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Here's an interesting bit of trivia I discovered recently.

The Nikola System [described Encyclopedia of Card Tricks & elsewhere] is a stacked deck.

There is a system for remembering the stack which uses a phonetic alphabet to represent the 10 digits 0-9. This mnemonic method has actually been around for about 300 years and was invented by someone called Winckelman. Winckelman is mentioned in many websites & also in memory books by Tony Buzan.

The interesting thing is that the Nikola 'alphabet' is actually slightly different from the Winckelman one. [Neither is perfect - they both contain compromises]. It makes me wonder how many versions there are?

Anyway, the great thing about these systems is they can be used to memorize ANY stack. (In fact they can be used to memorize anything at all - phone numbers etc etc)

For the curious amongst you -
[NB Moderators - this does not reveal the method to a trick.
Memorization itself is the method]

Nikola:
0 = z, s
1 = l
2 = n
3 = m
4 = r
5 = f, v
6 = b, p
7 = t, d
8 = ch, sh, j
9 = g, k

Winckelman:
0 = z, s
1 = t, d
2 = n
3 = m
4 = r
5 = l
6 = j, ch, sh
7 = k, g
8 = f, v
9 = p,b

There's something similar in Corinda's Thirteen Steps (in Chapter 3 under "The Mnemonic Number Code").

Yeah that's right, but I desided that it's something I'm not even going to attempt to memorize. I'm just very bad with things like that and not sure if it will be rewarding enough. Also I think you've got to be pretty serious to try that. Maybe I'll try in a few years...

Harry Lorayne has a number of books with this method for memorization as one of the methods. I use it a lot with remembering numbers - but I use the Nicola 'alphabet' - because i've memorized the Nicola stack. It's actually a whole lot easier than you realise. It took me around 3 hours to learn the whole thing and then about 2 weeks practicing about half an hour a day to get it relatively smooth.
The Nicola system is available in the book "Encyclopedia of card tricks" - available anywhere.

Some of the other memory 'tricks' in Corinda are also brilliant - but I would really recommend getting hold of some of Harry Lorayne's memory books. There are countless applications for performance. Here are some:

Remembering people's names when you're performing for them - this has tremendous impact especially for returning customers to a restaurant etc.
Memorizing things like people's car registration number ad then revealing it later. I did this with one of the patrons at the restaurant I perform at. I happened to see him driving in town one day - so I memorized his car registration and then did a mathematical trick with him where we added up a group of 'random' numbers - which came to his car registration (there were no letters fortunately).

Memorising a list of objects - this is a very impressive demonstration, but has a number of other uses .

I have to thank Taneous for bringing the name Harry Lorayne to the fore here.

As mentioined, Lorayne has many methods for memorising the order of the deck/objects/numbers.

With a little applied thought, his Memory Systems can give great benefits.

And also, the 'memorising objects' pattern (as seen recently on Derren Brown's Heist) can be an actual trick on their own...

An application which doesn't seem obvious in Lorayne's work is book tests: It is possible to memorize, for example, the first word of the top line of every page of a book—by page number—for recall at a later time. Although this would be a huge waste of time and effort (owing to the much simpler methods out there) it could be a fantastic personal feat of pure mind magic.

And you have to admit—Lorayne's work truly IS mind magic. It is excercise for the brain, and teaching the grey matter to perform such feats of memorisation is truly pure mind magic.

Good shout!

I just want to answer what Mahoney said - that you are not very good at things like this. The whole point of these memory systems is that they are designed to make it easy to remember things, once you have learnt the system itself. And the systems themselves are pretty simple - that's the whole point.

It's a bit like learning your multiplication tables by heart at primary school. I just know that 7 x 7 = 49, 4 x 3 = 12 etc etc. Knowing those basics then allows me to do long multiplication. Likewise, once you know the 26 letters of the alphabet you can read/write more and more words. If your memory is bad, then you really should check this out.
You can PM me if you want more details.

Also I want to mention Tony Buzan again. He is not a magician - he writes books about memory, only about £8 and lots of useful info. EG how to schedule revision for exams so you will remember as much as possible.

taneous wrote:Harry Lorayne has a number of books with this method for memorization as one of the methods. I use it a lot with remembering numbers - but I use the Nicola 'alphabet' - because i've memorized the Nicola stack. It's actually a whole lot easier than you realise. It took me around 3 hours to learn the whole thing and then about 2 weeks practicing about half an hour a day to get it relatively smooth.
The Nicola system is available in the book "Encyclopedia of card tricks" - available anywhere.

Some of the other memory 'tricks' in Corinda are also brilliant - but I would really recommend getting hold of some of Harry Lorayne's memory books. There are countless applications for performance. Here are some:

Remembering people's names when you're performing for them - this has tremendous impact especially for returning customers to a restaurant etc.
Memorizing things like people's car registration number ad then revealing it later. I did this with one of the patrons at the restaurant I perform at. I happened to see him driving in town one day - so I memorized his car registration and then did a mathematical trick with him where we added up a group of 'random' numbers - which came to his car registration (there were no letters fortunately).

Memorising a list of objects - this is a very impressive demonstration, but has a number of other uses .

I've had one of Harry Lorayne's ebooks on memory improvement systems for a while now. I was intrigued when I saw it, as I have terrible problems remembering even the most obvious things.

I've been through the first few chapters, but then forgot I even had the ebook.

Best get started again, methinks.

In the first 2 chapters tests, both of which I categorised as completely impossible before I read the chapters, I got 100% correct after reading the chapters, which completely blew me away. I've never been able to do anything of ther sort.

just use a chased deck