Buying an instant download with my credit card, entering my cc number I had an idea, as I almost have it memorized by now, since I'm buying a lot of magic ebooks these days...

I've been contemplating learning a Sam The Bellhop type effect for quite a while now. I'm only struggling with making up the story... Anyways, my idea was, once I have the effect down, I can use the story in my mind and the exact same deck to perform countless different effects, using the now memorized stack without telling the story. I am aware that in STB usually only values are used, not suits, but I think when I keep the suits stacked too, after performing the story effect for a few months, the stack will be stored in my mind forever, being able to name the successor of any card. To memorise long sequences of numbers, from what I know, these folks make up stories to attach to the numbers. It only makes sense to use it in both ways.

Does this make sense? Am I missing something here? Did I say too much?
Probably this is in Sam The Bellhop by Bill already, I guess I will have to get it...
Bill Ma-Lone! He's just great!



Cheers,
Ben

Arent you concern about the deck not appearing random?

Oh, thanks for mentioning that. Since I don't plan to use the original Sam the Bellhop plot, I would write my story with that in mind. Might get a little tricky, but I think possible, to make it both useable to produce a story and to still have the deck seem shuffled. The finale, that is the royal flush in STB might be problematic there, but hopefully I'll have an idea for that. Probably it was just a weird idea.

Maybe I'm not reading this right, forgive my ignorance, you want to use the STB stack, for different other effects as well, but you are definately keeping the stack right?

Not *the* STB stack, but one for a story I yet have to write, that maybe produces a more random-looking stack.

Ahh I see, ok cool....

Only problem is you won't know the corresponding number associated with the card. You would know the sequence and that's about it. If you are going to put that much work into it, just learn a stack.

I think his point is to make his MD the same stack as his story stack.

There's an individual who has done that with the Aronson Stack.

I would love to hear that story.
I just can't imagine a (sensible ) story that you can derive from an Aronson , Tamariz or any stack that looks like a normal shuffled deck.
In (almost) every story there are many pairs, triples and even 4 of a kind groups.
The idea itself is of course very good and it would be very nice, but I am afraid that it is a pipe-dream.
Maybe a short story is possible with a certain group of cards of the stack.

Maybe something like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyV7n4WstMY
:)
I think I watched that video, a day before that idea crossed my mind, might have been influenced by it. I don't have any experience with stacks apart from Si Stebbins, so I was looking for something that would make memorising a stack easier. But I'm getting the Tamariz book, although my brick and mortar guy said, it's really hard.

It's called The Legend of Southside Johnny, by Paul Thomey. Maybe he'll chime in here - it's not mine to share.

Tamariz has some stories with his stack. There in Mneumonica.

My computer guru and I are hard at work on a big update to my web site. A part of that will include some new articles in the mem-deck section. Thanks to Paul Thomey, they will include the story routine you do with the Aronson Stack... The Legend of Southside Johnny. I think it's excellent and for those of use that work with the Aronson Stack, it's wonderful to be able to do this story routine at any time. And, at the end, your stack is still intact.

Dennis Loomis

I am wondering if there are many "stories" around that do use a Si Stebbins stack?

To magicdano,
I doubt it since the Si Stebbins stack rather gives itself away if you deal the cards face up on the table. The first thing that is noticed is that Red, Black, Red, Black sequence, then the regular suit rotation, and then the progression by threes of the values.
Dennis Loomis

I wrote the original post when I still didn't know any stack, hoping I could somehow circumvent memorizing a stack, by simply knowing a story.

Since then I've started learning the Aaronson stack and am surprised how well it goes. I had the first 15 cards down in a little under an hour, then added 5 more over the next day, and another five a few days later, after rehearsing the first 20. Now I've got almost half the deck in very short time and can't wait to have the rest in my memory forever. I'm not using any mnemonic system, but I simply go through my cards, (shuffled face-up/down mixed) with the numbers on the back, and try to link both the card index images, the images of the cards themselves and the loudly spoken names of the cards to the numbers, the spoken out numbers and the visual of the numbers, both in order and in random order. Seems to work for me.

So I'm very excited about The Legend of Southside Johnny, Dennis, as you can imagine. Thanks for all your input everybody.

Hi Ben,

You will really enjoy the Aronson stack! Southside Johnny is great. There are so many great things you can do with this stack.

Eric

Thank you Cohiba, Dennis and Eric for your kind words about The Legend of Southside Johnny. I am extremely flattered that my story continues to get mentioned here and that so many people have seemed to enjoy it.

Paul

Hello churken, I just want to agree with the others about "Legend of Southside Johnny", it has a great story line. Thanks for letting me in on this one churken.

And Eric should know... because he's created tons of amazing things to do with the Aronson Stack. Memdeck workers ALL need his book: It All Depends. Many great things to do with the Aronson Stack in there. Thanks, Eric, for your marvelous work on my favorite card magic tool.

Dennis Loomis