M2M Day 27: Still a bad party trick
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For November, my goal is to memorize the order of a shuffled deck of cards in less than 2 minutes.
I just got back to San Francisco after a week with my family in New York.
While in New York, many family members asked me to demonstrate my newly cultivated powers and memorize a deck of cards in front of them. In other words, I was asked to perform Speed Cards as a party trick.
I was happy to comply, but I quickly found out that, even as a pseudo grandmaster, I’m still not quite ready for live performances.
Two problems with live performances
Firstly, up until this point, I’ve practiced memorizing cards in a controlled and quiet setting, which is a luxury I quickly lost during my live performances. In many cases, I would try to memorize while also holding minor conversations, or, at a minimum, grunting responses to basic questions about the trick.
Unsurprisingly, this was distracting and usually made for horrible recall.
The second problem is that two minutes feels like a long time to wait. Even though I perform this feat faster than most everyone else on Earth, as a party trick, Speed Cards still feels not so fast. As a result, impatience builds and conversation begins, leading to the first problem.
An idea for better performances
Clearly, the best solution for improving my performance is improving my memorization and recall speeds. In other words, if I could memorize as fast as Alex Mullen, and tear through the whole deck in under 20 seconds, I would have no problems. Obviously.
But, since I still memorize about 6x slower than the world record, I temporarily need a better way to perform Speed Cards as a trick.
My idea is called Speed Card racing. Here’s how it works:
- Get a deck of cards
- Ask someone in the audience to shuffle it
- Ask the shuffler to cut the deck into two equal piles of 26 cards
- Ask the shuffler to hand you one of the piles
- Tell the shuffler “Okay, we are going to race”
- The shuffler is first confused, but then most likely complies
- You both start memorizing one half of the deck
- 45 seconds later, you say “Done”
- The shuffler say “Oh. I’ve only memorized the first five cards…”
- You recall your 26 cards
- The demonstration is complete and everyone is thoroughly impressed
I like this routine for a few reasons. Firstly, I only have to memorize half of the deck, and rather than this being a disappointment of the performance, it’s justified quite nicely by the racing premise. Secondly, because we are racing, the audience (especially if it’s only one person) is occupied with their own half of the deck, so the 45 seconds goes by much more quickly. Finally, because the audience is also trying to memorize cards, they are quiet, which lets me do my thing as practiced.
Another thing I’ve realize is that people are much more impressed with the recall part of the trick (versus the memorization) in many cases. So, if you’ve been following along this month, and can memorize a deck of cards in (let’s say) 10 minutes, then… pre-memorize a deck of cards and just recall that already-memorized deck when asked to perform. This is basically just as impressive (sadly) to almost everyone who is watching.
Conclusion: Don’t practice Speed Cards if your singular goal is to impress people (unless you plan to devote many months to reach world record speeds). If you do want to impress people as a side benefit, you should probably race or pre-memorize.
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
