This month will be a departure from my usual practice of sharing tricks and routines that can be done with a memorized deck.  I’d like to share some thoughts on what constitutes true mastery of a memorized deck and how to achieve it.

            It seems obvious that to memorize a deck of cards requires learning 52 associations. The first card is the Jack of Spades; the second card is the King of clubs, and so forth. And that is the starting point. But the truth is that there are four sets of 52 associations, or perhaps I should say mental processes, to learn. They are related, but still distinct.

            When I first started to learn the Aronson stack, I used the mnemonic associations that Simon suggested and in two or three days I “knew” that number ten was the Ace of Clubs, number thirty three was the Jack of Clubs, and so forth. But I was slow. I made an audiocassette for drilling purposes. It would give me a number and then there would be a silence during which I would name the card associated with that number. And then the tape would say the card for confirmation. With practice I got faster at coming up with the card. I even recorded a new tape with shorter pauses so that less time was wasted. In a few weeks, I noticed that I was no longer using the mnemonic associations. I just knew that the Jack of Diamonds was thirty-six, for example. But, in practicing some of Simon’s tricks with his stack, I noticed that I didn’t seem to be as fast as I was when I was doing the drill tape. But sometimes I was.

            I’m embarrassed to admit that it took quite a while before the light dawned. But the problem was very simple. I was fast at remembering the identity of the card when I was given a number. But I was much slower at naming the number when I was given a card. Of course! I was drilling only one way. Just because you can spit out “Seven of Spades” when you’re given the number nineteen, it doesn’t mean that you can quickly recall “nineteen” when you’re given the “Seven of Spades.“ I think that learning the stack with mnemonics had obscured this simple fact. I had learned that the 24^th card was the Three of Diamonds by associating the image of the Roman Emperor Nero to the image of a dime. (If you don’t know the phonetic alphabet, you won’t understand that association, but don’t worry about it. You’ll still get my point, I’m sure.) I used that mental picture in the beginning to go in either direction. 24 to 3D, or 3D to 24. But when, as Simon predicted, the associations dropped away, you’re left with two different but related stimulus response patterns to practice.

            And so, I made a new drill tape. Starting with the name of a card, then a silence during which I would give the number, and then the number spoken on the tape for confirmation. With these two different drill tapes, I thought that I was on the way to mastering a memorized deck.
Bound to Please - Simon Aronson $28.00

            Incidentally, in writing this article, I went back to Simon’s section in Bound to Please, to see if Simon had commented on this. And there it was... on page 138: “Practice going both ways in your translations...” He had even underlined the word both. But I had not understood the importance. I do now, and hopefully you do too.

And, I had taken a big step. Alas I was still missing half of the story.

Before I drop that other shoe, please allow me to digress for a moment. I just want to share something about the drill tapes. As you work with the tapes, you get familiar with the order and you may not be responding based on the stimulus alone. In time, for example, you know that the next example after the Three of Hearts is going to be the Seven of Diamonds. And, you may also be learning the response. You say “fifteen” after the Seven of Diamonds, but you may be learning that the next necessary response after the Three of Hearts is going to be “fifteen.” So, it’s necessary to change the tape from time to time. Make a new one when you begin to get familiar with the first one. Shuffle a deck into random order and record the new tape. When you have three or four of these tapes, you can just randomly grab one for each drill session.

            “And now, for the rest of the story,” as Paul Harvey is fond of saying. At one point, I started to work on Simon’s Histed Heisted. This is a great piece of stand up Mentalism for parlor shows, and I recommend it highly. (It’s in Bound to Please, by the way.) During the course of the trick you are going to apparently read the names of ten cards in order from the deck. You’ll do it five times, but you are not reading the cards from the shuffled deck. You’re actually just reciting the order of the cards in the Aronson Stack. It seemed to me that this was going to be a piece of cake. I was getting pretty fast on responding to my drill tapes. But there were hesitations, and my “thinking” was clearly showing when I tried to just rapidly names the cards in order. Again, it took a while to “see the light.” The concept is simple; what I was doing, in attempting to recall the order, was a four-step process. I would say the “Ace of Hearts,” for example, and then, I would have to think “eighteenth card... the next card is the nineteenth card... the nineteenth card is the seven of spades.” Then I could say it. And that four-step process was slowing me down. Clearly, what was (and still is) necessary, is to know the order of the cards, without referencing their stack numbers. It’s one thing to just know that the Five of Spades follows the Seven of Spades, but quite a different thing from knowing that the Five of Spades is the nineteenth card and the Seven of Spades is the twentieth card. And so I devised some new practice drills to work on this. One simple thing that can be done just about any time and anywhere is to just run through the entire deck, speaking each card out loud, or just bringing it to mind. You can do this standing in line, driving, while a commercial is on, etc. Just name the cards... but don’t think of the stack numbers. You just know, for example, that the Jack of Hearts follows the Jack of Clubs. Not because they are number 33 and 34.

            You can make up a drill tape, of course, and the recorder names a card at random, and you then respond with the name of the next card. Or, when you have a stacked deck in your hand, you can just cut to a card and immediately name the next card. You can then look at the next card for confirmation if you like.

            At this point, I suspect that my readers may be one step ahead of me. But, I’ll mention it anyway. You need to be able to move through the deck, naming the cards, in both directions. Just recite them out loud going backwards, or make a drill tape going backwards, or cut to a card and name the card above it, not the one below it. I practice the backward order when I reset a deck in Aronson stack order after it’s been shuffled. I spread through the faces of the cards, looking for card number 52. (The Nine of Diamonds) When I come to it, I cull it to the bottom, using the Hofzinser Spread Cull. I then look for the two of clubs, then the Queen of Clubs, working my way down in order. When I’m done, the deck is set in Aronson Stack and I’ve also gotten quite a bit of practice on my spread cull.

            There’s a hidden piece of good news buried in this analysis. Advocates of other stacks and systems will sometimes suggest that with a memorized deck, you don’t have a backup. If you forget your association, then you’re just stuck. But, when you understand the different kinds of memory associations at work, you realize that you have not a single backup, but two. For example, let’s say that you are trying to remember what the stack number is of the Five of Spades. You’ve just temporarily blocked and you can’t recall. The solution is quite simple. Just see if you can recall the card, which comes before the Five of Spades. Since that’s something different, the odds are that you won’t be blocked about that. So then, if you can bring the previous card (Seven of Spades) then you can probably recall the stack number of that card as well. And when you remember that the Seven of Spades is 19, then you know immediately that the stack number of the Five of Spades is 20. Of course, you could also have asked yourself if you could remember the card after the Five of Spades as well. It’s likely that you will remember that it’s the Queen of Diamonds. And then, it’s also likely that you will remember that the Queen of Diamonds is the 21^st card. And so, again, you can then see that the Five of Spades is the 20^th card. Just knowing that you have these two backup systems for every card in the deck will relieve some tension. And that may help you to avoid blocks of this kind in the first place. Of course, if you are blocking on a regular basis, it’s also a reminder that you need to go back and drill some more on your memory.

            As you continue to work with a memorized stack, you’ll discover many other patterns that contribute to “mastery.” In the Aronson Stack, it’s handy to know things like this:

            1.  The Nine of Hearts and Nine of Diamonds are ten cards apart. (42 & 52)

            2.  The Ten of Clubs is surrounded by the Red Jacks.

            3.  The King of Hearts is surrounded by the Red Fours.

            4.  The Six of Diamonds is surrounded by the Black Queens.

            5. The Three and Four of Clubs are Five cards apart. (40 & 45)

            6.  The Three of Spades and Four of Spades are twenty cards apart. (17 & 37)

            7. The Two and Three of Hearts are three cards apart. (4 & 7)

8. The card following the Two of Hearts is the Nine of Spades, while the card following the Two of Spades is the Nine of Hearts.

            This is just the tip of the ice burg, of course. As you continue to work with a memorized deck and learn new effects, your mastery will grow and grow. If you’re just starting down the path, remember what I’ve said about the four different stimulus-response associations that you need to learn:

            1.   Card.... it’s Stack Number.

            2.  Stack Number... it’s card.

            3.  Card... the card after it.

            4.  Card... the card before it.

            As I write this, I just read Jim Steinmeyer’s column in the October 2003 issue of MAGIC magazine. I consider Jim to be one of the geniuses of our magic community. The quality and quantity of his creations is truly astonishing. In this magazine, he shares a wonderful card routine called Deceptivity. I spent a pleasant couple of hours making it up and recommend it to those of you that are seeking a stand up type routine for use in parlor or small platform shows. He first details a set-up using odd and even cards. But at the end of the article, he mentions that you could just as easily use any card stack or system. Need I mention that I made it up based on the Aronson Stack?

            I also just got the 4 new Richard Osterlind DVD’s from L & L publishing. Osterlind is another of our great thinkers and performers. I immediately zeroed in on the section in which he explains and performs effects with his Breakthrough Card System. This is a remarkable invention and a powerful tool. But even better, in my opinion, are the effects and presentations that he does with the System. He does a whole host of powerful card magic or Mentalism based on the fact that you can determine the next card in the deck if you just can see or glimpse one card. I’m amazed at the power and simplicity of these routines, and can’t wait to incorporate them into my own work. But, since I already know the Aronson stack, I’ll be using it. But whether you use Richard’s Breakthrough system, or a memorized deck, or just a Si Stebbins stack, I recommend Richard’s DVD’s very highly. His card effects and presentations rank with the best in the world. And he tips it all in his books and DVD’s.

 OSTERLIND, RICHARD MIND MYSTERIES VOLS 1-4 ON DVD - ONLY $105.00 OR $27.00 EACH

            On a personal note... many of you know that I was in a bad car accident about a month ago. I am very lucky to be alive. The car was smashed in very badly from the rear, but then it also burned up completely. Fortunately alert people on the scene pulled my unconscious body from the car before it burned. I didn’t become consciousness until I was in the emergency room of the hospital. I had a bad concussion, and lots of bruises, but no broken bones. I did have one cracked rib and that’s the only thing still hurting. But, I have the constant ringing in the ears which is called Tinnitus.  The doctors tell me this will probably go away in time, but that it could take months. While it’s not a debilitating handicap, it certainly is bothersome. Still, I’m lucky to just be alive. To all of you that sent cards, emails, etc., thanks so much.