Two Minute Deck Memorization: Complete!

Well, I managed to finished this challenge with literally less than a second to spare. I finally managed to do it on Memrise.com.

A while ago, Ed Cooke posted a contest on there for $10k to the first person to memorize a deck in two minutes. That contest is done and over, but the course is still up and it is one of the resources I've been using to practice since it had a convenient little timer up in the top right corner to tell you how much time has elapsed.

When I first started this challenge, I could not remember a single card. In fact, I couldn't even get through the deck without forgetting the cards before.

When I finally worked up to a full deck, it still took me well over 10 minutes to do it. Slowly that time came down and yesterday I finally made it.

Two Minutes. One Deck. Zero Errors.

I was able to work my way through the first three suits pretty easily, but when I got to a full deck, I really hit a wall. Nevertheless, I eventually made it and I'm calling this challenge done.

However, I really liked this one and I think I'm going to keep going with it in my free time. Once I get to the point that I can do this consistently, then I will post a video as I've done for the previous suits.

I want to thank Ed Cooke, who will probably never read this, for creating Memrise.com and essentially teaching me to do this. Also, thanks to everyone at Mnemotechnics.org for all their advice, insight and support!

Two Minute Deck Memorization: How To Memorize a Deck of Cards

Well, Memrise has been down for a few days, which means I don't have a way to practice memorizing cards in a way that lets me convniently post the results.

I have been able to practice with a deck of cards, and on Random.org, but I can't easily post times with these.

Before Memrise went down, I was able to get fairly close to completing this challenge.

2:16. So close...

To be honest, I'm not even sure whether I've completed the challenge already because I'm too lazy to work a stopwatch at the same time as I'm trying to memorize.

At any rate, while I wait for Memrise to come back up, I thought I'd teach you how to memorize a shuffled deck of cards.

The first thing you have to learn is just that you can do it. You may think you can't, or that you don't have good enough memory, etc, but relax. It's not some special gift that just some people have, you just don't know the tricks! You just don't know how to use your brain!

False.

Wait. Let me rephrase that...

You're brain is like an incredibly powerful computer. The thing is, you have to excercise it like a muscle and, just like a computer, you have to present the information in a certain format that is easily processed and stored.

For example, one thing your brain hates in long strings of random numbers, letters and symbols. Unfortunately, a shuffled deck is very much like a long string of random numbers, letters and symbols. In fact, that's exactly what it is!

So you have to take that information and convert it into another form that is easy for your brain to process and retain.

One thing your brain loves is images. Really vivid picutres are great. It also loves things that are familiar. Strangely enough, it also loves things that are bizarre and unusual.

There are a few different systems to allow you to memorize a deck and most of them include converting strings of numbers and letters into familiar, yet unusual, images. I use one popularized by Ed Cooke, a Grand Master of Memory (and Tony Buzon and Dominic O'Brien before him). Here it is in a nutshell:

They're ALL face cards

First, you have to convert each card into an image. Again, there's different ways to do this. Some people use objects like teddy bears, saws, pineapples and more. I use celebrities, politicians, and other public figures (with a few oddballs thrown in). 

So let's say for example that the King of Hearts is Barack Obama, the King of Spades is David Beckham, the King of Diamonds is Prince William, and the King of Clubs is Jay-Z. You have to do this for every card in the deck and you have to become so familiar with your system that you can instantly make the association between the card that comes up and the face it is associated with.

I especially prefer using people, rather than objects, because it makes it easier to "upgrade" your system later. More on that in a bit.

Walking Through the Palace

Once you have a face for each card, and you are able to instantly recall the correct face, it's time to start trying to remember them in order.

There's a concept commonly refered to as the "Memory Palace". I think that sounds really pretentious, so I'll just call it a Memory Space.

What you need to do is have a place you can imagine in great detail and which you can imagine yourself walking through. It could be your house, your workplace, or a fictional place that only exists in your mind. Whatever works for you.

Now, as you walk through this space, you pick certain spots which you will use every single time, and you always go through them in the same order. These are the places where you will place your images as they come up.

For example, I imagine a classroom. This classroom has four tables. Each table has four seats. 16 seats total. I move from seat to seat clockwise and from table to table clockwise. 

So if I were to go through a deck and  got the King of Hearts, the King of Spades, the King of Diamonds and the King of Clubs, I would imagine Barack Obama, David Beckham, Prince William and Jay-Z sitting around the first table. This image is much more memorable than any combination of four cards.

You can do this with an entire deck of cards as long as you have a Memory Space with places for 52 images and a few days to practice. 

In addition, you can go through the deck backwards simply by walking through your Memory Space backwards. Finally, you can tell which card is in a randomly chosen position simply by remembering who was at that position in you Memory Space. The 19th card is the person sitting in the 19th seat, for example. You can also go the other way and determine the position of a random card by remembering where that person was sitting. The Seven of Clubs? That's Galileo. Galileo was sitting in the 4th seat, so the Seven of Clubs was the 4th card. Easy.

However, if you are going for speed, then you'll need a more powerful system.

P-A-O

PAO stands for Person-Action-Object. Again, this is one of many systems. Use whatever works for you. However, this system is the natural evolution of the concepts described above.

In this system, each card not only has a person associated with it, but also, as you may have guessed, an action and an object, but the action and the object should also somehow be associated with the person to avoid confusion and link back to the card easier.

For example, the Three of Spades is Ben Stiller.

It's a familiar image.

In the PAO system, the Three of Spades would be:

P: Ben Stiller...

A:...zipping up on...

O:...his $#&%.

So for every card in the deck, not only do you have to have a face associated with it, but also a verb and an object, such as, "Julian Assange exposing a conspiracy," or, "Princess Kate losing a glass slipper," or, "Barack Obama giving a speech about 14 trillion dollars."

Now, once you have a person, an action, and an object for each of the 52 cards, and can instantly recall them, you're ready to go through the deck again. Here's how you do it:

Imagine three cards. Let's say the King of Hearts, the Five of Hearts, and the Three of Spades.

Once again, you can choose whatever images you like, but for me, that would be:

Barack Obama, Julian Assange and Ben Stiller.

But instead of having these three sit around the table as we did for the four Kings above, we're going to have only one. The first card is the Person, the second card is the Action which that person is performing, and the third card is the object of the action. So in these three cards, we only have one image, not three.

For example, these three cards refer to:

King of Hearts

P: Barack Obama...

A:...giving a speech on...

O:...14 trillion dollars.

Five of Hearts

P: Julian Assange...

A:...exposing...

O:...a conspiracy.

Three of Spades

P: Ben Stiller...

A:...zipping up on...

O:...his $#&%.

We pick the Person of the first card, the Action of the second, and the Object of the third and we get our composite image...

Barack Obama exposing his....

Well, you get the picture (literally). So sitting around my table wth four seats, I can have up to 12 cards, not just four. My classroom has 48, not just 16. In addition, these images are much more vivid and definitely more unusual. They are, therefore, much more memorable. Finally, every time I memorize an image, it eats through three cards, not just one.

It may seem like adding an action and an object would take so much more memorizing, but it's not that bad since the action and object are related to the person anyway, and the benefits of the action and object far outway the cost.

You can demostrate for yourself just how effective this system is by keeping track of how long it takes you to forget the image of Barack Obama standing up in a classroom and exposing his whatnot for all to see.

It'll be a while...

Two Minute Deck Memorization: Update...

This challenge is getting pretty difficult and I think I've hit a bit of a wall, but I'm not worried. I think I've been causing a lot of my own difficulties here.

Since I moved up to memorizing a full deck, I have been able to pull it off a few times, but the time is way up there. The fastest I've been able to memorize a full deck in is about 3:30, though usually I'm up closer to 4-6 minutes.

It's getting to be really hard for me to work the time down to be consistently lower.

I think the reason is the relatively casual way that I have been approaching this challenge. Between work and other responsibilities, I've really just been working on this challenge when I had time. However, it occured to me today that the brain is very much like a muscle. If I practice this more, I'll get better at it. If I don't, that skill will atrophy. So far, I've been like that guy at the gym who works out only once a month, then wonders why he doesn't see any progress. Consistency!

I need to invest more time in this and be more consistent if I'm going to get down under 2 minutes. I can memorize a deck. I just have to do it faster! I have to put more time in if I'm going to cut more time out!

In addition, learning a full deck has been a lot harder because I ditched the old method and started to apply a new method.

More on that later...

Two Minute Deck Memorization: Three Suits!

I just memorized three quarters of a deck of cards. It took me about four minutes to do it, but I did it and I'm moving on to memorizing a full deck. I'm not too worried about the time for now. I'll whittle that down once I get a full deck done.

What's interesting about this whole endevour is that I can see myself figuring out little tricks and loopholes to let me get my time lower and lower. 

There's so many things about the way I initially approached this challenge which were not only unneccesary, but actually detrimental to my success.

That's pretty exciting, and it's been exciting to see my capacity to remember cards grow as I put these tricks into practice. These tricks are nothing super genius, and nothing to brag about, but in the next few days, when I start talking about the process, I'll point out how my strategy has changed over time.

My fastest time with half a deck (2:36 min) was actually way slower than my fastest time with three quarters of a deck (2:02 min)!

Anyway, here's the video for three quarters of a deck.

Moving up to a full deck!!!

Two Minute Deck Memorization: Two Suits!

I've worked up to half a deck! I've gotten accustomed enough to this that I can go through the deck forwards and backwards and if given a random number, I can tell which card was in that position. I can go the other way, too. If given a card, I can tell which position it was in, but I couldn't think of a way to demonstrate that in the video.

I've also run through it enough that I've noticed a few things I can do to make things easier on myself. More on that later a few posts from now, but for now, I'll just say that I'm hoping that I can start whittling my time down a bit. When I added the second suit, my time shot way up, understandably, but then it slowly came back down and settled right around 3 minutes. In theory, I'm capable of getting it down to 45 seconds. I don't think I'll come close to that during this challenge, but I know I can get under 2 minutes.

Anyway, here's me memorizing half of a deck of cards!

Now I'm moving up to three suits! Three quarters of a deck!

I'm on my way!

Two Minute Deck Memorization: One Suit!

OK, here is my new attempt to memorize one suit out of a deck of cards. 

I looked up the method used by the people who do this for a living, like those Grand Masters of Memory, and it's surprisingly simple. It will take some practice, but holy crap, I've already seen some good improvement!

So in about a day, I've gone from remembering two cards out of a suit, to remembering the whole suit. This is totally not because my brain has gone into hyperdrive, but because the method is so effective.

Still, I won't be terribly impressed until I can throw in another suit or two...

Two Minute Deck Memorization: First Attempt!

Ok, so today I was going to try to memorize a deck of cards. Failure was fully expected, but I have to admit, I thought I would do better than I did.

I've always had terrible memory. I once borrowed a book from someone called Improving Your Memory for Dummies but I never remembered to read it and eventually lost it. That's not a joke. True story.

So here was my first attempt to memorize a shuffled deck of cards.

It didn't go well. I decided to try to work my way up to a whole deck like I worked my way up to the Ghost Pepper. So I tried to do the challenge again with only one suit. Again, failure was expected, but I did get about as far as I thought I would...

So I don't know. This is looking like a long road ahead...

Two Minute Deck Memorization!

I have a new challenge!

Down the gauntlet has been lain!!! 

Laid?.... Lain.

I'm also excited to say that this is my first challenge that has not come from /r/GoForGold! Many thanks to "Exclamation Mark Rlsh" who posted this challenge to me on Facebook:

Dude, I like your other challenges, but let's not just push your body. Let's push your mind, too! There are 122 Grand Masters of Memory in the world. In order to claim that title, you have to memorize a shuffled deck of cards in two minutes, Memorize ten shuffled decks in an hour, and memorize 1000 random numbers in an hour.

I'm not going to make you do all three, but let's start you off with what seems like the easiest one. I want you to memorize a shuffled deck of cards in two minutes.

So that's it! Im going to try to memorize a shuffled deck of cards in two minutes!

Then I'm going to Vegas!