For the last couple of years I've been doing a variation of the Birthday Card Diary effect. In my version, the
card plays a minor, but vital, part in the effect. I was too lazy to learn the Aronson stack, so adapted a stack I already knew - Lewis Jones' excellent Memory Deck. This works wonderfully well when the outcome of the math is an even number. However, for odd numbers I had to go back one suit and then add 6 to the card number. This was necessary to prevent the same card from appearing too frequently. The problem has been that I may perform it four times in one day, and then go weeks without performing it. It's in my pocket, so I'm ready to go at any moment, with or without a deck of cards, but as I'm not doing it regularly, there's often an awkward pause while I frantically work out what the card is. You'd think the even and odd numbers would work out approximately 50:50 after a while, but for some reason I seem to get far more than my share of odd numbers. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to bite the bullet and learn the Aronson stack. While reading "A Stack to Remember" I suddenly remembered Doug Dyment had written up a stacked deck. I found his "QuickStack" in "Mindsights." I was a bit dubious about his claim that it would take me only 30 minutes to learn it, but that proved to be the case. It's a bit silly to have an effect in which half the outcomes are exceptions to the rule, but from now on this effect will be extremely easy to do. I've posted this as I totally overlooked Doug's stack when it was first published. Do many of you use it?

I actually memorized Dyment's Quickstack. It's the only stack I use anymore. Like you I started off being able to work out any card from any number and vice versa but I also wanted to start doing effects that required more mastery of the stack. So I started memorizing it as one would with the Aronson or Tamariz stacks. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to get into MD stuff.

I love the Birthday card trick. Did you know there's a simple way to perform it that requires no memorizing? It is called PreDate If you have a special stack that you like, I can create a calendar using it. Just drop me a note.
But I also like the ACAAN plot. And I'm curious about the routine you use. Are you saying that if, for example, someone says "Ace of Hearts at the 23 spot," that you'd calculate where to cut your deck to pop it into the right spot?

I use Doug Dyment's Quickstack and I'm very happy to have discovered and learned this stack.
Few people know this stack because there is so much advertising for the Aronson or Tamariz (Mnemonica) stacks.
I began with the Claude Rix stack, but it was difficult for me to learn this stack and to remember it after a long time without praticticing it.
The Quickstack is easy to learn and to remember, because of two things : simple and clever rules, cyclic arrangement of the stack (which is a interesting property of this stack). And there are enough beautiful routines which are stack independent, that I think it's better to choose a stack because it is easy to learn and rembember, than to choose a stack because it has built-in routines.