The system that worked best for me was a video by Rick Lax teaching you how to memorize the Mnemonica Stack. The video is sold by Penguin for $19.95. I found the name. Mnemonica Trainer by Rick Lax (Instant Download)$19.95. It’s well worth the money if your planning to memorize the Mnemonica Stack

Doug Dyment’s thoughts on full deck stacks are also very much worth reading:
https://www.deceptionary.com/aboutstacks.html

It throws algorithmic stack in the mix of stacks to consider.

Plus 1 to this. It took about a week to get the system locked into my head, then about a year to make it almost natural. It was quite workable after just a few weeks, but I reckon a true mem deck takes quite a while to become second nature, with instant recall of every card to number and vice versa.

What is interesting is that, whilst I still have all of my Rick Lax notes, I cannot recall what many of the mnemonics are now. The deck has become its own thing.

One more comment is that, given I am not from USA, I altered quite a few of the mnemonics to things that meant something to me. Several of Rick’s associations were very USA centric, which is understandable, but it was easy to adjust a few and make them my own.

I agree - a good value purchase for any aspiring mem decker.

It is fairly effective. I learned it first without Rick Lax’s way of memorizing it and became decent with Mnemonica stuff. I actually sorta forgot it and endeavored to re-mem it along the lines of the Lax work and got it down again pretty good. But the thing with this is that you must practice it or use it regularly to keep it. I didn’t use it much, so I lost it. Who knows, maybe one day I will do it all over again, but there’s so many other interesting ways that release you from brute memorization, that brings about the same result as to these effects, that I might drift more that way as to this stuff. For instance, using it for ACAAN…There have been ways developed that skip you right by all the memorization and math pretty much to the same end, i.e., Berg FAST, TAKAAN both offer interesting, doable, & easier alternatives.

But overall, learning Mnemonica was a good mind exercise and worth doing. I think I first got it down in just few days fairly good. But with this thing, you gotta get it down really good, so that you know it every-which-way for it to be successful for you in presentation of tricks that use the method. I’m mostly a decent at best coin guy, but maybe if I had as great an interest in cards, I perhaps might’ve gotten it, used it (and kept it) a lot better.

Mnemonica (the book) has a whole section on memorizing the stack, I used it about 10 years ago, the combination of the various methods is very effective, to this day after not having practiced for about 5-6 years I still know it as well. There also is a $3 app (at least on Android, Mnemonicosis) to practice different stack related stuff. With all that I'm not sure I would spend another $20 on a Rick Lax video to be honest if I were to learn it again today.

If you were to use a cyclical stack, lets say 8 kings stack. You spread the cards for a few seconds to show its fairly mixed. Would anyone even notice it?

No

I agree and the same could probably be said for many other decks such as Joyal's 6 Hour stack, Si Stebbins, Bart Harding, Quicker Stack, etc, etc.

I also believe that many great effects have been developed with these decks in mind and are worthy of learning.

Nonetheless, and I am biased, none of them can produce the apparent "miracles" that a truly memorised deck will offer. The hard work up front is worth it. As mentioned above, my initial learning was done with Rick Lax's system (Mnemonica), but those memory pegs have long gone ... and the cards and their corresponding number identity have replaced them, with instant recall, both ways.

I keep it all alive by performing several mem-deck effects that are in my favourites (listed elsewhere on these pages), as well as reciting them in various ways, a few times a week, when my head hits the pillow. That process replaced "counting sheep" a few years ago. I will often run through times tables; sequences of all of the cards with a stack number ending in 1, 2, 3, etc; or running through the suits/values in order (forwards and/or backwards), etc - just to break it up.

It is really only a few minutes a week, but it keeps it fresh and has firmly planted it well and truly into the long term memory section of my tiny brain . . .

JuanPoop, I do not understand why you say : "Nonetheless, and I am biased, none of them can produce the apparent "miracles" that a truly memorised deck will offer", about Joyal's 6 Hour stack, Si Stebbins, Bart Harding, Quicker Stack.
For instance, I know the Doug Dyment's QuickerStack and it is a a truly memorized deck.

Hi Christian, I may have quoted the wrong stack. My understanding was that Doug’s stacks were algorithmic. If there is any calculation required at all to know the relationship between the value and suit of a card and its stack number, then I believe that many of the best mem-deck effects would not work very smoothly. If you can know, without a second thought, that (e.g.) the 3 of Spades is number 21, or that number 21 is the 3 of Spades, in QuickerStack - then I am mistaken. If so, I apologise and would remove it from the above list if I could.

I guess I am more generally trying to say that any stack that requires a calculation to convert card to stack number (and vice versa), versus one that is absolutely instantaneous, would have trouble doing many of the more advanced mem-deck work.

Having said that, I absolutely recognise that all stacks, if worked well, can produce terrific effects. I use many, but the stuff I do with Mnemonica are my favourite effects.

Ok Juan, now I understand your reasoning.
In fact, we can do advanced mem-deck work with any stack, but I agree with you, we must be able to know the stack by heart (as a multiplication table) and to convert quickly a card to its position and vice versa. For me, the calculation for a algorithmic stack or the rules for a stack like the QuickerStack, are only tools to begin with some stacks or/and to learn some stacks. At the end of your learning, of course, you no longer need to use these tools, but sometimes, they can still be used if you have a memory lapse.

It is possible to memorise ANY stack, at which point it becomes - for the individual that has memorised it - a memorised stack (by definition!)

Nevertheless, I think it is fair to say that "algorithmic" stacks are designed primarily to [b] calculate [/i] next/previous card. The best known are Stebbins and Osterlind's Breakthrough Card System. Some people memorise the card positions but most don't bother.

My understanding is that QuickerStack is intended to be memorised, and the "algorithm" serves as a temporary aid only.

The Joyal Stack is most definitely a stack designed for memorisation, not an algorithmic stack.

The Harding system always seems a bit odd to me. It is intended to be an algorithm to easily calculate card positions in a stack; BUT it assumes you already know the positions of every card in a deck in A-K order.

Very good points made by Nikodemus, as usual.

Prior to learning Mnemonica, I was using both Si Stebbins and Bart Harding stacks. I should have commented only on those, as I know them well. I accept that Joyal and QuickerStack were developed with mem-deck capabilities in mind.

Christian, I would say that for a deck to be truly memorised, there are zero calculations necessary. I agree that while learning the deck, one will need to apply either calculations or mnemonic pegs. However, if a deck is truly memorised, then the only mental process that should occur is to know (without any extra work) that every card has a stack number and every stack number has a card. It is like each card as an alternative identity. It isn’t that I can apply a stack number to a card after I perform a calculation, recall a memory peg or convert its position in the deck to a number - even if that is performed very quickly. Yes, these are how we learn the alternative identities, but once learnt, it is simply that the card has two equally important and inexplicably linked identities. E.g. JH = 20, 7C = 47, KS = 31, etc. This is simply “known”, not worked out. I think you agree with this, I guess I am just emphasising that until we drop the calculations, pegs, etc - we haven’t yet mastered the memorised stack. I contend that if we need to rely on those as a prompt, then we haven’t yet ‘mastered’ the stack.

I could be contentious and even say that if all of those pegs, formulas, or conversions are still in the brain, then we are either wasting brain space, or we haven’t yet mastered the stack. Maybe that's going too far . . .