How to memorize a deck of cards

jack.jackson

Well-Known Member
#1
How to Memorize a Deck of Cards

originated by:Anonymous, Jack H, Memeluke, Lalaloser (see all)

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Imagine being able to memorize the order of cards in an entire deck (or two) as quickly as they can be dealt. The secret of the card counters is a secret no more. Using the memory palace technique below, you too can memorize a random (or stacked) deck of cards in order with one viewing. It takes a little time to set up and a lot of practice, but once you’ve got it down, you’ll be able to amaze your friends.
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Steps

Stacked Deck Method(cheating)
1
Memorize the rhyme "Eight kings threatened to save ninety-five queens for one sick knave" This is the order the cards' ranks will run in 8-K-3-10-2-7-9-5-Q-4-A-6-J
2
Memorize the word "chased" This is the order the suits will run in C-H-S-D
3
Arrange your deck according to the pattern, 8C-KH-3S-10D-...
4
Use this in magic tricks that require a pre-arranged deck or pretend to have "memorized" it

Memory Palace Method
1
Build a memory palace. A memory palace is a place in your mind (often based on a real place) with many rooms that you can “place” things or people in that you can associate with things you need to remember. Then, when you need to recall those things, you mentally “walk” through the rooms. Constructing a memory palace takes a little time and persistence, but once you have it, you can use it for just about anything you need to remember.
2
Memorize the following sequence:

A=1, B=2, C=3, D=4, E=5, F=6, G=7, H=8, I=9 O=0. Note there is no ten, only 0. Zero becomes O (sounds like oh) for convenience. It looks the same.
3
Think of a two digit number. Now convert it using the table above to letters:

For example: think of 34. Take the 3. Using your fingers, count out the letters to 3, A, B, C. Do it for 4, D. So you have CD. Now comes the tricky bit. You need to somehow associate those letters, CD, with a person.
4
Make a list of 100 people. Use the number alphabet described above to come up with 100 people whose first and last initials correlate to each number from 00 to 99. You can use famous people, friends, and colleagues—whomever it takes for you to get your 100 people. As an example, take number 48. This would translate into DH (4=D and 8=H), so you could list Damon Hill, the famous motor racing champion. In order to memorize a deck of cards, obviously, you will need only 52 people, but having 100 will be useful for other endeavors, as well.
5
Assign an action to each of your 100 people. The action for Damon Hill, for example, could logically be driving a race car. The action you assign to each person can be anything you want, as long as it’s something you strongly associate with that person and can easily recall. You also have to make sure that each person has a unique action. That’s the hard part, but it’s very important.
6
Assign every card a person and an action, using this method. For example, the six of clubs would translate numerically to 63 (the 6 remains a number, and “C” in “Clubs” equals 3 according to the chart above.) Your number 63 person might be Frank Capra, the director of the classic film “It’s a Wonderful Life”. His action might be directing a movie while in the snow. Thus the six of clubs becomes Frank Capra. The suit of spades poses a difficulty because there is no numerical equivalent to the letter “S” in the chart above. To solve this, you can make spades equal another letter other than 3 (clubs), 4 (diamonds), or 8 (hearts). An even easier way, perhaps, is to just make 6=S instead of F.

Remember, the face cards are important, too, so make sure you have a person and an action for those cards. Since all your numbers will now be taken (except the number “1,” which you can designate as aces), you will need to simply memorize names for the face cards. Since the system covers all cards except jacks, queens, and kings, you’ll only need to memorize 12 people outside of the system.
7
Make sure you have all your people and their actions committed to memory. You should be able to instantly picture the person associated with any number from 00 to 99, as well as those people associated with each of the face cards.
8
Memorize a deck by placing each card in your memory palace. When it comes time to actually memorize the deck, simply put the cards into the rooms of your memory palace. Thus, if the first card is the six of clubs, you may want to place Frank Capra at the first stop in your memory palace (the front steps for example).
9
Walk through the memory palace to recall what cards have been turned over and in what order.

Double Pegword Method
1
Study the article Memorize a List Using Numbers and Rhyming Words to learn how to use pegwords. It is a fairly simple concept.
2
Study the article Memorize Numbers You must be adept at this to use step 3
3
Learn these pegs for the numbers 1 through 52:



Code:
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
0		tie	Noah	ma	rye	law	shoe	cow	ivy	pie
10	toes	toad	teen	time	tire	towel	teach(er)	taco	TV	tub
20	nose	nut	nun	Nemo	nair	nail	notch	nuke	knife	knob
30	mouse	moat	moon	mummy	mower	mule	match	mug	movie	mop
40	rose	rod	rhino	ram	error	roll	roach	rake	roof	rope
50	lasso	lid	lion
Code:
A	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	J	Q	K
C	Cat	Can	Comb	Core	Coal	Cash	Cookie	Cough	Capo	Case	Club	Cream	King
H	Hat	Hone	Ham	Hare	Hill	Hash	Hog	Hoof	Hippie	Hose	Heart	Queen	Hinge
S	Suit	Sun	Sum	Sore	Sail	Sash	Sock	Safe	Soap	Sauce	Spade	Steam	Sing
D	Date	Dune	Dam	Door	Doll	Dash	Dock	Dive	Deb	Dose	Diamond	Dream	Drink
see chart here>http://www.wikihow.com/Memorize-a-Deck-of-Cards

For these pegs, the first letter is the same as the suit,The last letter (A-10 10 treated as 0)is from the major system, Jack is the name of the suit, King and Queen (sort of) rhyme with the words "king "and "queen". As with the previous list, if any of these give you trouble, make up one of your own.

5.Associate the card pegs with the number pegs. If your first 5 cards are KC,9D,10S,3H,8C, visualize a king (King of Clubs ="king") wearing a tie (tie=1) for the first card, a debutante(Deb nine of diamonds) on Noah's arc (Noah=2) for the second, Your mother (ma=3) making (or covered in) sauce (sauce=10 of spades) for the 3rd card, a ham(3 of hearts = ham) on rye (rye=4) sandwich, and a policeman(5=law) coughing (8 of clubs = cough) for the fifth card.

6. Practice. Practice. Practice. Instantly memorizing an entire deck is quite a feat. Do not expect to get there right away.

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Tips
Combine the action of a person with a different person. When you need to memorize a lot of different things (a whole deck of cards, for example), you may find it easier to combine one person with another person’s action in order to save time and “space” in your memory palace. For example, suppose the first card that comes up is the six of clubs (Frank Capra) and the next is the 4 of hearts (Damon Hill). You can then picture Frank Capra driving a race car instead of directing.
This method can take a lot of time to establish, but in the long run it is well worth it. Once you have all your associations memorized you will be able to slowly remember the order of a deck of cards. With practice you will be able to recall the cards very quickly.
Create a list of people you are familiar with and who you can picture. It’s very important that you be able to vividly see the person in your mind.
You can use this method and the memory palace to remember any long string of numbers, as well as many other things. See the related wikiHow for details.
You can modify the system to work best for you, but always be consistent. If you decide, for example, that 6=S instead of F, 6 must always equal S.
 

Mr. T

Well-Known Member
#3
Don't do the school boy way. Do the professional way. Like the airline pilot you learn to do this and that in an emergency from the book. But you have to go to the simulator so that your reaction is automatic and not try to memorise what the book says in an emergency.

Go to this website BS trainer and practise and pratise there until you can play without thinking or memorising anthing.
 

jack.jackson

Well-Known Member
#6
StandardDeviant said:
Memorizing the cards that have come out doesn't help that much with the unseen sequence of cards that remain in the shoe...
Believe it or not,(and dont ask me how) if you were to memorize an entire pack of cards, its possibble to know the dealers hole-card, on the next working pack(after shuffle) about 75% of the time.

Not that, I would ever be foolish enough, to try an memorize a deck of cards.
 

21gunsalute

Well-Known Member
#7
jack said:
Believe it or not,(and dont ask me how) if you were to memorize an entire pack of cards, its possibble to know the dealers hole-card, on the next working pack(after shuffle) about 75% of the time.

Not that, I would ever be foolish enough, to try an memorize a deck of cards.
I'd really like to see the science/mathematics/logic behind that statement. Or any type of validation for that matter.
 

RJT

Well-Known Member
#8
It works like this, number the cards 1-52, 1 being on top and 52 on the bottom. Now the cards are split into 2 even piles and a perfect riffle is then done. You end up with the cards like this

1,27,2,28,3,29,4,30,5,31,6,32,7,33,8,34,9,35,10,36,11,37,12,38,13,39,14,40,15,41,16,42,17,43,18,44,19,45,20,46,21,47,22,48,23,49,24,50,25,51,26,52

Then a second perfect split and perfect riffle

1,14,27,40,2,15,28,41,3,16,29,42,4,17,30,43,5,18,31,44,6,19,32,45,7,20,33,46,8,21,34,47,9,22,35,48,10,23,36,49,11,24,37,50,12,25,38,51,13,26,39,52

Notice that the squences are not broken, just spread out

1,14,27,40,2,15,28,41,3,16,29,42,4,17,30,43,5,18,31,44,6,19,32,45,7,20,33,46,8,21,34,47,9,22,35,48,10,23,36,49,11,24,37,50,12,25,38,51,13,26,39,52


As we know that the sequences aren't broken we can easily predict what the next card out is going to be, our complete hand and the dealer's hole card.
But "Wait" i hear you scream! "Perfect cuts and riffles are an artificial constraints that make this work - without these this system would not work at all!" Yes and no.
When the dealer doesn't drop exactly the same number of cards every time it won't make any difference to the order of our sequence. 5 will still come after 4 and 6 will still come after 5, but predicting exact locations and hence your hand will be impossible as you don't know the exact location of the cards. However if you could look at the whole round that's been dealt out you could see the cards both before (player's first card) the dealers hole card and after (player's second card). So you should be able to see what sequences were just before and just after the dealers hole card and hence find a gap in one of the sequences. This is very likely to be the dealers hole card.
This is a nice concept, but it is simply not practical for play - those people that used this theory i believe used a computer to impliment it.

RJT.
 
#10
I was thinking about this during some of my free-time at work today and here's what I came up with...

My time playing blackjack (first and only time) after the shoe was done (7/8 pen), the dealer put those cards into what I believe was an automatic shuffler and pulled out another deck from the same machine and those were the two decks that were being used. If the machine were to only shuffle once, you could figure out the sequence that it should be when returning to the table and when it starts to go out of sequence that's where the cards behind the cut card are so you will only know every other card.

With my little knowledge, I'm assuming that the decks are shuffled continuously, then, unfortunately, only a computer could figure out the sequence if you were able find the rates at which the machine shuffled and plugged it into the computer's algorithm for the allotted time of shuffle...

Just something that I found interesting and figured I would add my $0.02. Though, after I am able to count cards effectively this is a skill that might be fun to have.
 

stophon

Well-Known Member
#11
jack said:
What RJT said;)
If you could notice more than one sequence going through at the same time, I could see it being very possible. But by my count, a 3 riffle shuffle would contain 8 different sequences. That would suck to follow.
 

blackriver

Well-Known Member
#12
you could just remember easy sequences such as a bunch of face cards and have an idea of where they are. if you see ksqsjsts get put into the discard tray like that there is a good chance you could make a perfect insurance bet in the next shoe
 
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