Hey guys,
I learned the stack with brute memory. Ive been practicing for the past couple of days.
I can name most of the stack with no mistakes. But Im having trouble naming the card according to the corresponding number. Any advice would be appreciated. I was thinking maybe flash cards?
Thanks!

"If brute force doesn't work, then you're not using enough."

Yeah, and stay away from my ten or twelve books where I teach how to remember cards (among other, like everything, things).

I'd like to second Harry's advice. (Without the irony.) Mnemonics really works for most folks. Give it a try. Even if you do stick with Brute force, this is telling you that you wern't ready to start using a mem-deck yet. A little bit of daily practice over a period of time will solve your problem. I recommend that you try to go through the whole deck and keep track of the cards or stack numbers you can't recall. Do a few runthroughts of the complete deck every day, but then spend a little more time on the once that are giving you difficulty.

Dennis "Denny" Loomis

"I learned the stack with brute memory. Ive been practicing for the past couple of days."


What's your TOTAL time since you started working on the stack???

Did you read Tamariz' ideas for memorizing his stack? They'll get you on the right track!

Mnemonics works for me. Not just for cards but everything else as well. Once you have memorized your list of mnemonics is becomes really easy to apply it toanything, you just need to take thhe time to learn your original list, there are many books on the subject, Harry Loraynes books are where I got Started.

ForK TogetHer the SeaDog that ThrowSback his FourHead while SiD the AStrologer got into a FigHt and broke his NoSe on TOmbStone of the Queen of Halloween...

There is the first 11 and it goes on from there...

As many have written, there are two stages to this. One is being able to go from card to number and number to card for every card in the deck for all 52 cards without looking at anything---it's all in your head, slow, but all in your head. Mnemonics are wonderful for this step, but there are other mnemonic approaches beyond mnemonic alphabet based linked words. All are good. In this stage, it's ok to explicitly think through your links and associations.

But to actually perform with a memorized deck, the associations should be essentially immediate. In this second stage, the mnemonics drop away; they were useful in stage 1, but now serve only as a backup. You immediately know that the 10H is 38 (true for both popular stacks by the way). You immediately know that one ace is in the first 26 cards, and the the other three in the last 26 (Tamariz). In my experience, this mastery takes months. And requires consistent attention. You think about cards while driving, showering and instead of counting sheep at midnight. A good test---can you put a randomly shuffled deck into your memorized order in 90 seconds? It is tough to do this if you are working your way through mnemonic associations. This type of mastery sounds hard, but compared to the mastery required by most professions, it's not hard. Good luck.

In Mnemonica, one of Tamariz' suggestions was to sing the cards and their positions, like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24WZKpI5l5o

Impromptu,

People learn/memorize at different rates of speed, though--as Harry Lorayne and other memory specialists show us--techniques exist to help an individual become better are memorizing. I found learning the Mnemonica deck to be much more laborious than Tamariz indicated from his discussion of it, and it does take continual work with it to, for example, remember exactly where the 10 of hearts (and not the 10 of diamonds) is located. One problem with the process is that you'll eventually remember the order for the 52 cards (e.g., you know that 5 of diamonds is the next one), but you still have not mastered the deck. My suggestion is to get yourself another deck of cards and write the numbers of the locations of the cards on the backs of the cards (a number at each index and one in the middle). Then shuffle the deck several times and go through it face-up to see if you can correctly name the number of each card when the deck is in random order. Then shuffle several times and go through with the backs up to see if you can correctly identify the cards only from their numbers. If this doesn't work in a reasonable amount of time, get a book on coin magic.

Best of luck,
Zipper

P.S. I assure you that whatever time you spend memorizing the deck, even if it takes years, will be time well spent when you see some of the things your knowledge of card order will make possible.

What's your technique? I remember reading this post when it first appeared, and I thought, "gosh, I'm accustomed to putting cards in new deck order in 90 seconds" (granted, that's without the assistance of a table, and there are guys who can do it in less than 40 seconds). So I spread a shuffled deck on my small table top, and struggled to put them in order in less than a minute and a half. For the first round I just hunted for each card -- position one, then two, and so on. I think I only broke sub 90 once and that was when I searched for three cards at a time. Clearly my time didn't improve because I found mastery over the pack. So again, what's your technique?

I've been working on remembering the mnemonica stack for the last week and a half. I learned it in a few days, but it took me an additional week to increase my speed. The Mnemonica app for my iphone was increadibly helpful. Works like flash cards on your smartphone, and it's free - by Juan T.

Remembering a song like WizardsofSorts suggested isn't ideal unless you follow the instructions for rapid memorizaton in the book. You need to know the positions of each card at a moments notice to be able to execute most the stuff in the J.T. book.

Hope this helps.

Amazing!

The iMemorize app by Rune Carlsen is a great tool for learning both the Mnemonica stack and the Aronson stack. And it's free!

It took me just a couple of days to memorize the Aronson stack and about a month to become truly proficient with it.

I used the mnemonics described in Aronsons "Bound to please" - the methods described in "Mnemonica" by Tamariz is great too.

I also used an iPhone app (it's great to be able to practice anywhere!), but most of the time I used a deck where I had written the stack number of each card on it's back (and at first also the mnemonics). Then I just shuffled the deck and went over the number->card and then card->number backwards. Then you shuffle again and do it all over again.

Now I practise the stack in my head every night before I go to sleep. It's important to keep mixing the exercises, for example you can go over the card->number in NDO or first the aces, then the deuces etc. Don't forget to practise number->card as well, for example going over all the cards with the number 1 in their stack number, then the ones containg the number 2 etc (see "Histed Heisted" in Aronsons "Bound to please" for a better explanaition).

It's been over two months since the thread started. How did you do ImpromptuBoy?

Wow I have never seen this video on the Mnemonica order that's great, Now I need his book to learn what to do with this stack...

Altough the book Mnemonica and the books from Aronson (and others) are a MUST for every MD-worker, the use of these books must be, in my opinion, always more to learn the principles and the possibilities of a MD and only in secondary order for the tricks themselves. There are some very good ones but most or mediocre.
Besides all the little but sometimes important benefits, the real power of a MD lies the possibility to create tricks yourself that a non-MD-worker isn’t able to create and the enormous advantage that you have over “normal” magicians while jazzing (the trick that can’t be explained – Vernon).
It is too bad and a waste to learn a MD for doing a simple and ordinary spelling trick. It is your OWN creativity that (can) make a MD such a mighty weapon.
Success!

I can't believe I posted this in 2013! Funny story for anyone who bothers reading this, I've had Harry Lorayne's memory book for a few years now, but I never put in the time to learn the systems properly. That's until recently, I started working on the peg words (I studied and memorized all 100 words) and I learned all the card words as well.

Lo and behold, last night I studied the Mnemonica stack once again, which I gave up on a few times before, because I just couldn't commit the *** thing to memory. Using Harry's system, I was able to learn the ENTIRE Mnemonica stack in about half an hour. I was stunned LOL. For the longest time, I was trying to memorize this stack with brute force and I was never able to get it right, and I only spent half an hour last night, and committed the stack to memory using a simple memory system.

Lesson learned folks. Mnemonics really help. I highly recommend Harry Lorayne's Memory book. Thank you Harry!

Mor

You're welcome, Mor. It's just amazing to me...people all over the world, for decades - since my first book on the subject (1956) have believed in my memory training systems, used my memory training systems to give themselves memories they never thought possible ---- but magicians, a milieu where I am pretty well known - JUST WON'T LISTEN. Well, their loss, right, Mor?