DEX by Lloyd Barnes and Javier Fuenmayor

Hi, my name's Steve Faulkner, welcome to Real Magic Review, and today, after much demand, I shall be, for the final time, talking about decks. Before we do this, can you please like and subscribe? Very importantly, have a look at onlinemagic.co. That is me teaching you magic. Rubber band course on there, coin course, rope course, and loads and loads and loads of courses on card magic, because it used to be just a card magic course. 10 years worth of material on there. Live sessions uploaded every week with everybody. As a member, you get to come onto Zoom and chat with me. All the special guests, including people like David Williamson, if I can actually get my words out, Nolan Roddy from Trick Trick Boom, John Allen recently, and many more upcoming, and many more have been in the past. Have a look at that, please. And new podcast is Steve Faulkner's Magic Show. Searched out one episode at the time of recording, but lots of cool stuff lined up, so Steve Faulkner's Magic Show. Have a look at that wherever you get your podcasts. And share this with your friends, thanks. Okay, right, so this total kind of honesty, which I think is very important, especially at the moment, is I received decks from, I think, maybe via Murphy's Magic through Lloyd Barnes, who agreed to send me one very kindly. Didn't buy it, I'm not gonna buy it, because I can't afford to keep buying stuff, because I won't be able to do any of it if I do that. But I'm gonna be as honest as possible. I don't know Lloyd, we've kind of chatted a couple of times in the past, he's not like my best mate, like some people's stuff I review, which is very difficult to stay objective. So this is pretty easy for me, actually. Obviously, there's been a whole controversy and all that. I'm taking that out of it. I haven't purposely read or watched any of the reviews. I've not been on the cafe, and I'm not interested in any of that stuff at the moment. This is just about the product. Okay, oh, it's hot in here. It's got hot in England all of a sudden, and it's ruined everything. Everybody's eating's on everywhere. Always complaining about that. Oh, I'm so boring. So, Dex is an index. Loads of you will know that. You reach in, someone names a card, at its most simple, right? At its most simple. Someone names a card, you can get any card out of the pocket, right? Apparently it holds, it's been shown online. Lloyd's shown it, everybody's shown it. I'm not gonna show it, because it feels a bit weird. But it holds 52 cards, kind of. It's better to do it without the aces. So, 48 cards, I've got no problem with that at all. I've got no problem saying, think of any card, don't think of the aces, because everybody says that. I say that anyway, usually, because when people say the ace of spades, people go, I bet everybody says that. So, that's fine. But you can use all of them, if you want. You put your hand in the pocket, and you can pull out whatever card is named. Of course, it's not just for that. There are loads of routines on this. Hours, like five plus hours of stuff. Have I watched it all? Because I don't have to watch videos on how to do a palm, because I've done hundreds of them. But it's got all the slights on it. And people that complain about long tutorials, myself included, I complain about them when they're not indexed. If they're indexed, I can look at that and go, don't need to look at that, that, that, and that. I don't need to listen to them for 20 minutes talking about the history of how they came up with it, and the different prototypes. I can if I want, but I don't have to. No real problem with that. There's no negative consequence of having loads of stuff to look at for this. And it's easy to navigate, so not an issue. Does it work? Let's look at the good stuff first, all right? Yes, it works. I am now, I spent about an hour today kind of learning how to feel in and kind of feel where the cards are. So I've got no problem that if I wanted to do this, I could do it. Is it easy? I would say nearly everybody, with time, is gonna be able to grab any card from that index. Now I do pinky counts, I do thumb counts, I do all of that kind of stuff. So I can kind of, when I get to the right bit, I can pretty much every time grab the card easily. For those of you that have never done anything like that, you are gonna have to work at this to get it quick. But you don't really have to get it quick. There's a lot of stuff about, is it faster than this? Is it faster? If you're like, yeah, I can get it really quickly. That's not what this is. Unless you're doing it, it's in my pocket, there it is, which is a bit of a waste. If you're doing a lot of the routines, which you can routine it, so you've got actually quite a lot of time. It's relaxed. It isn't deep down into your pocket, so it's not like you've got a photo around. It's kind of, I'm there now, you're not really gonna see it, but it's a relaxed thing and I can feel where all the cards are. That's all good. So it works, it's gonna do what you want it to do. I have not had it for long. So after three weeks, I've got some theories about what may happen. Now, it's just really good. I'm treading into very dangerous waters here because I'm not gonna make any assumptions, but based on what's happened already, all right, this is evidence-based. So I'm quite enjoying myself. So for me, without all the hype, without all the stuff, someone says to me, oh, I've got an index that holds all the cards or nearly all the cards and this. You buy it, you go, that's what I need. I really need an index that I can go into one pocket with one hand and get any card out. It's going to do that. Thanks very much. Brilliant. The problem with all these things is it's not the best thing in the world. It's not, the way they're hyping stuff at the moment, I'm really enjoying this new thing of them going around and then discussing it on camera. Did you see that response? Yeah, that was brilliant. Let's face it, right? If you go up to most lay people and do a half decent magic trick, you can get really good responses. So there is a ceiling of responses and, you know, if you're a magician and you're doing good magic, whatever it is, you're going to get really good responses. So we can't judge the quality of anything on the fact that people went, yeah, that's amazing. They do that anyway. They did it with an invisible deck. So, you know, it's kind of, it's not that important, but you can create very, very strong magic with this. Of course you can. You can do, as they show, you can do gimmickless brainwave effects, loads of that stuff. If you think of it, they can name any card, you can have a card with a different backing index. And this is where indexes, all indexes are going to give you some good stuff. The selling point of this is it's the best thing ever. No, isn't it? It's good. It's just a good thing. Is it the best index ever? Well, it probably is if there aren't any others where you can go in one hand. Apparently there aren't. I haven't researched that much. So don't, you know, but for me, if that is the only one where one hand fit all the cards pretty much, great. Then it is, you know, if that's what you want, if that's how you say better, and that means better for you, brilliant. For me, would it be better to have a two pocket index and not as bulky? That probably would be better for me because I'd probably be able to do it quicker. But again, it depends on the context. Now this is made to be in your jeans. Now some people are going to be like, well, I don't wear jeans to a gig, but you can't really win because the majority of people buying this stuff aren't doing gigs in suits. So there are so few things you can wear with a pair of jeans on or use of a pair of jeans on in this kind of area that that's actually a good thing. Majority of the people are going to be able to take it out and do it. So it is ticking a lot of boxes. I think the fact you can wear it in jeans, great. Will I walk around with this in my pocket constantly? To be honest, it's weird. Like when I first saw it, I thought, that's a really big bulky thing to be walking around with. But actually when it's in there, you do kind of forget it's there. And this is, and I know there's a lot of, they're going to be selling, selling, selling it, but because of the shape of it, it does actually feel a lot better than it would if it was square. If it was kind of a square bulky thing, it's kind of tapered and it feels okay in there. I'm someone that despises, I hate having full pockets. I don't like the feel of it. It's a horrible feeling. I've kind of forgot it was there just a minute ago. I was going, oh, where is it? Oh, it's in there. Now saying that, it looks like a wallet in a pocket. Now if, again, depending on where you're working, you're not going to want that. This really works best with jeans that are not tight fitting but aren't too loose either. You don't want everything moving around. So there are pluses on this. It does work, but of course, there are some things that you are going to want to know about because people have already been talking about some stuff. There's this thing where, and watch Lloyd's videos, watch everybody's videos, it's all been out in the open now, where the way, the thing at the bottom is glued together and the glue comes undone. That happened within minutes. Now, there's a bit on the download where they go, well, you know, I didn't think it'd be a problem, but it looks like it might be, so we've made this video. This may happen. Now, of course, it's going to be a problem. If you get something you haven't, we've watched a whole thing and it hasn't got that bit cut in and the thing falls apart, regardless of whether it can be used or not, and it can with that, and very easily, it doesn't ruin the use of it, but it's not great, is it? When you get something and it falls apart, it immediately alarms you, especially if you paid a lot of money for it. So that is, and I don't care if they've said, you know, oh, we didn't think this would be a problem. You know it's going to be a problem. That's why you've got the video in. But does it, again, objectively, with no affiliation to this, does it make it any less usable? No, you put, I put a bit of gaffer onto it. It works, and that hasn't stopped anything. It took me two seconds, but you know, I got it free, so I don't mind that. If I'd have paid for it, maybe I'd have been a bit like, oh, come on. You know, you don't want to be fixing something like three minutes after you got it. Basically, when it gets warm, the bit comes unglued. I wouldn't say, you know, this has been open, but it's not out in the open. So people, I'm being a bit more honest about actually what it is as well, because, you know, there's no secrets around this. So, but it's working fine. They say, I think Lloyd's says on it, you know, we've, instead of making it look really nice, and there's these prototypes that look really great, but they're bulky. They've gone for workability as well. So you will get it, and it does look like, to me, you know those cheap kind of packets, where if you buy a packet trick or something like that, it comes in a little, it's the same sort of stuff. And again, even though it probably means it works better, what has happened after is that the snugness of it, even with playing it for like an hour, has become a little bit less snug. Now I don't think it's going to become even more less snug. I think that, but what happens, what it means is that if you don't check anything, just before you approach a table or do whatever you're doing, or a lot of people, you're going to have to check everything's all kind of in line, because things are kind of loosening up there. Now, honestly, for me, if I was going to be doing this, you can do it just with touch. You just sort of push it, make sure everything's sort of there. Great, and I know that I can do that now. That's fine, but just to be aware of. It doesn't feel like it's going to fall apart anywhere else. It feels like that's the only bit, but it's, yeah, and it's kind of snug, but things are moving around a little bit. And again, there's this thing about, you can put the aces in sort of facing up if you want to add the aces. To me, that, I don't like that, because then things were moving around. If they're in there for 10 minutes, in my pocket for 10 minutes, and I'm not doing anything, again, I'm going to have, they feel in a way I don't like the aces being in there. But again, I'd have no problem either putting them in another pocket or any of that. So basically what we've got, I think, is something that's pretty good. It's a nice index. If you're into indexes, I'm not the person, if you're comparing it and you're going to be going, no, but this does this. I don't know. I'm just taking this on face value without the hype. If I got it, I think $75. I don't use, you know, if you really want a thing that does that, then it's going to do it for you. But I think it's quite expensive for what it is. I would be happy having a two pocket index. Actually, I'd be happy probably even having half the cards and equivoking them down to half the pack. But I know a lot of people don't want to do this and you want that clean thing. And I know that. And I know there's an argument that you don't need it, but if you want it and you're a hobbyist and you really like the idea, it's great. It is really enjoyable to practice. I think they get a bit too excited about it on the tutorial and they could cut a bit of that kind of testing each other, look how fun this is stuff. And you kind of feel like you're selling it a bit too much and I've already got it. I think they could cut everything down a bit and make everything a little bit more concise. But again, no real negative consequence from that. Anything else? I'd be really interested to see what you think, basically. What everybody thinks. I'm going to, obviously I've got the podcast now. I'm going to be doing a mix of things on there. I've got three different kind of shows that are going to be on that podcast. And one of them is going to be answering your questions. So do email me on steve.onlinemagic.co or comment below this video. If anything springs up that I think that'd make a good podcast, I'll just put it out and I'll answer your questions on the podcast. There are some interviews coming up and they're interviews with a little bit of a difference. So you'll be able to get those on here as well. But you know where to go with any questions, comment, share, all that sort of stuff. Like and subscribe, check out onlinemagic.co. Thanks very much. I've bound to miss something out. Don't get cross if I have. Just ask me and I'll cover it on the next live show or in a podcast. Take care. onlinemagic.co, go for it. And thank you, by the way, Lloyd for sending this to me. You know, thanks a lot. Cheers.