talkmagic.co.uk

Now I know this topic has been done before, but sometimes it's good to get fresh ideas...

I have been watching Looch's superb DVD "Your Thought Are Mine," and am rather inspired! A couple of the pieces of magic make use of a partial stack... I figure that if I'm going to go to the trouble of learning a stack of around twenty cards, I may as well memorize a full deck!

Which leads to the point of this post. Which memorized deck?

I could just shuffle a deck and then memorize the order, but I'd like to do a little more with it. I figure that if someone has already done some work in the direction that I like to take my magic, then I'll try and make full use of it

Tamariz and Aronson both look to have great ideas, as does the break through system. Most of what I do fits under the mentalism/mind magic sort of mold. (You can probably work that out if I'm spending my time watching Looch's discs!) And to take this a little further (and without being dismissive towards this style of magic) I'm afraid that I have no use for gambling based routines, or decks that I can produce a royal flush from instantly, so any ideas which memorized deck would be most worth the investment of my time to learn?

Thank you Talk Magic-ers!

I'm working on Tamariz. Can't assess the relative merits of any others, but the weighty tome that describes it is full of ideas. I'm sure once I have the stack memorized the stuff in the book will be pure gold. He is a genius, after all.

Ian

would it be possible to use Osterlinds Breakthrough Card system for what you want? As his dvd has loads of mentalism ideas that you can do with this.
Its not necessarily a memorised deck (think more Si Stebbins or 8 kings but much more deceptive) but im sure it could be memorised to the same effect.

I initially learnt the Nikola system, but got utterly bored with setting up the deck the whole time. I switched to Tamariz.

One of my main reasons was the ability to faro into it from new deck order. You can even do it in front of people, under the right conditions. I'm sending you a PM showing someone reasonably well established doing just that.

Which stack to choose largely comes down to what you want to do with it, though. I'd suggest looking at the effects that "pack" with each stack, and choose based on that. I tend to eschew speller effects and poker hands, which tend to be the ones that are locked into particular stacks. And I love effects that aren't locked down. Darwin Ortiz recent Vanishing Inc video release is a nice pairing of effects.

Tamariz here...certainly stacks with more built in effects, but as far as the book goes, it is one of the funnest and most thorough.

Thank you all very much!

(And love the video clip Mr Grue... That guy is moderately well known, isn't he!)

I'm torn between the Breakthrough system and Tamariz's system...

I started learning the Joyal stack (http://www.joyalstack.com/index.php?p=mdsh) but abandoned it when my performances moved away into my current stuff. I can't compare it to the others as I've not looked at them...

Hi, I use 8Kings for all my card mentalism effects that require a stack. No one has ever questioned it and even when they look through the cards they don't spot any stacking, htey usually only look through a few cards and then give up. Its really easy to learn and get fast with. SO unless you are performing for other mentalists/magicians you probably don't need to learn any overly complicated stack.

regards,

Sea

I've always used Stebbins and it has never been called out. it's also very robust and can stand quite a bit of damage.

Cyclical stacks will only get you so far, though. There are effects that absolutely rely on positional knowledge. There's also the old saw about how a memorised stack can turn a lot of card tricks into "thought of" card tricks.

If you're planning on using a full memorsed deck, rather than a cyclical stack (which I think the OP was asking about), I'd personally recommend Doug Dyment's Quickstack.

While some stacks rely on brute force memory to link cards to positions, Doug's incredibly clever system creates a set of simple, memorable rules that govern each card's position. If you're like me, it will just click and you will surprise yourself at how quickly you can reel off cards and their positions. Also, it's easily adaptable. I found a couple of the rules were counter-intuitive to me as written but I was able to tweak them easily.

Thanks for mentioning Quickstack. I hadn't heard of that before. Is it anything like the Lewis Jones' Memory Deck (from Cardiograms)?

I'm not familiar with Lewis Jones' stack, but looking at Doug Dyment's page he states:

For the sake of completeness, I also note that both Barrie Richardson and Lewis Jones have published clever algorithmic systems that are extremely easy to learn, but cover only half the pack: either all the even cards (Jones), or all those of one colour (Richardson). These can be quite effective for certain effects.

So Quickstack is similar in that it is algorithmic (based on a series of rules) but differs in that it covers the entire 52-card deck.

Thanks for the clarification - I must have missed that...