Recently, I bought the Bound To Please book and I am in the process of learning Aronson's Stacked Deck (SD). I have been noticing that there are many set-ups in that deck "order" already to perform numerous gambling effects (poker, blackjack, bridge, etc.). I know there are many effects one can do other than gambling effects with any stacked deck... But finding out that Aronson's "order" is more geared to the gambling magician. I really am not into that type of magic.

Being not too familiar with Tamariz's Mnemonica SD, does his order have many other non-gambling effects that are already set-up within his order?? If so, what effects are in that order set-up already??

If you have already learned a lot of the Aronson Stack, I would recommend that you stick with it. There is so much more than gambling effects that you can do with it. I do perform gambling effects, but they only make up 15% of my work with the stack. There are other features also built into the stack such as many spelling effects. The Aronson Stack is my preferred stack, but that's probably because it's the one I learned first. With this stack you can do any effect that uses a cyclical stack found in other books. Also, Try The Impossible has many effects in it. Far more than found in Bound to Please.

Mnemonica by Tamariz is a superb book. Many of the effects in it can be done with the Aronson Stack. Also keep in mind that Mnemonica also has a lot of gambling effects. (Mem Deck work works well with gambling demos)

I have not personally read Osterlind's Memorized BCS, but understand that it is excellent. His BCS (which I am familiar with)is very good, so it follows that adding a method to memorize it would be as well.

All I can say is stick with it. It can seem very daunting to learn a stack, but it's really not all that bad. You will get it sooner than you think if you work on it a little each day. Also, as soon as you feel even reasonably comfortable with the stack pick out an effect and start doing it. This will speed up the learning curve. The work you put into this will be worth it.

Paul

Here, here.

Well said Paul.

Check out the Sy Stevens method, you would maybe like it.

I'm like you in that I don't really care about gambling demonstrations.

I am memorizing Osterlinds Breakthrough Card System (BCS), and although it has a poker demonstration and a blackjack demonstration built in, I doubt that it was ever originally meant for those purposes. It's basically a mentalism-oriented cyclical stack. The poker and blackjack demos were probably "discovered" afterwards by Osterlind or other users of his stack.

But The BCS's advantage over other cyclical stacks is it is a full 52-card cycle. No alternating red-blacks. Nothing that even a math wiz could see as being cyclical. It looks like a normal shuffled deck.

The advantage over other memorized decks is you don't absolutely need to memorize it to obtain the value of the next card in the sequence. You can do so through math.

But if you do both -- learn the math and memorize the deck in a first position through 52nd position order -- you can do much of what you can do with other memorized decks as well as having the mathmatical "out" of a cyclical stack.

So if you're not into gambling, then learning the BCS through and through might be the way to go.

On the other hand, if you've already started memorizing Aronson's stack, then once memorized, you will be able to do with the Aronson stack nearly everything that you can do with BCS (not the demos, but nearly all of the mentalism effects). The only thing you won't have with Aronson's is the "crutch" of being able to get to the next card using math.

Any way you go, good luck,
Bill

If you believe in KISS use the S* ST****** stack. There is no end to the possibilities for magic or mentalism.

I've never thought of the AS as a "Gambler's stack." I've been using it for years. It's nice to know that I could perform an "Any poker hand called for" routine if needed. But I've never needed to.

Stick with the Aronson Stack. Anyway, many great MemDeck routines are stack independent:
ACAAN, Aronson's Invisible Card, or Two Beginnings.

:)