Hello,

what are your favorite effects with a one-way-deck? And what are the best resources for effects?

Thank you for your input and best regards,

Zedd

Guardians, phoenix, bicycle 3 wing design

I have used one way backs with a memorized stack and a 52 bit wrapping deBruijn sequence and six cards dealt and a secret cheat sheet to determine the first card:

https://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/view......c=745123

The above thread explains how to do this and prepare the deck with a noticeable big black dot on the face of each card at the bottom middle. Use the somewhat humorous explanation that "squeezing the dot with your thumb activates neurotransmitters in portions of your brain".

After a spectator cuts the deck several times and then deals six cards face down to six other spectators who hold the cards with their thumb on the black dot the magician looks at the backs of the 6 cards for the binary pattern of the six cards and then secretly quickly looks up that pattern on the cheat sheet.

After the magician names the first card of the six cards, the magician can rattle off the other five cards from memory. Note that you don't have to use a memorized deck, you can use a Si Stebbins stack or better yet Doug Dyment's DAO stack which looks far better than the Si Stebbins stack and is super easy to determine the "next card".

There are many deBruijn sequences that could be used but here is a good one suggested by jmbulg:

0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1,
1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1,
0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0

Preparation:
Orient the one-way backs so that "up" is where the ones are and "down" is where the zeros are (then mark a big black dot at the bottom face of every card).

The important part of this trick is to have a sorted octal cheat sheet (I put the info on the back of two Jokers which I remove at the beginning and fiddle with during the trick but you could use a little clipboard with the cheat sheet info).

Below is from another post of mine on another thread about this method:

"Below is a much better deBruijn that I call jmbulg-B therefore use your pristine stack and a one way deck and orient each card position appropriately then when the six cards are dealt on a table the magician can get the identity of the first card from the binary pattern and then instantly knows the other five cards from memory.

jmbulg-B deBruijn:
0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1,
1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1,
0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0

When you look at the six cards: separate them in your mind into two groups of three. The first group of three make up the first octal digit. The second group of three makeup the second octal digit.

Example: 101010 becomes
in your mind 101-010 and then becomes in your mind 5 2.

Now that you have the two octal digits just quickly look down the cheat sheet list until you see the same two digit octal code (the list is in numeric order so it should be easy to spot the proper row). In this example the 52 tells you that the first card of the six is your stack card in position 13. Then you know the other five cards from memory (or from calculation if using Si Stebbins or DAO).

One screen jmbulg-B 6 card 1 way generic octal Cheat Sheet A list:
01 pos 22 ... 40 pos 21
03 pos 23 ... 42 pos 31
05 pos 32 ... 43 pos 51
06 pos 52 ... 44 pos 7
07 pos 24 ... 45 pos 10
11 pos 8 .... 46 pos 17
12 pos 11 ... 47 pos 44
13 pos 33 ... 50 pos 29
14 pos 18 ... 51 pos 15
15 pos 1 .... 52 pos 13
16 pos 25 ... 53 pos 38
17 pos 45 ... 54 pos 4
21 pos 30 ... 55 pos 35
22 pos 9 .... 56 pos 40
23 pos 16 ... 60 pos 20
24 pos 14 ... 61 pos 50
25 pos 12 ... 62 pos 6
26 pos 34 ... 63 pos 43
27 pos 39 ... 64 pos 28
30 pos 19 ... 65 pos 37
31 pos 5 .... 66 pos 3
32 pos 36 ... 70 pos 49
33 pos 2 .... 71 pos 42
34 pos 41 ... 72 pos 27
35 pos 26 ... 74 pos 48
37 pos 46 ... 76 pos 47"

Note that if you are using Si Stebbins or DAO then you must modify the above cheat sheet to have the actual two character card name after the word "pos" instead of the position number.
I may provide that in another post here for the Si Stebbins.

This type of cheat sheet keeps your stack intact which makes everything easier.

Note that the black dot technique is not necessary if the six cards are dealt in a row on a table (because there is little chance that any of the 6 cards will accidentally get reoriented).

But the black dot serves another purpose: when later reconstructing the deck it ensures that the backs are oriented properly (when the black dots are all at the bottom on the faces). It is easy to make a mistake when initially constructing the one way backs to be properly oriented as ones or zeros, but once done and having marked the faces with the black dots at the bottom then the deck is easily insured to be correct by spreading the deck face up and making sure there is a black dot at the bottom of every card and none at the top.

Note: do not use this deBruijn/cheat sheet technique with the Harding stack because even though this technique works fine to get the first card of the six it is very difficult to mentally determine the next five cards using the Harding stack (the Harding Stack is excellent for doing acaan but very poor for determining "next card").

I would note that the old "bicycle 3 wing design" is more commonly known as a "Bicycle League Back" deck and may be found for sale in brand new condition for ca. $10 on the big auction and from other sources.

"Tricks with a One Way Deck" by U. F. Grant contains a nice little collection of 20+ effects and is downloadable from www.lybrary.com for a mere $5.

The Bicycle League Back deck is what I use to do the deBruijn six cards dealt trick. I don't believe any layman will ever catch that this deck has one-way backs.

Quoting from ad copy on the Butterfly Magic Store website: "[The] League Back design was first introduced back in 1888, which makes it one of the oldest patterns used on Bicycle cards. Almost all vintage Bicycle designs were modernized to be symmetrical (two-way). League Back is an exception as it features an asymmetrical bicycle wheel placed in the middle."

It has been a favorite of mine for over half a century, and I completely agree with glowball's view of its usefulness today for card magic--a perfect example of "everything old is new again."

Update:

1. The Locator Deck by Gogo Cuerva was reviewed as early as last March on the Penguin website, so it is difficult to fathom why no one saw fit to mention it here when this thread was begun. However, its qualification for inclusion is so blatantly visible in the demo video usually shown to advertise it, that it hardly seems revealing to mention it here now.

2. Besides the Phoenix decks and a couple of other popular ones already mentioned above, both the highly acclaimed DMC Elites and Phill Smith's new Elysian Duets are worthy of note here as well. In particular, IMHO the design of the Duets' backs deserves particular praise for being readable from a tight ribbon spread, thus enabling its use in performing a nice little one-ahead effect included with the Cuerva cards.