In 1997, Dominic O’Brien memorized a deck in 41.43 seconds at the 1997 World Memory Championships. Back then, he was placing just one card per station in a memory palace. (He later started using two cards per locus with his PA system.)
At the 2018 2nd Korea OPEN Champs, Shijir Bat-Enkh memorized a deck in 12.74 seconds with a PAO system.
My contention here is simply that you don’t need the Shadow System to memorize a deck in under a minute.
I realize that some memory superstars like Alex Mullen have switched to the Shadow System, so I must be missing a key idea here. Hoping someone could please explain to me the reasons for adopting a much more complicated technique for speed cards.
This is a thought that has been plaguing my mind too Richard but I didn’t have to guts to ask the question for fear of appearing to be the ‘only one’ on the forum who doesn’t understand the Shadow System correctly. There are 2 704 different two-card combinations in a single deck if my Maths is correct which is merely the starting point of using the Shadow System. Goodness knows how many different palaces are needed either. To confuse things further, I’m led to believe that the way that the cards fall out of the shuffled deck in order of “reds” and “blacks” is of extreme importance too. If I understood one such comment that I think @TheHumanTim wrote an unfortunate but unlikely event of getting a deck of 52 randomly shuffled cards with the cards #1 - #26 all being red (therefore obviously #27 - #52 all being black, is the most difficult type of deck to recall. I may be mixing this up with the 2Block System though, so best wait for the experts to answer. Nice Question!!
Trouble at visualising actions - But there is a problem with me, I can’t able to visualise actions much clearly than just putting the objects and combine them.
That’s the only reason I switched to 2 card block system.
Having 3 digit system - Another reason was, since I was already having 3 digit system. I thought it will not be an extra effort to create such a big system.
Not improving pr in cards - My personal best in cards is 24 sec by 1 card peg system like 2 = car
And I tried , and tried but the speed isn’t improving it’s freezed at 24 sec. (*well, I am still not sure is it my best speed, since I got 24 sec on phone, I have no idea if I try on laptop my speed will be better or not.)
Then I considered I should switch to pao. (But find troubling imagine actions)
So thought let’s give 2 card block system a try. Since I believe in try everything yourself.
Now I am in a dilemma
I am quite busy these days. I mean literally months.
1 card system : I am not practicing since I changed the system. Pao : I am confused I should practice or not 2 card block system : that’s I am 101% sure I will do this. But I didn’t trained a bit and it’s almost 8, 9 months since I created.
That’s why I didn’t even playing any card games on memory league. I don’t wanna play 1 card, having trouble at pao and no training on 2 card.
One nice fact you should know that, 2 card block system is a such an easy system. The problem is it’s little trickier to explain in words.
I think the main thing is that any system, given enough properly structured practice, can be used to get to incredibly fast times. If you know it well enough that the card immediately triggers a visual and you practice your link or mem palace technique to the point where there is no hesitation in forming your scenes/story, then you’ll achieve super fast times.
There are some additional benefits to certain systems beyond using it for cards. I’m with @Rajadodve786 where the extra benefit of using most of the Shadow words to simultaneously learn a 3-digit number system is what tipped the scales for me. There was another plus with Shadow being grounded in the Major System, which I was already used to and really really liked.
@fred2 the doomsday scenario for Shadow is alternating colors so every pair starts with the same color. This either makes it 26 loci with one image at each or 1 loci with 26 images interacting at that single spot.
= car