Dave,

Before you devote a lot of time into working with the random stack that you memorized, you should probably spend the time memorizing one of the more popular stacks that have powerful effects built into them, and a lot of repertoire already figured out. Otherwise you will never be able to do more than a small subset of the effects that are possible with a good memdeck stack.

Usually in discussions of memdeck it comes down to the Aronson or the Tamariz Mnemonica stack. The Tamariz stack has more powerful effects built into it than the Aronson, but the Aronson has been around longer and there are more total routines published for it. Personally I went with the Tamariz stack because you can do 95% of memdeck effects with any memorized stack, and I figured that I wanted to have the most up-to-date stack at my disposal. I'm glad I did.

Memdeck effects are truly stunning, but for a long time were often limited to mentalism, divination, and gambling demonstrations. But in Mnemonica Tamariz pretty much blew the roof off of what you can do with memdeck to include just about any plot in card magic that you would want. I'd definitely recommend getting a a copy of Mnemonica.

I agree IF those types of effects (gambling, spelling) appeal to you, and they do to most magicians, but they don't to me so I learned Martin Joyal's Six-Hour Memorized Deck solely because I thought it would be easier to learn than other memorized systems I knew of at the time (including Aronson's, and Joyal's did turn out to be much easier for me).

You can get Aronson stact for free from his site.

You can also download deck testers which are really helpful.

Roland, you can find an extensive list of where to find memory-related effects, over at Grey Matters, including many card effects that can be done with any memorized deck.

Thanks for sharing your approach, Roland. It's great!

There are a couple errors in your thinking here. First of all, you don't know for sure that the Joyal stack would have been significantly easier for you, unless you had done the work to memorize both systems and therefore had a basis for comparison. Isn't it a real possibility that memorizing Aronson or Mnemonica might not have been as difficult as you had imagined?

And with the publication of Mnemonica, Juan Tamariz pretty much blew away the old archetypes of what is possible with a memorized deck. It is simply incorrect to say that the Mnemonica stack can only be used for the standard memdeck gambling, spelling, and divination type effects. How would you like to end your routine by doing a few faros and ending up in new deck order? There aren't too many people who wouldn't find that appealing in itself.

Also, using Tamariz' techniques for memorization, it is quite possible to do the memorization work in an afternoon (albeit an afternoon of hard work and total concentration). His claim is that anybody can memorize his stack using his methods in about four hours, which is about what it took me. Given the real possibility of learning Mnemonica in four hours, it is sort of ironic that you opted to memorize a stack called the Six-Hour Memdeck, on the assumption that it would be quicker.

In any case, I still don't think it's a smart trade-off to go with a less powerful stack just to save a little bit on the memorization work. If you're going to commit to memorizing a stack and learning the memdeck routines, why limit your options? Go with the stack that has the most powerful stuff inherent to it.

Guys, let's clarify something here for people that have not yet memorized a full deck stack. The order or the cards in one thing. The METHOD used to memorize it is something else. I learned the Aronson stack using Simons methods explained in Bound To Please. They are just basic mnemonics, the same as the Lorayne System, and the multitude of mnemonic based systems which came before. It's been used for centuries and can be used to memorize ANY full deck stack, not just Simon's.

I have not used the "revolutionary" Tamariz method (actually a combination of several methods or procedures) and so I can't comment on whether it's faster or not. It may very well be fast. But, you can use Juan's method(s) to memorize the Aronson stack, or any other full deck stack, too.

You can also use brute force memory. This may be harder and take longer, but it absolutely will get you there.

Once you memorize your stack, the method you used no longer matters. You do not continue to do the mnemonice associations, you just KNOW.

The main point is this: before you decide to memorize a stack, the method you're going to use seems to be very important. IT IS NOT. Most magicians will be able to memorize any stack by any method with some regular practice. What IS important is which stack you choose. If you're going to memorize one, think carefully on what you are going to use it for. Larry Davidson did just that. He could have chosen the Aronson stack, but on finding out what routines it can accomplish, he felt that most of them are not his cup of tea. Remember, a great many of Simon's routines can be done with any memorized deck. There are a few which require that the deck be in Simon's order. As Larry says, these are heavy on gambline routines, primarily poker. But there is a nice Bridge Deal built in, and a blackjack routine as well. There are also some special spelling situations built into the deck. I personally like some of these. I routinely do the complete three phase poker deal. I don't normally do the Bridge deal, but when I happen to run across a bridge player in my audience, it's there and ready.

On the other hand, if you do a lot of Faro work, the Tamiriz Stack is probably more your cup of tea. Being able to get a deck into new deck order does make a wonderful effect, and one that you can't do with the Aronson stack.

I do hope that this is useful to you.

If you decide to memorize a deck, I've got some twenty articles I've written for the Smoke and Mirrors Ezine collected on my web site. Come on in and browse, there's no charge for the information. The URL is in my sig file below.

Denny Loomis

I really like Doug Dyment's stack.
It works for me.
Peace,
Parson

Denny gets it.



Scorch, I did briefly attempt the Aronson stack, and did not find it easy. I thought Joyal's would be easier, I tried it, and I found it very easy. I did not attempt Tamariz's approach because it wasn't published at the time I learned memorized deck work which was years ago when Joyal's work was first published.



Scorch, I created my own effects using Joyal's memorized stack, and none of my effects are gambling, spelling, or typical divination type effects, so I didn't have to wait for anyone else to "blow away any archetypes." To this day I perform only my original effects using a memorized deck. Note that in my original posting I didn't say anything about Memonica one way or the other. If I hadn't learned Joyal's stack years ago and I was just starting out today, of course I'd look into and consider Mneumonica.



I'm one of those people. That idea doesn't appeal to me, nor would any idea that shows a deck in any order after using a memorized deck. Different strokes for different folks.



Given that you didn't know when I learned memorized deck work, and given that Mnemonica wasn't published at the time, I guess it wasn't me who was making assumptions. Ironic, isn't it?

Larry

To anyone who is still on the fence about learning a full memdeck stack, I can offer my experience.

I first became interested in the Aronson stack, because I really liked many of the effects that Michael Close does using that stack (actually, many of those effects can be done with any memorized stack, but since that was the stack he used, I decided to start there). Unfortunately, I was absolutely convinced that memorizing an entire deck of cards was some kind of monumental undertaking, and I kept putting off the work necessary to do it because of how hard I assumed it was.

I had tried many of the memorization techniques taught by Lorayne and others, including the procedure Simon Aronson gives in Bound to Please, but one thing that always bothered me was the notion that the associations that one makes were only temporary; after the stack was learned, the associations were supposed to drop away, and you would just know the card at any number or vice versa. To me, this seemed like a lot of wasted effort if the idea was to just memorize the cards and their numbers, so I came up with my own way of memorizing (or rather, adopted the brute force approach).

I made up a little card with the cards and their numbers, and used it as a prompter. I live in Mexico City, and spend a significant portion of my day on public transportation, so I had a lot of time both before and after work to devote to the memorization procedure. I started by memorizing five cards, and would recite them in order. When I felt comfortable with this (a few minutes), I would refer to my little card and memorize the next card, adding it to my mental list. By running the list in strict order, I was able to memorize the entire deck in about four hours.

Now, when I say memorize, I mean only that I could run through the list and name each card and its number. This, however, is not sufficient to actually perform with the deck, so once I had the "raw" memorization down, I developed a series of exercises to help cement the associations, and allow me to name card from number or number from card. Some examples:

Name cards from 1-52
Name cards from 52-1
Name odd cards forward
Name odd cards backward
Name even cards forward
Name even cards backward
Name cards in pattern: 1, 11, 21, 31, 41, 51, 2, 12, 22, 32, 42, etc.
Give number from card in ascending order A-K in CHSD order
Give number from card in descending order A-2 in CHSD order
Give number of card from new deck order
Give number of all Aces, 2s, 3s, etc. in CHSD order
Give number of card from Si Stebbins cycle

Obviously, there are lots more combinations; the point is that you can do this anytime you have a little "dead time" without even needing a deck or any other reference (provided you have the raw memorization down cold: if you get stuck, you can always run your mental checklist to find the info you need).

Now, I don't believe that this approach is the right one for everybody; this is just what worked for me. The important point is that memorizing a deck is certainly within the abilities of anyone who really wants to learn it; I don't have any special mental powers, so if I can do it, anyone can.

One last note: it's tempting to try to find some kind of system that will allow you to avoid the work of memorizing a deck, but there are some effects that can only be performed with a fully memorized deck, not a cyclical system like Si Stebbins. If you don't believe me, pick up any book by Simon Aronson; every one of them has killer effects that make the effort worthwhile.

Stebbins with a shuffled top stock for me.

Ew, ouch. That one hurt. I guess I had it coming though.

But I still stand by my recommendation of the Tamariz over the Joyal stack.

On the subject of an association-technique for memorising: I would recommend it for the benefits it gives OUTSIDE magic. Maybe many don't take exams but for me the power of memory that I picked up by using the techniques of association were fantastic. I am an accountant and it was no good for computational papers, but for subjects like law taking exams felt like walking on water it was so easy.
I used the associations published by Bob Farmer for the mem-deck. The acutal memorising of the Tamariz stack took only a couple of hours; but the playing around with the Farmer associations to amend them to what I felt to be useful to me took me a couple of weeks (done leisurely).
I feel that I could now also memorise other stacks IN ADDITION to the Tamariz one in a couple of hours.

To Bob Greaves,
I enthusiastically second your comment. When Harry Lorayne came to L & L in Tahoe to shoot his DVD Series, it was my pleasure to be a part of the audience. When I first arrived, I was able to shake his hand and to say: "If I hadn't purchased How to Develop a Super Power Memory when I was in High School, I wouldn't have my college degree." It was true, too. At one point, while taking a course in Shakespeare I memorized the names of all of his plays in the order he wrote them, and I memorized a list of the major characters in each one. That would have been a very lengthy task using brute force memory, but with mnemonics it was fast and fun!

I've used mnemonics all my life for learning things and just remembering lists, etc. I even taught mnemonics for a while. It's a powerful tool to learn most anything.

Denny Loomis

Dennis
I too was facinated by mnemonics at school. The problem I found was that authors tend to concentrate on memorising numbers - this is fairly useless nowadays. Electronic devices like mobile phones do that for you.
Paul Daniels, the UK magician, was involved in a TV documentary about 15 years ago, whereby he was trying to learn Spanish by mnenonics in the space of a week or so. He suceeded well enough to do a gig in Spain using only Spanish. I have heard nothing about this experiment by him since. He has been the guest on the UK magic site Magic Bunny for a few days (finished last week) and I completely forgot to ask him. Using the same method I had to go to Switzerland to work for a month a few years back so I learnt 1000 German words with a 90% recall in 10 days (100 words/day).

Hmm. The only memdeck I've ever worked with is 8kingten. I don't like to use any deck with a system. I perform for a lot of math geek friends, all of whom excel at patterns. I'v tried to just take any deck and memorise all 52 cards in order. still working on it though.

To glatner
I'm not familiar with the memdeck you mention. (8kingten?) Can you tell us more. I thought I had a complete list of all of the mem decks which have been created.
Thanks,
Denny Loomis

To Bob Greaves,
As you know mnemonics is NOT limited to numbers. Actors use systems for memorizing their lines, salesmen use mnemonics to remember names and faces, students can remember things like the Pesidents, State Capitols, etc. And, when you need to, the phonetic alphabet allows you to also convert numbers into mnemonic images for easy recall. I wan't joking with Harry... most everything I had to remember to get through college, I used mnemonic associations for.
Denny Loomis

I bet Glatner is thinking of "Eight Kings threatened to save Ninety-five Queens from one sick Knave."

One of the wonderful sections in Tamariz' publication concerns the use of the half-stack. Some fiendishly fooling effects are possible using a partial stack - Juan also includes a neat method for setting up the half stack from a shuffled deck.

Tim

Thanks Larry!

To Larry,
Yeah, that's probably it. Didn't recognize it. Technically, things like Eight Kings and Hungry Jackass do require a little memory to recall the "jingle" but they are not Memorized Decks in the formal sense because they lack a stack number for each card. They can still be good tools, but not as good as the Aronson, Tamariz, Joyal, et. al.
Denny Loomis