Tossed Out Deck

Tossed Out Deck is a mentalism effect in which a deck of cards, held together by a rubber band, is tossed out to the audience for them to peek at a random card. After three or more people have selected a card in this manner, the mentalist can name all the cards selected.

The name comes for the effect published by David Hoy in THE BOLD AND SUBTLE MIRACLES OF Dr. FAUST (1963). The deck that was needed for the effect came from the mind of Persi Diaconis, who worked it out for David Hoy.

It was known to be performed many times by Orson Welles.

One of the first "banded deck" peeking ideas can bee seen in a Sphinx (Vol 7, December, 1908, page 136) ad for the "Peerless Monte Cristo Cards" by Hardin (sold by DeLand). It states that you can, after showing all cards are different, allow you to put a rubber band around the deck, hand it to someone to pull it open at any place and "peep" at a card. The deck, however, could not be tossed or allowed to get that far away from you.

Variations

• Harry Anderson's All for One in Harry Anderson, Wise Guy written by Mike Caveney (1993)
• David Ben's version in his book Tricks (2003)
• Ron Wilson's version in The Uncanny Scot, Ron Wilson written by Richard Kaufman (1987)
• Whit Haydn's Killer Epic routine
• Jack Dean's Bagatelle uses Baggage Tags with various Countries and Cities printed on them instead of a deck of cards.
• Max Maven's Tossed-Out Tech in Videomind, phase 2
• Psi-Deck by Bruce Bernstein (2001)
• Telomatic Deck

References

• Sphinx Vol 7, December, 1908
• Genii February 1979, page 116