Bi-Reveals
/I was working on a trick for a future post when I landed on a concept I think you might be able to help flesh out with examples.
The concept is called Bi-Reveals.
One of the subjects I’ve come back to, time and again, since the beginning of this site, has been to create a framework that makes it impossible for people to write forces off as a force. This is something most magicians had completely given up on. Instead, they had come at the issue the other direction. “If you have a billboard that says, you will pick the 3 of Hearts, people will know it was a force. So you shouldn’t do anything too grand with your reveals. Take it down a notch. Keep the reveal small and underwhelming, and maybe they won’t suspect anything.”
What a bizarre response to the problem.
How about instead we work on creating processes that seemingly couldn’t be forces?
In one of my older books, I wrote about something I called The Damsel Technique—a style of forcing that incorporates genuine, indisputable free choices along the way. It’s hard to dismiss the outcome as a “force” when the spectator sees their decisions ripple through the process in real time.
Bi-Reveals come from the same spiritual family as the Damsel Technique, but they operate on the reveal side, not the selection side.
Here’s the simplest example.
You place a small wallet on the table. “Inside this wallet is a prediction of something that’s about to happen.”
You have someone slide a joker into a deck of cards.
“Take out the card next to the Joker you placed… well, actually—there are two cards next to it, I guess. Remove either one.”
They take out the Ace of Hearts.
You remove the card on the other side of the Joker, the Three of Clubs.
“You shuffled the cards. You could have placed the Joker between any two cards, but you ended up here. And even then, you had a choice: the Ace or the Three. And you picked the Ace. Are you happy with that, or would you rather switch to the Three? Totally up to you.”
Let’s say they switch.
“Interesting. Given that option, most people would keep the Ace. It’s just a more appealing card. But that’s okay, we just want to go with your instincts.”
You point to the wallet on the table, and with no moves, you crack it open. A face-down card is seen. There’s nothing else in the wallet. You tell them to slide the card out.
They turn it over, and it’s the Three of Clubs.
This is simply Bill Simon’s Prophesy Move to get the Joker in the right place, and then a Z-Fold wallet that allows you to reveal either card as the one card you set aside from the start.
What is a Bi-Reveal
A Bi-Reveal is a reveal that allows you to cleanly show two (or more aka a Poly-Reveal) possible revelations, in a location that is established before the selection is made.
It may use gimmickry, technology, sleights, or linguistic deception to make the person believe the reveal is in the one reveal in the only place that was directly or indirectly stated earlier in the performance.
It’s not just a multiple out. It’s a type of multiple out where the structure of the trick strongly suggests there was only one path, and you’re now seeing its inevitable conclusion.
With a standard multiple out, the effect often changes based on the outcome. With a Bi-Reveal, the setup frames the experience as if this was the only way the trick could have played out all along.
History
As others have undoubtedly done, I would sometimes use a procedure that forced two cards and then I would allow a free choice at the end. To prepare for this, I would have two reveals set up. Maybe one is a poster hanging in my hallway, and the other is written on a cake in my refrigerator.
While this sort of thing can be entertaining, there is a significant difference between:
“Pick a card. The four of hearts? Okay, let’s go to my refrigerator, there’s a cake in there….”
and this:
“Inside my refrigerator there is a special cake I made. I want you to pick a card.”
The difference between the two is something any moderately intelligent non-magician will understand intuitively. In one version, the area of the reveal is indicated after the choice. In the other, it precedes it.
It’s the difference between a reveal that feels reactive, and one that feels inevitable.
This is why I’m drawn to Bi-Reveals.
What Isn’t a Bi-Reveal?
A card index in your pocket would allow you to say, “Your named card will be in my pocket.” But because you can’t show that pocket cleanly afterward, that wouldn’t be a Bi-Reveal.
However, I suppose if you said, “I have a wallet in my inner breast pocket with a single sealed envelope inside.” And then you had them name a card, you pulled it from your index, you loaded it into a Card-To-Wallet, that would technically meet my definition. But it’s not quite the thing I’m looking for. I’m looking for ideas that are structurally less complex (even if they’re hyper ambitious).
Examples
Here are some examples of what I’m talking about.
Tools like the Z-Wallet, the Quiver Purse, or those card boxes with a flap all qualify. You can place them out before anything has been selected and casually reference them: “That’s where the prediction is.”
Then, at the end, you can open them cleanly and show the reveal. To the spectator, it’s been sitting there in plain view the entire time, containing a single possible outcome.
Let’s say you do the Cross-Cut force. You tell the person to look at either the card where they cut. You tell them they can either look at the top card of the packet or the bottom card of the other packet. “Focus on that card and send the energy of that card right to my chest,” you say, tapping your heart.
If they say one card, you have them place their hand on your chest where you pointed earlier and they feel something in your breast pocket. They remove the only card that’s in there, the card they chose.
If they pick the other card, you unbutton your shirt to reveal there is only one card tattooed on your chest.
In both cases, the reveal was pre-indicated by you tapping your chest. You framed their expectations. And in both cases, the reveal precludes any other possibility.
You tell your friend that we often see shapes in the clouds not because they’re there, but because we expect to see them.
You “prove” this by having them stop at a random page in a book, and you ask them to think of an interesting word they see on the top line. There are a couple of options for them to choose from. They settle on the word “bologna.”
“You sure you don’t want one of these other words? ‘Knife’ is also a good option.”
No, they’re happy with bologna.
You take their hand and walk outside.
High in the sky, in drifting, disappearing script is…:
You actually have both words written in the air. One that you can see in the distance if you walk out your front door, one in the distance if you walk out your back door. Your house itself obstructs the view of whatever word they didn’t choose.
(This would be an example of a reveal that is ambitious, but structurally simple.)
“I’ve predicted the card you’ll choose,” you say. “It’s in my photo roll.”
They go through some process which narrows the deck down to just a couple of cards. They make a final, deliberate choice of one card. They can change their mind.
If they pick Card 1, you say:
“Open my photos. Scroll through. Somewhere in there, you’ll find a picture of a single card—the one you chose.”
And they do. A clean photo of the card, buried somewhere in your camera roll.
It’s the only playing card they’ll see as they scroll.
If they pick Card 2, you say:
“Open my photos and check the most recent picture. Now zoom in… see what I’m pointing at?”
And sure enough—it’s right there. The newest photo, taken earlier that day, casually showing you pointing at a card.
In the first case, there would be one close-up picture of a playing card, but it would be somewhere far back in the camera roll. This is the only picture of a card anyone would see while scrolling through your pics.
On the other hand, directing them to the most recent pic makes total sense and they’d never even see that other pic way back in your camera roll.
You get the idea.
In the future, I’ll share some actual routines I’ve done with this concept, not just these theoretical examples.
In the meantime, if you have any Bi- or Poly-Reveal ideas of your own, shoot me an email.