Anyone with a 4 card suit system?

erikfromholland · September 26, 2020, 5:20pm

I have tried a couple of different card memory systems and all of them appear to be in the category of “not worth the trouble”. So, after some brainstorming I thought of making a 4 card suits system, using symbolic reading (as opposed to reading suits as letters). I have not decided on how i will make a full card memory system out of this; the value combination of 2 cards will probably be translated in 1 object (so that’s 13 4 suits objects and 26 2 card value combinations gives a total of 39 objects for 1 deck of cards).

Nice party trick and nice stepping stone

Memorising a deck of cards is not really a good party trick, unless you are really good; anything longer than 30 seconds may test the patience of the party members. So, I imagine that with some practice it should be possible to memorise all suits of a deck of cards in less than 10 seconds (it’s only 13 objects). Memorising a deck of cards in under 30 seconds is very likely more difficult than this, but will likely not be as useful for a demonstration in party like circumstances.

If/when I get “really” good at memorising card suits, I can transition to a full card system and I “only” have to also learn how to memorise card values (I already have a system for this, but I think it needs to be made better).

Basic translation of suits

= love/something that is alive;
= a table;
= a spear/hunting/danger;
= a hand/claw

Examples

= water melon; I really love water melons;
= Ikea bar table; I really love my Ikea bar table;
= a crocodile; someone pushing (with 2 hands) 2 tables with on top a big crokodile;
= a giraf; someone eating at the table to get the energy to hunt a big giraf;
= zebra; hunting a zebra and eating it at the table;
= table tennis; 2 small tables pushed together to make 1 table tennis table;
= The mountain/Hafthor Bjornson; pushing 2 table to the side;
= Bruce Lee; 3 attackers with a spear/sword attacking Bruce lee (with left hand held in front of attackers and nunchaku under his right arm);
= a knight on a horse; 2 knights in a jousting duel on horses.

Does anyone else have a 4 (or 3 or 5) card suits system (as part of their card system)? How fast can you memorise 52 card suits? (It would also be interesting to see how fast memorisers without a “card suit only system” can do this. And finally, what if card suit memorisation was an actual event at your next memory competition; what system would you use?

Thanks for reading my post and extra thanks in advance if you answer one or more of the above questions.

QiJitsu · September 26, 2020, 6:03pm

For a party trick you have to read back the cards in order, rather than put a second deck together, which is slightly harder. There are very few people in the world who can do that in 30 seconds or less, especially with everyone watching you and the pressure to impress. It’s possible though!

erikfromholland · September 26, 2020, 6:21pm

You also can’t take another 30 seconds to repeat all the images (multiple times) in order to prevent them from fading. It is my guess that the faster someone is at memorising a deck of cards the more important this repeating process is; someone needing 10 minutes to memorise a deck of cards will have the first object in his memory for 10 minutes before the reading starts, so most/all of his objects are stored in a more long term memory kind of way, whereas a super fast card memoriser will be relying more on short term memory (needing repeating shortly after the first memorisation).

I have never been fast at memorising cards so the above reasoning is just speculation; it would be interesting to hear from forum members who are under or close to 30 seconds how they think about these matters.

Simon · September 26, 2020, 9:22pm

It’s an interesting idea, and it’s always fun to do something original. As a system for memorizing a full deck of cards, I think it has some downsides compared to a “standard” system:

To recall each card, you need to recall two images and combine parts of the converted values. If you forget a single image, it will affect either 2 or 4 cards.
With physical cards, you would need to be able to hold the cards such that you could see 4 cards at a time. It seems like that would be hard to do fast.
Reading a 4-suit combination quickly may be difficult, even if you are very familiar with the system, because at a glance looks quite similar to .

zonjan · September 26, 2020, 10:15pm

I’m using a card method now which works similar to what you said. I have one letter for each combination of two suits for example:
club + club = b
club + diamond = c
and so on…
Then I create one image from 2 letters(4 suits)
Then I memorise the values. I have one image for each combination of 2, for example :
J + 9 = snow (no reason why, just snow)
I need only 3 words to memorise 4 cards, I use more words which is good for long disciplines but not too many so its easy to find image from 425 images than 2500 when I forget it. Recall phase is also easy because when I remember the order of suits I can figure out the values and vice versa. The only drawback is memorising the physical cards. On a computer my best is 26s and I hope for sub 20 in the future,

QiJitsu · September 26, 2020, 10:44pm

Nice! 26s - that’s a proven system!

Simon · September 27, 2020, 6:10am

That’s great! I guess when you forget an image and have to search for it, you know whether it’s a suits image or a values image, so you only have to search 256 or 169 possibilities.

So clearly it works well for cards in memory competitions, but I imagine it would be harder for reciting a deck verbally? Or do you think that would be fine, too?

Out of interest, do you have different types of image for suits and values, for example people for values and objects for suits?

erikfromholland · September 27, 2020, 8:53am

True, but in a 1 deck of cards memory event you have to memorise all cards any way and it’s the time that determines the “score” you get. In marathon memory events, I imagine, this will more of an issue.

With physical cards, you would need to be able to hold the cards such that you could see 4 cards at a time. It seems like that would be hard to do fast.

Very good point, but on the other hand just about everything card magicians do seems even more difficult (regarding the card handling, not the memorisation); like spreading the cards out on a table to show the audiance that the card deck is real and than use 1 card to sweep the deck back to a pile. If the only thing preventing you from breaking the world record is physical card handling, than you will probably have plenty of motivation to get this “problem” sorted out.

Reading a 4-suit combination quickly may be difficult, even if you are very familiar with the system, because at a glance looks quite similar to .

In a previous system I translated as a T and as a K and I could read faster than world record speed (for memorisation a single deck of cards). I’m not nearly as fast now because of the different translation methods i used for various systems; in some the is an M and in others it’s an I, so my brain is confused because of this when reading suits as letters.

zonjan · September 27, 2020, 9:08am

Different types for suits and values. Everything is mixed up but the total amount of people is 1/3 of all images. I’m not sure if its the best strategy but it works.