I’m wondering those who are good at memorizing a deck of cards that use, say, the PAO system as an example, do you place the PAO in a memory palace, use the link method or what do you use to remember the sequence order of the cards to recall their correct order in the deck later. Many thanks John
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I began learning to do this after reading Deep Work by Cal Newport where a memory palace is explained as a way to accomplish this.
I made a memory palace with five rooms and ten loci on a path in each one, established images for each card and then place them in order as I move through the rooms. As he says in the book the real work was a getting 52 different card image/connections firmly established. I can remember the deck order but it takes a while, so am far from expert.
I’m new to the forum and have more questions than answers on the subject so hope to hear how others use this or other techniques to accomplish similar things.
yep, that’s exactly it. people use a memory palace with anywhere from 13 to 52 locations, then mentally place the images they create at those locations. so if location #1 is my mailbox, and the first three cards correspond to “Michael Jordan shooting a gun at a mattress” or whatever, that’s happening in/around/on top of/through the mailbox, then i mentally travel to location #2 and “place” the next three cards there, fitting the location into the action as best (and quickly) as possible, continuing through the whole deck
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Thank you to the both of you for your replies. I HOPE others will also reply to my post to give more information/experiences on memorizing a deck of cards to the three of us. Many thanks John
The PAO or a variation like PA, PO, in a memory palace is the most common way. I think incorporating a story into it helps tie the stations together. For example when I have the object of the last person thrown/fall at the next person and they react to that it helps me not to blank on who was next. If you find that you’re usually forgetting the action or object try just using a PO or PA. You’ll need more stations but if you get better accuracy and time it’s a good trade off.
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Chris thanks for the reply and your information. It was helpful. Hope everyone has a good week, John
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I place 1 card on location. My memory palaces have 48 locations. So I memorise 48 cards on the memory palace and then I grab the last 4 cards with short-term memory (I pronounce values of cards while visually focusing on suits). My best 52 card attempt is 56 seconds. My best memory palace is first one I created
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Thank you for your reply. I found it interesting that you have a memory palace for the 48 cards and remember the last 4 in your short term memory. Not have heard that before. I would find it interesting if others would post what they do as I’m trying to see/learn how others do their cards too. All the best John
I tried doing that one card per spot but was having trouble making each person interesting enough to recall. I found they needed to be interacting with something and figured might as well make that an action or object of the next card instead of something without any card value.
But your time is fast and since you only have about a second per card is there a specific way you found that helps it stick? Im still a couple minutes or longer partly because I’m refining my pao and taking longer trying to get familiar with the visualization of each so I can hopefully cut some time off by picturing them quicker eventually.
If you haven’t created a category for the cards yet I think most people do something like
- Family/close friends
- Famous people or celebrities
-People you’ve worked with or met while working.
-Music Artists
Using the Major System for numbered cards and face cards could be something like King of Clubs is Elvis since he was the King and Madonna has been called the Queen of Pop. I have Capt Jack Sparrow as my J and parents could be K/Q of
In my category system only Jacks and Queens and Kings are people.
All other cards are objects or animals (except 9 is a human, because I didn’t find distinct animal from this category).
When memorising I don’t imagine how a person looks like, I just imagine a basic silhouette with one distinct feature of this person. This feature is the main focus, so it can be bigger and more colourful than the silhouette itself.
K has a shiny suit,
Q has a big head,
J has a microfone,
K
is a dumbledore from Harry Potter, so he has a long white beard, that is always getting caught on my location,
Q always shoots a magic frost beam.
I didn’t create these features consсiously, images just changed naturally. I guess one time my brain imagined the first feature and wasn’t fast enough to imagine the whole person, because I already moved to the next card. Then during recall it turned out that this feature is enough to memorise. So my lazy brain was like “Why should I imagine whole person if one feature is enough?” 
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Thanks Thats really helpful! Yeah it makes sense, work smarter not harder and to have a quick distinct thing to grab Thats first to come to mind sounds like great advice. I struggle to see full vivid images and just get a flash, feature or outline as well and instead of trying to continue forcing more detail I’m gonna try to keep it simple and fast.
Some of my characters weren’t that familiar I was just filling places and didn’t think to branch out from people for cards. Objects and animals sounds worth a try if it’s a better fit. Thanks!
Thank you for the additional replies as they are helpful. John
Hi. And how you do it? You put the feature in the palace directly?
I visualise both the person and the feature. But the full focus is on the feature, so the person has not any details
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