?
To something positive, obviously
and they would say yes.
You go, look down, you see it's a red card
and then you say, that kind of person
would take out, usually, a red card.
If it's black, you would say,
this kind of person would
take out a black card.
Okay, it really doesn't
matter at this point
but you sort of want to
nail the color at first.
As you nail the color, you look down,
you see what the card is
and you place it to the side
and now you can reveal the card
in whatever way you want.
But these are just little things,
that you can add to things
that you're already doing.
Like forcing the card and revealing it,
or knowing the markings on it,
you could this, but adding layers,
makes even that much
more powerful, I think.
Okay, so now what we're
going to talk about
is how to use this
duplicate Queen of Hearts
with the reveal Queen of Hearts.
Now, I now what you're thinking,
cheesy revelation that you just put there,
but the way that I thought
about it, is to build
something of value with
something very, very small.
And it's more just an exercise
of how creative can you be
with something people would
just pass up as that's nothing.
Look, Queen of Hearts, wow, big deal.
Now, how are we going to use it?
First and foremost, we're
going to force the card.
So go ahead, force the Queen of Hearts,
however way you want to do it.
Whether it be a riffle force,
a stop anywhere you want,
a classic force or any other way.
My personal favorite is,
I would try to get them,
especially females, to
name their favorite card.
If you saw yourself, as
a card, what would it be?
So, usually when I do this,
I would place a jack or a king
on the face of the pack, for me.
So let's say, I would say, King of Spades,
I would place on the pack right here.
As I'm asking them to name a card,
as you saw yourself as a card right?
What would it be?
And you don't give them time
really to think about it,
and more likely than not,
they will say Queen of Hearts.
Ladies also do say Ace of Hearts.
So you can run with that if
they do say Queen of Hearts.
Now Queen of Hearts is
forced to the spectator
and you're going to control
it to the top of the pack
using your favorite method.
Today we're going to do
the simplest way possible,
the double under cut, just
because we haven't gone through
anything else on this YouTube channel,
but I'm sure all you guys
know a bunch of controls.
Queen of Hearts is now on top, okay?
What you're going to do
is do a double lift, okay?
Now I'm going to push this card over
as I tilt my hand back
so I can actually show the card
to the spectator and give it to them.
Now it's important that you do this
because you want to
see what the back says.
So I give them the card and I ask them,
what does it say on the back?
It says, follow your dreams.
But the presentation,
it works if you sell it.
Anything does if you're
sincere about it enough.
So I say, the reason I
use this deck of cards
is because I saw this deck in a gift shop
and I saw this phrase, follow your dreams.
Now that stuck with me because,
like with everything,
following your dreams
is a big part of life, right?
Never giving up and I
guess that's why they have
that little bicycle there
because, when I was little,
I got on the bicycle
and I fell a bunch of times,
but I got up and I tried
again until I succeeded.
Which is a very nice way of thinking
of something we take for granted,
just the image of a bicycle right?
And an image of a random card.
So right now, this means nothing to us.
It's just the three of hearts.
It's not even the card that you picked,
it's not even your favorite card.
You're going to help
me to create something
that we thought would
be impossible, right?
For example, riding a
bike when you are little
may seem impossible the first
couple of times we do it.
But then, afterwards, can you
hold out your hand for me?
So they hold out their hand
and you place it just like that.
Afterwards, after we achieved it, we said,
anything is possible.
We can do anything, no matter what.
So the first thing I want
to show you, is this.
And then I'm going to
literally just take my finger,
they're watching over here,
they're not seeing
exactly what's happening.
Remember, you're switching the
card for the Queen of Hearts
with the Queen of Hearts revelation on it.
Now I'm just going to take my finger
and I'm just going to
wipe slowly across the
follow your dreams, the
follow your dreams saying.
And they'll see it visually change
because they're not focused in on this.
They don't know what you're
going to do, just like that.
And I give them a second just
to stare down at the card,
that's in their hand.
And give a reaction.
Once they see this, once
you see their eyes light up,
then you take a step back
and you just wait for it.
Sometimes they'll turn the card over,
which is an even more shock.
It's boom, boom, really fast
put together, all in one.
Or, if they can't believe that it's there,
and they haven't turned it over just yet,
I would then, take my hand
and slowly move it across
the deck, across the card
just like that, mimicking
what you did to this
and then finally revealing that the card
has changed to the Queen of Hearts.
It's a miracle and now you've created
something out of nothing.
Okay guys, besides learning
the marking system,
and me asking you to pick
up a few of these decks
cause they are so awesome,
I do hope that this video
did instill some sort of
inspiration into your magic
and into the things that
you want to think about
and perform and do for your audience.
I think it's very, very
important to not take the little
things for granted, so even
a revelation on the back of a
card or a double lift can be overlooked
and it does get overlooked
a lot of the times.
But we can build layers on top of it
and make them more powerful than they are.
If you guys did enjoy this video,
please hit that like button
and do subscribe to this channel.
Share it with your friends, if you can,
and most importantly, do comment below.
I do want to hear your thoughts.
That's what's going to make
this channel even better.
If you like something, if
you didn't like something.
And just thoughts on the
routines that I've done.
How to make it better, because
I'm sure there are so many
creative people out there
and this should be a conversation, yup.
So, I didn't forget about
the contest, don't worry.
We had over 1000 people enter the contest,
which makes me very, very happy,
so I realized something.
One winner is not enough for this contest.
So I'm going to announce the winners,
plural, on my Instagram.
So please go follow me on Instagram.
It's a.pandrea and check out the winners
of my unboxing contest on my Instagram.
Congratulations to the winners
and I will see you guys next time.
