For this trick, you spread the cards and have your friend divide the spread somewhere in the middle, making two halves. She takes one half and you the other. Similar process is repeated where you both spread to the middle somewhere and separate into two halves. At the randomly separated locations are a pair of matching cards.

Set up: top and bottom cards should be mates. You can set up fasdiu via cull, or just do it real quick before starting.

To start: have your friend hold out both her hands together. Ask her to say some at some point as you push off the first card and drop into her hands, followed by another card, then a couple more, then a few more... until she says stop. You’re aiming to have given her about half the cards.

So now, each half should have the mates at the bottom. She can switch the two halves if she wants. Either way, you should be holding in your left hand, and she in her right.

Tell her to mirror you- and you start first- by pushing off and taking the top card into the other hand, then pushing off a few cards on top of that card, then pushing off a few more cards on top of the packet, then continuing to push small groups of cards on top until you both get to the last card.

I say something like “take the top card and push a few cards on top randomly... then a few more... and a few more... and keep going until you get to the last card.” I’ll get to the last card first, and I just toss the last card as a single card on top of the now genuinely shuffled half.

You’re now holding the cards in your right hand, and she in her left- still mirroring. Both of you have shuffled the mates to the top.

Next, flip the cards face up (in the same hand), and tell her to spread through the cards and separate into two halves at a random spot in the middle. You follow her and separate when she does. You will need to execute pulp friction from your right hand, which is backwards if you learned it normally.

If you don’t know pulp friction, I’ll give you the general idea. But you should track it down and learn it properly from Lee Asher. Basically: pinky pull down on the bottom-most card, then reverse spread the cards above while keeping the bottom card hidden under the reverse spread.

Whenever she separates, you do so as well somewhere in the middle, and secretly keep the mate under the upper half as you square up in each hand. She will now also have the mate underneath the packet in her left hand- remember, still mirroring.

Now have her do as you do in this order:

1. Raise your left hand to about shoulder level (the packet without the mate)
2. Turn over the other packet (the one with the mate) with the same hand its in
3. Wiggle the right thumb
4. Use wiggled thumb to up-jog the top card.
5. The raised hand will now flip its cards face down and place it flush with the packet in your right hand, which leaves the mate card out-jogged.

Two things- 1) wait for them to copy each step before moving on to the next. 2) wiggling the thumb helps somehow to up-jog.

Now that the both of you have the mates sticking out, I like to do this crisscrossy thing at the end for the reveal where: your right hand with the cards extend over to her right hand, then your left hand crosses over top to take the card sticking out in their left hand. This prompts her to remove your out-jogged card.

Additional thoughts: this doesn’t doesn’t have to end with mates. You can have the other matching pair in different places (i.e. inside box, in pocket, etc) as predictions. You can also just use this to force a card. It is a process, so not gonna work for everything.