This close-up/table hopping/mentalism card trick leaves a wake of astonished spectators in its path every time it is performed. It can be performed partially surrounded, which is conducive to table hopping.
The performer takes a deck of cards out of its box and dribbles it, face up, so the spectators see that all the cards are different. The deck is then dribbled face down and a spectator picks a card mid-dribble — and is even given the option to keep going if they wish to choose another card. The chosen card is displayed to the spectators and then another spectator chooses a different suit from the chosen card and freely names out-loud any card in that suit. The performer look through the deck and finds the first card. The performer proves that they knew which card would be chosen by allowing one of the spectators to turn over the empty card box, which has been sitting on the table the entire time, in plain sight, to reveal that the first chosen card’s name is written on the backside of the box. Then amazingly, a spectator turns over the chosen card and on its back is written the name of the freely chosen second card.
If you can dribble cards you can do this trick with great ease. The hardest part of doing this trick is the initial one-time preparation of the gimmicked deck, which only requires about 15 minutes of alone time and a Sharpie.
Often, promotional videos are edited to make tricks look better. Not so here. If anything, the video underplays how great of a trick this is. Although the promotional video claims that there is a different outcome every time, that is only partially true and you would not want to repeat this trick to the same group of spectators.
The gimmicked deck is well made and the instructional DVD is easy to follow and enables you to start performing immediately after the initial setup is completed. The DVD comes with some great alternative handlings and an fantastic bonus routine, “touched” which can be performed with another gimmicked staple deck of cards.
iContact is well worth the $29.99 price and the 10 star rating.