I’m 50 years old and just started into the memory game. I’ve developed a P.A.O. system to memorize a deck of cards, but my speed is lacking. It currently takes me about 3 minutes just to recall all the P.A.O. associations. Clearly, I need to improve the system. I’m really intrigued by Ben’s system, where letters represent numbers, but the challenge is managing 2,704 images, which feels overwhelming. I believe the consonant-vowel-consonant system needs a minumum of 1,000 images (0-999) to represent all possible consonant-vowel-consonant combinations. This approach could handle binary numbers up to 111,111,111 using Ben’s method, but it leaves out J, Q, K, and the suits for cards. I’m considering treating these elements as a separate system or entity. Do you have any suggestions or ideas on how to build the most efficient system?
I assume you’ve already considered systems which use half as many images, like The Eclipse System?
Kep in mind that developing speed with cards takes time. It depends on three main factors.
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How fast can you read a card and have the image spring vividly to mind?
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How fast can you build memorable scenes based on those images?
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How fast can you navigate your memory palace loci to set those scenes?
All of these factors take a good amount of time to get fast. How long have you been working with your PAO card system? It very well could just be that you haven’t developed the fluency needed to boost your overall speed.
One of the “secrets” to all of this is that the actual system that you use to encode and decode cards or numbers doesn’t matter as much as the practice time that you commit to learning and using the system. It may seem natural to think that if you jump to a 2-card system, you can double your speed, but its not necessarily the case. A variety of systems are used by people who can achieve times of around 15 seconds. Traditional PAO, PO, Dominic, Ben, Full Major PAO, Shadow, custom systems… The common thread for all of them is a massive commitment to drilling and practicing for fluency.
A little more about the time commitment needed for various size number and card systems here:
If you’re really set on jumping to a large system, give the following link a look. This is my most efficient build out for a 2-card system. Based heavily on Major. Very simple phonetic and card reading structure. Can be used to simultaneously learn almost a complete 2 and 3 digit number system as well:
Whatever you decide, remember that it takes time, and there will be variation in how quickly progress comes. Don’t get discouraged, just keep working on it!
Nice resources. I’m diving into how they work.
The one system looks similar to what I am trying to achieve, except instead of consonant-vowel-consonant it’s consonant-consonant-consonant. (Will examine it more).
Hey MemFart! I truly recommand my post about that explaining the 2 block system I’m using and how I got under 30s really fast —> 2 months and 2 days to create a 2 block card system and go below 30s, is it possible? yes it is
I’m still working my way through the systems. I have a question (and maybe mord to come as I dive into these). It looks like you still need over 1300 images which is doable and much better than the 2700+. Is there a reason no one uses the consonat-vowel-consonant (C-V-C) or C-C-C for suits? Like take 3 cards, the first object is made from the suit letters like S, C, D (maybe C for clubs has an A as a vowel) so the word might be Saddle. Then the 2nd object is made from the numbers? You would not need more than 1000 images as the suits could be douplicates of the numbers. Like C and 7 use the same consonant and vowel sound. I realize for the JQK you’d need to be inventive. I know someone must have tried this. Just wondering the reason its not used?
Couple thoughts on this.
Card systems are all about data compression into the least possible representational ELEMENTS. Not total elements in the system… Least elements needed per piece of card information. But then it needs to be balanced by the total size of a system. A thousand or two associations is managable, when you get into the hundreds of thousands… Not as much.
So if you take a single card and represent it as a person or an object or an action, you’re compressing one card into one mnemomic element.
If you can devise a way to combine 2 cards into a single element (like folks have done with Shadow, Ben, and various others custom systems) then you have a 2 to 1 compression ratio.
A 3 to 1 card compression system would be amazing, but there is a huge problem…
The reason a 2-card system is so big (2704 for a “true” 2-card system with a unique representational element for each pair, or 1352 for a double-block system where each element cam represent two different pairs) is due to the math of the combinations.
Card 1 in the pair could be any of 52 cards, card 2 could also be any of 52 cards. (Lets assume that doubles could appear, so a pair like Ace 
/ Ace would be possible.) 52x52 = 2704 possible pairs.
For a true 3 card system, you have 52 options for card1, 52 for card2, and 52 for card3. 52x52x52 = 140,608 possible triplets.
This is for all intents and purposes, impossible to construct and learn to the point of usability within ones lifetime.
So, can we create a system where 3 cards are represented some way thats more efficient than the 2-card compression, that doesn’t require a near impossible learning curve? Not really.
If we do as I think you propose and break the info of 3 cards across two representational elements, we only have a compression rate of 1.5 cards worth of info per element.
You’ll also need to learn well over 2000 associations with this idea. If you’re commiting that much effort, you are better off with a true 2-card system that gets a better compression rate.
13 value options x 13 x 13 = 2197 possible combinations of values.
4 suits options x 4 x4 is 64 possible suit combinations.
2261 unique elements needed for this idea.
Hope this distinction makes sense?