PAO Card System vs PAO 0-99

General Memory Chat
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Hi all. New to memory training. I recently began learning how to memorize a deck of cards, like many new mnemonists do, and can now memorize a 52 deck of card in somewhere between 10 to 12 minutes (not impressive, I know, but it’s a start). I did this using the PAO system combined with the Major System, as demonstrated in the Nelson Dellis video about how to memorize a deck of cards. This is the one where you use different categories for each suite, (family for hearts, athletes for clubs, celebrities for diamonds and star wars for spades) and then use people who start with each letter of the corresponding card number with the Major System.

This was a good starting point for me and something I obviously want to continue to perfect, but my ultimate goal is to use a lot of these mnemonic techniques for trivia. So my next goal is to create a 0-99 PAO system that I can use to memorize things like dates and such.

So my question is this: when creating a 0-99 PAO system, can I/should I re-use some of the PAOs for the 52 deck of cards or should I start new from scratch? If I can somehow convert the 52 existing PAO into my 0-99 system that would obviously save me a ton of time because it is difficult to create that many PAOs, but I don’t want to do this if it is likely to confuse me with encoding or if it’s a general rule that people don’t do this.

Basically, I want to create a 0-99 PAO system but I don’t know where to start because having the Card PAO system already has paralyzed my decision making about how to approach this. What do I do?

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You should absolutely use some of the same ones, as when you are training cards it will also be like training numbers and vice versa

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I was expecting most of the replies to advise against using the same, because I figured there might be some difficulty/confusion with encoding doing it this way, so I appreciate your feedback. I want to incorporate as many of the 52 into the 0-99 as I can because I already have them memorized and it is difficult coming up with big lists like that. But I obviously don’t want to do it at the cost of efficiency. So you encouraging me to use the same ones is good to know and I will take that into account.

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I have a 00-99 PAO and also use 64 of the images AO in my chess system and am happy to have so much crossover using both.

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And you don’t have any memory interference with encoding? Good to know. I think I’m sold on this. It will make the process twice as fast + I already know my 52 PAOs for cards works and is effective

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Im sure most would recommend this. Interference wont be an issue unless you use the same palaces. I like to have the palaces designed for each event.

Words need 23, cards need 16 for me for example. So at the least keep your numbers/cards palaces in different palaces and interference wont bother you

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How do I go about converting images from my PAO card system to a 0-99 PAO? Obviously with four suites I can’t have each 2, 3, 4, etc. card represent 02, 03, 04 in the 0-99 system. I was thinking about using the Major system with PAO (although likely with a lot of rule-breaking). Is it going to mess me up to use Michael Jordan for the Jack of Clubs AND the number 23 in my 0-99? Or Nelly as my 2 of Diamonds but also the #25? If not, how should I convert the numbered cards over to 0-99 numbers?

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If I were you I would adopt major phonetics.

After learning the major system if you don’t know it yet I would brainstorm 5-6 vocalizations for each existing image in your system. For example Michael Jordan: MiKe, JoRdan, BuLls

When you complete this distribute as many existing images across open numbers as possible and fill the rest of the blanks with new brainstorming.

Some stretch vocalizations in my system I used to place desired images include RaMs for american football, MaiNe for stephen king, SPlode for explode

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That’s the plan. Although I might make some exceptions. I was thinking about doing Jordan as 23, for example, because I’m a massive sports fan and I can’t think of 23 being anyone but Jordan or LeBron for that reason.

My question is this: will having the images from the deck of cards also represent images in 0-99 cause memory interference? Muhammad Ali is my 3 of clubs. But using the major system he would be 35 in my 0-99. Is that going to cause a problem? Also, there’s going to be some overlap with some of the existing 0-99 in the major system so I’d have to either toss out the extras or arbitrarily assign some others most likely.

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No it should actually be an enhancement as you will get more practice with those images. You know when you recall if you are decoding cards or numbers.

The only way it would be a problem is if you were memorizing a combination of cards and numbers but that isn’t a use case.

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I did a very similar thing last year, went from category based cards to major-based and loved it. I had a pre-established 2-digit fully Major PAO and it worked great adding the cards into it. The big benefit I saw was being able to literally read each card and visualize everything without having to try to reassociate a bunch of arbitrary connections.

My approach was to use the value and suit to dictate which major system PAO items the cards represented.

10’s get the “0,” S/Z sound.
Aces get the “1,” T/D/TH sound.
The rest of the numbers get their associated Major sounds.

For suits:
Spades is 1 (one point on top)
Hearts is 2 (two curves on the top of the heart)
Clubs is 3 (three puffball branches or whatever)
Diamonds is 4 (four points on a the diamond)

So to convert the number cards, you read number first then suit. 3 of Hearts is 32. 6 of Spades is 61, etc.

For Face cards, the structure is reversed and the suit gives the first digit/sound.

Jacks give J/SH/CH (Jack starts with J sound)
Kings give K/G (King starts with K sound)
Queens give F/V (Cliche “female form” is hourglass 8.)

Jack of Clubs is 36, MaCHo: M for clubs, CH for Jack.

This way for all number cards (3/4 of the deck) you can simply read them. Ace-S TeD, 2-S aNDy… etc. The only mental adjustment is on the face cards where you read the suit first to give your word.

Full Example:
Two Of Spades is represented by 21
Two = 2, Spades = 1.
21 in my Major PAO is represented by either aNDy if in the person position, kNighTing if in the action position, or a NighTy if in the object position.

King of Diamonds is represented by 47
Diamonds = 4, King = 7.
47 in my Major PAO is represented by either RoCKy if in the person position, RoCKing if in the action position, or a RoCK if in the object position.

My whole list is here if you want to reverse engineer it at all:

Also, some tips on practicing and avoiding a common pitfall I had when I started out:

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MemoryNinja thanks for your post, it’s very helpful to me, as I am 73 years old and making very slow progress getting my times down memorizing cards. I am about 4 months into it and down to about 8 minutes at best. How long have you been working on the cards?

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Hi. How yo do for chess??

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Hi. I dont know about cards. I like use this things to study.
I dont understand how you conect pao with major system.
Ive read that memorists use pao system with palace or may be peg.
But i dont know how they connect quick those two things.
I suppose they create a very short story with a word of the pao. This could be quick.

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P = Variation identifier
O = Friendly move destination square
A = Enemy move destination square

I group my openings into chapters of 25 lines or less. A 25 line chapter will have 25 different people traversing the same ~15 loci.

If they happen to be moving to the same square on the same move number the people join a party scene. At most there are usually 5 people in the same party scene.

This varies from a non-PAO approach to chess which often uses 25 different branching paths within the same palace to accomplish the same goal.

In my opinion both approaches are valid and the only key best practice for chess memory is storing a friendly and enemy move image on the same locus.

Memory palace for chess also has proven prohibitively time consuming so I am using Chessable (anki of chess) for a large portion of my openings reserving MP for only the most serious openings.

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HI,
it’s great to read so many insights about the PAO system in this Chat. I’ll throw my question in the mix, maybe somebody has encountered similar problems and work out a solution already.

So here it is:
I’m memorising cards with the PAO system which in my brain groups the cards into threes- a person doing an activity with an object. When remembering afterwards I find my memory often breaks the connection when going from one group of three to the next group of three.
Are there any tricks of linking them together quickly? I feel like i don’t have the time to pad out the story just to link two sets of three together.

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Are you using a memory palace? If not, it is very highly recommended. For a single deck PAO you’ll need 18 loci, stationing one PAO scene per loci. The key to getting your scenes to stick and be easy to recall is interaction with the loci. Try building your scenes as “person, does action, with object, TO LOCI.” Not just AT the loci, TO the loci. That way when you review your loci in recall, the loci itself can trigger details of the scene that exists there.

It can be very difficult to try to connect every scene to each other in one large chain that is dependent on connections between each link. If you miss one, you likely miss everything that follows. This is not an issue when using a palace journey and why the loci method is so highly recommended.

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Hi everyone. I’m new here, but not new to to the memory topic. English is not my first language (I’m from Germany), so it can sometimes happen that my grammar is not correct.
I’m very familiar with the major system (I’ve stored over 2000 digits in my brain with it). And I have a memory palace for many years with ten rooms and ten places each and created recently a second palace (also 100 loci).
I’m interested in this thread, because I’m creating a POA for cards right now.
I want to contribute something to this topic, because I see, that a lot of people are eager to follow the major system rules and stick to it, even if they have to ged rid of same Persons in there list, because they don’t fit in.
BUT from my experience, it is not necessary to follow that rule.
My loci in the 1 to 100 palace (mostly rooms) are not based on the major system, but anyway, I can immediatly tell what’s on 81 or 25 (on each place I stored the square of the number and to the smaller numbers I stored also pythagorean triples).
I structured the order of the places after another logic than the major system. It works absolutely well for my.
The first digit tells me in which room I am (The 8 in 81 tells me I’m in the theater and the 1 tells me it is the stage).
I watched also the video with Nelson Dellis and was fascinated by the POA System how smart it is build. But I feel uncomfortable with the Idea that I cant use every person in a category that I want, because the name doesn’t fit to the major system.

I’m almost done with my PAO. At first it was frustrating, because the actions are often repetative (playing piano, playing chess). So I’ve collected over 52 interessting verbs and looked afterwards which person would fit to the verb (of course it doesnt work all the time and the action and the objekt should be natural the the person). But with “riding” and “cooking” you cant go very far.
So don’t be afraid leaving the path of the major system. It works anyway. YES, You should have some kind of logic and connection to the number. Of course. And sometimes it fits in the major system … fine.
I give you an example. In “Hearts” a friend of mine is doing pilates (similar to Yoga). So she is streching her legs in the picture and I put her on number 4, because the 4 looks like the legs in a pilates pose. When you draw a body over the four you can see the vertical line as the standing leg and the other leg is bent. A spirituell friend of mine is on 3 because the 3 looks like the Ohm symbol. For my it works great.

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Have you tried to use the Dominic System for playing cards. It uses a different coding system from the major system and you can build a cast of playing cards by encoding letters into famous peoples first names and surnames. I was grappling with one card only and that was my 10 of Spades = OS in Dominic Code. I’ve settled for Orthopedic Surgeon ) (Person)/ Sawing-off (Action)/ Leg (Object).

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Excellent points! Ultimately what it comes down to is to run with the system that resonates most naturally with you. The system itself is less important than the commitment to building fluency with it!

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