The Single Card Shadow System (a transitional system for the beginner to intermediate level)

General Memory Chat
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Continuing the discussion from Shadow System details and document:

Introduction

It’s one of those “forest for the trees”-situations. I just realized that only because it’s obvious to me doesn’t mean that it will be obvious to a cards beginner. I am not sure if this will revolutionize the single card system world (I doubt it), but it will definitely make the transition to the double card shadow-system later on much easier.

Basically, any post you read on this forum about memorizing cards will tell you that you need to come up with 52 images; one for each of the cards. That is in fact NOT so, 26 images will do just fine. Now, if you’ve read about the Shadow System on this forum before and you wonder how that’s possible, you should definitely keep reading…

The original idea with the shadow system was to have a shadow for each image. If you saw a card pair 6 / 9 and the suit pair XX, you’d have a shadow suit pair 6 / 9 for it. This was to bring down the possible suit combinations from 16 to 8. That was a big deal, because you don’t have 16 consonants for the major system; however, 8 was a number you could work with. From Lance’s original post 10 years ago:

…this idea of shadows was later abandoned in favor of a block system. The logic would be to keep placing card pairs that started with a black suit in the very same location until you’d run into a card pair that started with a red suit. You’d tread that as a STOP-sign, place it, and move on to the next location. That way “ketchup” in the last position was different from “ketchup” that came before.

The ONE-card version with 26 images (PHASE I)

The above is part of the 2-card Shadow System mapping for suit pairs. Since we’re only dealing with a single card, we don’t care about combinations like spades followed by hearts, etc. Our mappings for a single card system will thus be:

#:spades: - S,Z
#:heart: - S,Z
#:clubs: - K,G
#:diamonds: - K,G

…the mnemonic is simple, Spades starts with an “S”-sound (major: 0) and Clubs starts with a “K”-sound (major: 7). This way, you don’t have to re-learn anything if or when you will upgrade to a 1,326 image 2-card Shadow System. We’ll handle face cards later, but for now we’ll read the cards starting from the suit. Ace is 1 (T/D) and 10 is 0 (S/Z) with 2-9 obviously 2-9.

Example

2 of clubs, 9 of hearts, ace of diamonds, 9 of spades, ace of clubs, 2 of diamonds, …

L1: coin, soup
L2: cat
L3: soup, cat, coin
L4: …

Note how the 9 of hearts and the 9 of diamonds are both “soup” but since we know that it’s the last image in location 1 (L1), we know that it’s red (i.e., hearts). On the other hand, the “soup” in L3 is not the last image, so it’s black (i.e., clubs)… and that is how we get away with only 26 instead of 52 images.

Face cards

Face cards are read the other way around; value first and suit second. Jacks will be F/TH (major: 8), Queens will be R (major: 4), and Kings will be H (major: n/a). Both the queen of spades and the queen of hearts would thus be “rice” and the position (last or not) in the location will tell you which one it is. The mapping here follows Lance’s, so again, you will have no issue when you go full Shadow System with 1,326 images.

Conclusion

Is this the better 1-card system? Define better… it has a lot more repetition than PAO does. For each “cat” in the last position, there will be a “cat” in the not last position because we are not dealing with card pairs here. If you had “ketchup” as a card pair, the chances of the same card pair showing up are quite a bit lower.

Is it a good transitional system though? Well, if you think the big deal about a 2-card system is the additional 1,200+ images that you’ll need on top of your existing ones… try variable items in locations first using this system to see how that feels for you. Maybe you prefer the strict 3 cards per location setup of a PAO system.

Anyways, if nothing else… this should definitely help you understand the original post about the shadow system, which you can find here: A New 2-Card System (Shadow System)

My advise would be… don’t use it in competitions, but do try it a few decks as you read and re-read Lance’s post above to figure out if you really want to move into the direction of a 2-card system. Do the math as well and understand what’s going on. With pairs there will be less repetition, as mentioned above, and also more items per location on average.

So please… Like, Share, Comment, and Subscribe… oh wait, this is not Youtube… never mind then. :wink:

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This is a really cool idea, @bjoern.gumboldt!

If I’m understanding correctly, your idea would halve the number of words needed to represent
each card, down to just 26 images for a deck. Number of loci and images per loci would vary as in the full Shadow System, but you’d still end up with 52 total elements to visualize and decode. Each word would appear twice per deck, once for black suit, once per red?

It does seem like a good stepping stone to try the technique of loci stacking before tackling the effort of full Shadow!

Would this be compatible with a PAO or a PO approach? I suppose not because you could potentially need to place single images at some loci and thus wouldn’t be able to use a PAO image.

Hmmm… Great stuff. Given me something to think about!

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You didn’t get out an actual deck of cards to try it out, did you? Think about it… if the red cards are in 2, 4, 6, etc. (all even positions) or in 1, 3, 5, etc. (all odd positions) in a 2-card system, you’d either stay in the same location the whole time or change locations with every single card pair.

If you apply this logic to a 1-card approach, what would be the difference? I tried to hint at it above…

…and the chances of it showing up in a 1-card system are 100%. You got 26 red cards, so you will change locations 26 times, all the time. This is probably the worst system ever, because it focuses on the wrong aspects of the shadow system.

The point is not to half the number of images to deal with less of a system to initially memorize. The point was to bring 16 down to 8, so that you could use the 0 - 9 major system whilst still using card pairs. So, what you really want to do is use twice as many instead of half the images.

The ONE-card version with 104 images (PHASE II)

Let’s actually look at the cards in pairs BUT then encode them individually. The benefits here are twofold:

  1. We’ll be able to use card pairs (the major one)
  2. Twice as many images (less redundancy)

Example (same as above)

2 of clubs, 9 of hearts, ace of diamonds, 9 of spades, ace of clubs, 2 of diamonds, …

L1: LN, LP, MT, MP
L2: PT, PN, …

…so here we look at the first pair and get “L” for the combination clubs/hearts and use that as our first consonant for both 2 and 9 to get “LN” and “LP”. The red card is in second place, so unlike in the same example in the original post, we don’t change location. Next we look at diamonds/spades and get “MT” and “MP”; however, this time we do move to the next location after placing BOTH cards because the card pair started red.

If you compare this to the example in the original post, you’ll find that you don’t have SOUP…SOUP anymore. The 9 of hearts is now “LP” and the 9 of spades is now “MP”, so there’s far less redundancy and also, the 9 of hearts didn’t automatically make you change locations because of its red-ness since it was in second position.

Of course, “soup” still exists… but only if the 9 of spades is followed or preceded by another spades or if the 9 of hearts is followed or preceded by another hearts. But there are 7 other things now that if could be instead of soup when compared to the 26 image system in the original post.

Conclusion

The first post was meant as a gentle introduction. It was also supposed to show you, that you can quickly run down the wrong pass. This is not meant in a condescending way, but sometimes you gotta get things wrong first. This system here (104 images) you could actually use and it gives you good practice into reading the card pairs in the actual Shadow System and also allows you to get your feet wet with variable items per loci.

So, if you’re unsure about putting in the effort of creating 1,326 images for a full 2-card system. Then give the above a shot. Shuffle up a deck of cards a handful of times with the approach describes in the first post (26 images) and then a few more times with this one (104) images. This is hard to see in theory, so please do yourself the favor and just take out some cards and try it for real.

And again, if nothing else… I hope this helps you to understand Lance’s post about the Shadow System somewhat better.

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Yeah, just read it over quick last night as I was going to sleep. Definitely gonna give it a walkthrough today with cards in hand!

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Hi, I want to ask something why is 769 abbreviated as Kech instead of Ketchup?

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Please read Lance’s original post; otherwise, I’ll just end up answering things that shouldn’t be questions in the first place…

…btw, this is not used anymore. Neither the abbreviation, nor the ketchup/mustard. So, as I already mentioned…

…Lance himself writes…

…you all do yourselves a favor and put an hour aside to actually READ what he’s written. His is not a post for speed reading, skimming, or cherry picking. Read it and re-read it if necessary. The same goes for this very post… you need to know what you are transitioning to if you want to use a transitional system; otherwise, you’ll just be stuck in limbo… probably off worse than before.

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Thank you.

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