Only some of the best magic books in recent history.

http://www.hermeticpress.com

Wesley James' Enchantments
Phil Goldstein's Focus
Barrie Richardson's Theatre of the Mind
Tommy Wonder's Books of Wonder
All 5 Card College Volumes
...and many more...

-Jim

Amccrawford wrote:

This tends to be the case for all methods. My point, though, is that if the entertainer momentarily (perhaps in the heat of performance) forgets an association (whether it was part of the original learning process, or acquired as a consequence of usage), there is no recourse with most systems, as there is no universal way of relating card values and positions.

For the regular user, none of this is likely to be of consequence. But for those who use a memorized deck (or cards themselves, for that matter) infrequently, it can be a significant problem. That, in fact, is one of the reasons why QuickStack was developed.

... Doug

I have found that my memory is probably on the strong side, because it took me a couple of hours to learn Aronson stack. I took me some practise to be able to instantly say which number any card is, and which card is at any given number. But with this ability, I feel capable of miracles. ( The luckiest cards in Las Vegas is one example) HOWEVER: Knowing what I know today, I think I would have considered memorizing my own stack, because I don't think I will be using the tricks built in the Aronson stack. But I would not have just shuffle the cards and learn the stack. I would have built in some of the tricks that I use. Maybe in a way so I could get to f.ex. "Sam the Bellhop" after a couple of Faros ? Another thing, I have marked a deck using the numbers from 1-52 and stacked it. This way I don't have to peek the bottom card to be able to know where any card is in the deck. And by marking the deck with NUMBERS you have one less conversion card/number to make.

El Toro has the right idea; if you are to make that kind of commitment, you might as well make a stack that you WILL use.

If you are not too finnicky, Si Stebbins is hard to beat, if only because you can set it up invisily in front of the spectators, as Ortiz (and currently Youell) teaches.

Hugard and Braue teach how to set up any memorized deck invisibily in front of the audience: Encyclopedia of Card Tricks (Faber & Faber, 1961), pp. 444-445

... Doug

Anybody out there attend last week's Stack Clinic in Vegas? I was dying to go, but couldn't make it.
What was it like?
Thanks!
Larry Zaslow

I'd like to know who could AFFORD to go?

Gianni

You'll find some nice practical memorized deck work in Gregg Webb's new CD-ROM, "The Book That Doesn't Exist...And More!"

(Interesting note: Gregg also designed the book cover for Juan Tamariz's book "Mnemonica")

Hi
Absolutely NO disrespect but it is very hard to sort out all the information/advice that is given on memorized decks
Could anybody advise me about a system I can use that will tell me the card that is 1,2 or 3 cards away from a given card?
If this is a problem perhaps which systems are not suitable for that particular task?
Cheers
TJ

Richard Osterlind's breakthrough card system will give you the next card, so in principle, do the calculation 2 more times and you'll get the card 3 away. A bit of a pain doing multiple calculations though.

With a full memorized deck (i.e. every card every position memorized) its simple to add or subtract 'n' to or from a stack number. Standard mnemonic systems are used for memorization. See google for memorizing playing cards using the dominic system, bob farmer's mnemonics etc.

teejay - I agree with Conus on this.

Gregg Webb's CD includes methods for knowing/naming any card-anywhere in the deck. This includes of course knowledge of what is positioned anywhere above or below a named card or number.

Good luck!