Hi guys! It's time to share something with you all! Hope you'll enjoy reading this!!

~To Memorize or Not to Memorize~

I'm going to let you in on one of the best kept secrets in card magic. That is, that all magicians who use a memorized stack are miserable. They went to all the trouble to memorize a deck and now travel the world over looking for reasons to justify the effort while mentally straining to hang on to each pasteboard in the stack.

Don't take it the wrong way, but why would you take all that time assigning numbers to pieces of paper that are in random order - stay with me - pieces of paper that already have numbers on them?

Yes, I know. One has to witness Juan Tamariz or Simon Aronson perform some of their classics to appreciate that some memorized deck tricks are in fact killer effects. It's just that for me, the shine of those effects diminish substantially sometime in the middle of memorizing the first half dozen or so cards.

I have my own memorized stack. It's called "new deck order." You never have to set it up yourself and you can start from a factory-sealed pack of playing cards. You are never more than 2 faro shuffles away from my back-up memorized stack, Si-Stebbins. If you are concerned that you can't show the faces to the audience then, oh, I don't know... don't show them the faces! Forget six hours to memorize the order - this takes six seconds and I highly recommend it!

Er sorry man, i did not get the main purpose or your post, and whats with ur stack which is a new deck order? Care to elaborate more?


cheers

LOL!! A "New Deck Order" stack!!

This article is basically questioning "Is it worth it to memorize a deck ?"

For me it's worth it. There are some killer effects that cannot be accomplish without a stack.

I think that if you really need a stack,
Richard Osterlind's Breakthrough Card System
would be the best.
It looks very random, and it doesn't even require to really memories. Just need the technique.
All thumbs up!

someone once told me that doing 7 perfect faros equals to one false. So why not do 5 perfect faros, and keep that stack in the box. When you need to perform, take it out, show the face, looks fairly legit, do two more faros, and you're back in ur 'new deck order'

A deck is restored back to its original order when 8 out-faros are performed. Not 7.

that's right. My bad. But I personally don't know how to do perfect faros so that's why.

ZiAn

Well, memorized deck opens up a new area that cannot be accomplished as elegantly as other methods. It MIGHT be tedious. But, hey, bottom deals are difficult, raise rise is difficult, a good pass is pretty difficult. So in the end, its all about your choices, your wants and your taste.

Haha. I'd guess you guys got me wrong. This is an article I found in Steve Beam's Semi-Automatic Card Tricks.

I found it very amusing. So I decided to share it.

I personally use Tamariz's mnemonica. Easy to setup. As for the memorizing, I'd guess it's all the same. You still need to put in a lot of effort to get it into your head.

You should have cite the source earlier, if not it might sound like it's your view.

Hmm.. Okay.

I think I put the sub-heading for the thread as, "An article that I have found"...

Apologies for the misunderstandings!

Kenneth

Learn the 6 hour memorized deck. Easy to remember.

Haha. I think Mr. Beam addressed Mr Joyal here...