So in Secret Sessions I tried to start a thread about DVDs with mem deck effects - that didn't work too well so I figured to switch to books. The problem I came across is that I couldn't find a lot of the bibliography items from Tamariz or Aronson's books in print. There are other people who have effects, Barry Richardson is one, Mike Close is another, and Darwin Ortiz is another. I hope those are ALL the names that I know of. I want to find out more that are in print , maybe newer, less known perhaps.

I know Allan Ackerman has some stuff with stacks, not sure if it's MD or not.

Steve Ehlers has an awesome routine in Las Vegas Kardma. (I'm not sure why I'm spreading the word.)

Steve Youell uses Si Stebbins as his MD. I've only seen a few items of his published work, so I'm not sure how much MD stuff can be found within.

You've already mentioned the big ones; I'll pipe back in if I think of more.

By Simon Aronson:

• Bound To Please
  
• The Aronson Approach
  
• Simply Simon
  
• Try The Impossible
  

In my opinion, the four books above are best, however, they contain more than just memorized deck magic. Bound To Please is a combination of several of Simon Aronson's early works, and contains the most about the specialized uses of the "Aronson Stack".

Go to http://www.simonaronson.com, click the "Magician's only" button, and find the free PDF file Simon Aronson supplies about memorized deck magic. It's named, "Memories Are Made Of This". It's one of the best free resources in magic that there is. (Technically, it doesn't contain routines, but the ideas there could easily can be, and have been, made into routines).


By Juan Tamariz:

• Mnemonica
  

Mnemomica is an encyclopedia of memorize deck magic. There is nothing there technical regarding stacks that I found that can't be learned from the Aronson books, however, you get lots of information in just a single book. There are other advantages and disadvantages to the Tamariz Stack (Mnemonica Stack) over the Aronson stack; notably, one of the major advantages is that the "Taramiz Stack" can be setup by shuffling a deck that is in New Deck Order (NDO). I do highly recommend this book too. If you're only going to purchase one book about memorized deck magic, this is probably the best choice.

There are a great many stack-independent routines taught in the books listed above, i.e. it doesn't matter what deck order you've memorized, you can still do the routines.

The Aronson Stack and the Mnemonica Stack incorporate spelling effects, poker deals (including any hand called for), bridge deals, and other routines specific only to those stacks. This is one reason many magicians choose these stacks.


By Hugard:

• The Encyclopedia Of Card Tricks
  

This source teaches the Nikola Stack. I don't recommend that stack, newer stacks have more and better features. There are some tricks, and this is a relatively inexpensive book that contains lots of different kinds of magic.

The Si Stebbins Stack is a cyclic stack and a tetradistic stack, but like any other deck order, it can be a memorized deck too.

By the way, I believe Simon Aronson was the first magician to mention that the Si Stebbins Stack, along with any other deck order, could be used as a memorized deck, but in mentioning that he discounted it for several reasons. The alternating red-black pattern is apparent when performing certain routines, particularly where the spectators cut packets of cards and spread them to look at the faces. Also, it lacks many of the built-in features of the Aronson and Tamariz stack.

At the same time, there are many published tricks for the Si Stebbins Stack that take advantage of it as a cyclic and tetradistic stack, and that along with the ability to shuffle into the stack for NDO make it the memorized deck of choice of some magicians. See the book, Darwin Ortiz At The Card Table to learn how to shuffle from NDO into the Si Stebbins Stack.

• Steve Beam's Semi-Automatic Card Tricks Volume 3 by Steve Beam - contains "Stebbin Out", a great routine (and a horrible pun. I wish I had thought of it!)
  
  
• Bob Wagner's Master Notebook Book of Magic by Bob Wagner - contains a great prediction effect using the Si Stebbins Stack.
  

However, neither of these are memorized deck routines, you don't need to memorize the stack to perform them. They're just a small sample of numerous Si Stebbins routines.

Finally, search Doug Dyment's posts here using the search word "stack", he lists numerous facts about various stacks, including memorized stacks. I believe he also lists some sources.

Saw that on DVD [at first I tried starting this thread as DVD related] . I was afraid I mentioned most of them

Hi Bill , thanks so much , I should have listed a lot of the stuff you did

I heard of "Stebbin Out" actually but this is a reminder. Will have to check out these 2

John Born's Meant To BE
Denis Behr's Handcrafted Card Magic
Michael Close's Workers 5, Devious DVD's, Closely Guarded Secrets, etc.
Al Baker's collected works

You can find more listed in previous threads as well.

Great, these 2 I didn't know about! Thank you!

Are we talking MD specifically, or any stack? Stebbin Out uses Si Stebbins, but no memorization needed.

It all depends. (grin)

By not listing his own work on memorized deck effects (i.e., "It All Depends") in this thread, Eric is being both modest and humble. Nice to see such non-hawking of a person's own commercial efforts when he writes a public post. For this, I'm happy to step in and give Eric a well-deserved "Atta-Boy!".

Mike

P.S. BTW, Eric's book is devoted to memorized deck effects that will, with minimal effort, maintain the memorized deck stack after each effect has been performed. As such, if desired, you should be able to pick out 2-3 memorized deck effects and then string them together into a cohesive set. Of course, the hard part will be picking the specific 2-3 effects to tie together and deciding upon a unifying theme for them.

Note: The effects in Eric's book are all stack specific to the Aronson Stack.

It is indeed a good idea to mention everytime if the effect who is refered to, is stack independent or that you need a specific stack.
That would help a lot.

Close's workers series has some great, really great ideas in terms of real workable routines with a memdeck.

Series 5 I believe.

Jon Hackett

I consider effects that use cyclical stacks (you know a key card next to the spectator's, etc.) to also be mem deck effects. Some, like everything Richard Osterlind does with his Breakthrough Card System are awesome, and I would love to learn more about them. It's just that I will perform them using the Aronson stack - makes no difference.
If something uses the stay stack attributes of Si Stebbins then I guess its less relevant.

Mike I already decided to get Eric's book. Maybe he didn't mention it because it sounds more like its exploring features of Aronson stack (which is also very cool) but doesn't have mem deck effects as such (I hope I am wrong).

Any deck order can be memorized, and if memorized, it will be a memorized deck.

However, routines that do not require the deck is memorized and that rely on only the cyclic nature of a stack, or some other aspect of a stack, are not memorized-deck routines, even if the stack has been memorized.

I understand what you are trying to say though not agree. To me many effects can be done differently, and if mem deck can be used as the method, then the book with such an effect is suitable for this thread. . Mem deck can replace effects with marked cards, cyclical stacks etc . Juan Tamariz included this kind of effects in his Mnemonica, and he considers this type of effect a good point to stop reading the book:) [at least jokingly ].

I really do not want to debate though. Whatever one wants to call them, I am interested in good effects of that type also. I feel that those kind of effects are much cleaner when done with a stack you know cold + will have less restrictions making them very good tricks indeed (and who cares what classification they are).

I wrote:

dimazales wrote:

The quote I made is unquestionably true. Neither you, nor I, can define what memorized deck magic is, it's been defined by magicians before us. And, I have read Mnemonica. So, it doesn't make sense to disagree with that.

I only mention this because I don't want others who are new to magic who read the topic to misunderstand what memorized deck magic is. Of course, a memorized deck routine can take advantage of other aspectes of a stack, and those who use the Si Stebbins stack as a memorized deck do this. But, a routine like "Stebbin Out", is not a memorized deck routine, even if the magician has memorized the stack, because at no point during the routine does the magician have to convert card to number or number to card.

However, if you want to discuss other stacks, such as cyclic stacks in your topic, that's fine, but I never disagreed with that, I just wanted to make it clear what memorized deck magic actually is.

You might also want to check out Stay Stacks. By the way, any memorized deck can be used as a Stay Stack, but a Stay Stack is not necessarily a memorized deck. If you want to know more about this, consult the book Bound To Please by Simon Aronson.

I agree with keeping the terminology clean Bill.

It amazes me how even to this day (after many years of clarification on boards like these) so many people think that a calculated stack like Si Stebbins or BCS is equivalent to a memorized deck. They use the two types interchangeably. Keeping clean terminology helps prevent this.


I guess to this end, I'd be careful with saying that any memorized deck can be used as a Stay Stack. A typical Stay Stack is a mirrored stack, which most memorized decks are not.
Though you might be able to take advantage of some of the principles of Stay Stack with a MD, most Stay Stack routines in literature won't work without a mirrored stack.

Ok with terminology cleaned up, I am hoping more book recommendations will follow:)

Cohiba, all memorized decks are Stay Stacks, it's just that the cards numbered N, and 53-N are mirrored, not cards that are mates. That is proper terminology. Simon Aronson has written about this.

A memorized deck allows performing some Stay Stack routines, just not ones that require cards that are mates (or even the same card - can't say the routine I have in mind where the mirrored cards are the same as I just stated part of the method).

Occasionally, such routines can be modified to use a memorized deck to get a different effect.

However, I agree, most tricks that require opposing mates in the Stay Stack won't work with most typical memorized decks. But, the memorized deck is still a Stay Stack!

One good book on Stay Stack is Redivider by Phil Goldstein.

See Mike Powers book, Power Plays for a killer routine that uses a special Stay Stack.

Bill, when I read that (its in Aronson Approach btw ,not Bound to Please I am pretty sure) I was a bit dubious about doing the (albeit simple) math vs just knowing instantly in regular stay stacks. I am sure its doable though. Plus if you really like stay stack effects, you can take the time to practice the math or Memorize the pairs (plus then you can use it other ways like pairing your Invisible Deck that way ).

Thanks for the reminder I heard of Redivider before - might check it out.

Cohiba, I might have come up with an analogy for those who don't get the difference between a cyclical and memorized stacks. Cyclical stack is like those old cassette players - you want song number 13 to play after song number 1 , you got hassle . Memorized deck is more like CD player or ipod where you just go to any songs you want.
For Computer Science people (who I am bias to say probably understand the difference anyway ) its akin to random access (MD) vs sequential access (cyclical stacks)...

Bill - yeah, I understood that's what you were referring to. It's been a while since I've read that material, I'll have to brush up on it. Are you aware of any effects that use this principle with MD (non-opposing mates)?

I like the CD / cassette analogy dimazales.

Finally, Power Plays has some good mem deck stuff in it as well. I saw Mike Powers kill with a trick from his book. It does use a little deck preparation, but the effect is a fooler.

A new work on memorized decks is at the printers. It's Danny Crauwels "System Maigret." It's about Danny's system which has some brilliant new thinking. However, the book is written in Dutch. An English Version of the system is being discussed and may well come out later. Stay tuned for more information.

Dennis Loomis