7/28/2019 How to Memorize a Shuffled Deck of Cards in Less Than 60 Seconds

1/7

How to Memorize a Shuffled Deck

of Cards in Less Than 60 Seconds

(Plus: $10,000 Challenge)91 CommentsWritten by Tim Ferriss

Topics: Mental Performance, The 4-Hour Chef -4HC

(Photo credit: Jystyn)To become a Grand Master of Memoryfewer than 100 in the world can

claim that titleyou need to satisfy each of the following in competitions

approved by the World Memory Sport Council:

Memorize the order of 10 decks of cards in 60 minutes. Memorize 1,000random digits in 60 minutes. Memorize the order of one deck of cards inless than two minutes.

Ed Cooke first hit this trifecta when he was 23. He later came tointernational attention when he coached journalist Joshua Foer from

ground zero to U.S. Memory Champion in one year, a feat chronicled byFoer in the best-seller Moonwalking with Einstein. To win that

championship, Foer had to memorize 120 random digits in five minutes,

successfully commit to memory the first and last names of 156strangerswithin 15minutes, and (last but not least) memorize a shuffled deck ofcards in less than two minutes.

Ed has memorized a shuffled deck of cards in competition in 43 seconds.

Of all memory feats, none is a more compressed act of mental athleticism.

I asked him if hed open the kimono and explain his method, and he very

graciously agreed.

It takes around four hours to get comfortable with Eds best-of-breed

system. Witha little practice, youll be a third of your way to becoming a

7/28/2019 How to Memorize a Shuffled Deck of Cards in Less Than 60 Seconds

2/7

Grand Master.

(Im)practically speaking, its just freaking amazingly cool. Few people in

the world can pull it off, and thats reason enough to take a weekend or

slow evening to try. Instead of watching another bad movie, you can

become one of the memory illuminati.

Last but not least, theres a $10,000competition at the end if you want toreally give this a shot

ENTER THE BICYCLESHOP

Ive taken to calling Eds approach the Bicycleshop, a combination of the

brand of playing cards and Photoshop.

We will learn the basics of Bicycleshop with a simple version; lets call it

Bicycleshop Lite. Then well upgrade to Bicycleshop Pro. Learn to use

them in that order.

BICYCLESHOP LITE

Bicycleshop Lite helps you do two things: memorize the cards and

memorize the order of the cards.

Step One: Learning the Cards

First, you convert 52cards into 52celebrities.The mind ignores the mundane and remembers the unusual, whether

people (e.g., Lady Gaga) or a sudden motion in the under-brush. Themore unusual, the more the brain forms a bookmark for recall.To make

recalling 52 celebrities easier, each suit corresponds to a personality type

and each card ( jack, 10, ace, etc.) corresponds to a profession (or

category). This means that when you look at a given card, you ll have two

cues to help you remember the celebrity.

The Suits (think: personalities):

Diamondsrich peopleHeartspeople you loveClubstough or crazy

peopleSpadesamusing or absurd people

The Cards (think: professions):

7/28/2019 How to Memorize a Shuffled Deck of Cards in Less Than 60 Seconds

3/7

All even numbers are female and all odd numbers are male, and they re

paired up. You can just remember that, for instance, 9s are powerful men,

and the 10s are therefore powerful women. The 5s are controversial

males, so 6s are controversial females, etc.

Mnemonic suggestions are included below each profession to facilitatethe association, but you can create your own. Skim this list once, read Ed s

notes following the list, and then read them over again.

KingMale half of celeb coupleQueenFemale half of celeb coupleCeleb couples are the royalty of the present. Each suit will have its own

celeb couple. Contrasting celeb couplesJohn and Yoko, David Bowie

and Imancan help the pairs stick.

Jack

Religious figuresJacks are bachelors; religious figures werebachelors.

10 Famously powerful women9 Famously powerful men Highest numbers,highest-powered people

8 Famous female physiques 7 Famous male physiques Hourglass or bustyor hunky or rippedthe bodies of your dreams.

6 Controversial females 5 Controversial males Think of five and effing;six sounds like sex.

4 Female movie stars 3 Male movie starsThink of all those trilogies outthere.

2 SportswomenAce SportsmenAce is a term associated with excellence insports; think of two as deuce in tennis.

Ed explains how this is all put together:

Having chosen 13 professions/categories and four personalitiesjust 17 things

to learn

you can use your existent knowledge and opinions to fill out a 52-card

matrix. The ace of diamonds, on my scheme, is a sports-man (ace) who got rich(diamonds)OK, Michael Jordan. The jack of spades on my scheme would be areligious figure whos amusingthe Dalai Lama has a good sense of humor. The

six of spades, a humorously controversial womanLady Gaga, no question.

Using this method, it should take less than an hour to fill the matrix out and

come to be able to slowly recall the people who now correspond to the 52 cards.

7/28/2019 How to Memorize a Shuffled Deck of Cards in Less Than 60 Seconds

4/7

Once you have your cast of card-people, go through shuffled decks and practicetranslating the cards to their images until its automatic. This might take another

hour to begin to master.

The next step is to put them in order.

Step Two: Memorizing the Order of a Shuffled Deck

You will now peg 52 cards to locations along a familiar route. It could be a

path through your house, the journey from your front door to a favorite

pubwhatever you like. Some memory competitors use their childhood

homes: Scott Hagwood, who won the U.S. Memory Championship from20012004, uses rooms from luxury homes he finds in Architectural

Digest, 10 locations per room. If you choose that approach, you can

mentally position yourself at the entrance to each room and move as

follows: at your feet, closest left corner, then clockwise to left wall, then farleft corner, opposite wall, far right corner, right wall, closest right corner,

then two spots on the ceiling.

Choosing 52 locations should take no more than 30 minutes, and then you

can start placing your celebrities (cards) at each point. Keep it simple for

now, using a longer path if multiple points per room cause overload. Ed

starts at his bed:

For me, a pack beginning with the jack of spades would mean the Dalai Lama

standing at the first point on my routemy bed. At the second point, my

wardrobe, Id deposit the image corresponding to the second card, perhaps it will

be Michael Jordanthe ace of diamonds.

Continue all the way through the pack, taking your time and lots of care to

imagine each person vividly in their position. Once you get to the end of theroute, retrace it in your imagination and you will hopefully encounter all the

people in the sequence that you imagined them. You will probably need to go

through two or three times the first time you attempt it.

And just like that, bingo: youve memorized your first deck of cards!

BICYCLESHOP PRO

Now we upgrade you.

Bicycleshop Lite, while perfectly effective, is a little slow. Fifty-two separate

goddamn images! Well, what did you expect for trial software? But it s the

7/28/2019 How to Memorize a Shuffled Deck of Cards in Less Than 60 Seconds

5/7

right place to start. Biting off all the features of Bicycleshop at once will just

give you indigestion. Now that youve taken a ride with training wheels, its

time for phase two.

Bicycleshop Pro, the next step for power users, has a much more efficient

compression algorithm. It builds on top of what you already know, butinstead of 52images, well reduce to 17or 18images. This makes it threetimes as fast. Heres how it works, in Eds words:

The next step is combining several cards into single images, which weachieve by assigning each card (celebrity) an action and an object. Jordan,

the ace of diamonds, might have for an action a slam dunk, and his object

a basketball. The Dalai Lamas action might be praying, his object a

Buddha. Lady Gagas action might be posing in a meat dress (memory,

after all, loves to be disgusted), her object a load of paparazzi

photographers (also disgusting).

By adding this syntactic structure, combinations of three cards now form

mini-sentences: the celeb from the first card, theaction from the second,and the object from the third.

For example, in my matrix, ace of diamondsjack of spadessix of spades

becomes Michael Jordan praying to the paparazzi; jack of spadessix of

spadesace of diamonds, on the other hand, translates into the Dalai

Lama wearing a meat dress while holding a basketball. The two images,

utterly distinct and deeply memorable, could never be confused.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Bicycleshop Pro. Elegant and, with

practice, as fast as world champions.

Perhaps you need a little incentive? Try a $10,000 card-memorizing

competitionthe first of its kind. See the next section for moredetails. For the type-A, obsessive sorts: once you get reasonably fluid andwant to take racing the clock more seriously, I suggest getting a

metronome. This will be your plateau breaker. If you stall and seem unable

to memorize any faster, set the metronome for 10%

20% faster than youcan currently handle. Force yourself to turn cards at this rate until you stop

making errors. For instance, if youre stuck at 10 cards per minute (1 per 6

seconds) after a few weeks, set the metronome to 20% less time, so 4.8

seconds per metronome click. If a particular card causes hiccups, make a

note of it (or draw a pen marking on it) and analyze the reasons later.

7/28/2019 How to Memorize a Shuffled Deck of Cards in Less Than 60 Seconds

6/7

Just remember: this is fun, so keep it fun. Enjoy the mind games.

The $10,000Card Memorizing Challenge ForBeginners Only

Ed can learn 16 decks of shuffled cards in an hour. Lets get youto yourfirst memorized deck, shall we?

In The 4-Hour Chef,we promised a $10,000prize to the first person whocould from beginner to expert (being able to learn a deck in less than a

minute). The rules were coming soon. Well, after a few delays, the

challenge is ON.

Ed has put together a course on Memrise, complete with video tutorials

from the clever and charismatic man himself. The exercises are trulyelegant and effective.

To win $10,000, one of the biggest prizes ever given for a memorychallenge of any kind, you have to learn from scratch to memorize a deck

of cards in under a minute. This is a 6-week competitionjust enoughtime to do this. All of your training has to take place on Memrise, so we can

watch the competition unfold and ensure no cheating or fraud.

So is this really possible? Sure. It takes just a few hours to master the

images youll need. Then it takes a few more hours to get your head

around the spatial memory techniques. From that point on, its just a matter

of practice for speed.

HOW THE COMPETITION WILL RUN

The competition will take place at http://www.memrise.com/tim-ferriss

The competition begins now, Feb 6th 2013 and runs until 11.59 p.m.

March 20th 2013.

The winner of the $10K will be the first person who legitimately goes frombeginner to being able to learn a deck of cards in under a minute, so long

as someone does this by March 20th. Therewill be various other prizes,including limited edition T-shirts and packs of cards for the top competitors

who dont finish first.

To be eligible for the prizes, all your practice at learning card sequences,

7/28/2019 How to Memorize a Shuffled Deck of Cards in Less Than 60 Seconds

7/7

as well as the achievement of doing it in a minute, should happen in the

cards system found here. *The competition *is* the training, and we need

to be able to watch everyones progress to ensure a fair winner. Well also

be gathering collective data for the purposes of science and a later wrap-

up.

So, let the games begin! Click herefor all the juicy details and trainingtools.

Note: For additional help two graphs, representing how to memorize allthe cards quickly, can be found in the Appendices of The 4-Hour Chef.