Jim Karol - Amazing Memory or Magic Trick
I just watched a YouTube clip of a Howard Stern radio show episode. In it, Jim Karol performs several feats of mentalism. One in particular caught my eye. He seemingly is able to instantly memorize the order of all 52 cards in a standard deck. Check it out. It begins just before the eleven-minute mark in this video:
Because Jim Karol makes lots of money with his Memory Master course and lures people to sign up by demonstrating similar feats of mental power, I feel it is time for a closer examination of his claims. What do you think is happening in the video? Amazing memory or magic trick, or perhaps a little of both? |
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Is there much to be gained by paying him money and taking his Memory Master course? |
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I studied acting in college and during my younger days appeared in many plays, musicals and stage shows. I had to memorize page after page of dialogue and stave after stave of music, not to mention blocking and cues. Then I had to unlearn all of that so I could start to memorize new stuff for the next new show. And I'd say my memorization skills are rather average. How many songs do you know? Hundreds? It doesn't take much to learn the lyrics of a song. The fact is, all of us use memory and memorization skills all the time, everyday. If I was a professional mentalist and I needed to memorize the sequence of a shuffled, 52-card deck, I betcha I could knock that out in about fifteen minutes, thirty at the most. It would not be an amazing feat by any means. |
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I had an accounting prof in college who, on the first day of class, would go around the class and have every one of the 30 or so students say their name and where they were from and he would engage them in brief small talk - for instance, the last time he visited that town, etc.. The whole process took nearly an hour, and he didn't rush, and didn't write anything down. Then, he want back through the class, one by one, but in a different order than before, and stated each students full name and hometown as well as other tid bits he'd heard during the period. It was interesting to watch. He was no hukster and there were no cheats. He was just well practiced at memorizing. |
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Were I to attempt what your professor did, I would first require loads of special training and tons of practice. I'd need to study the special tricks that go along with picture memory and I'd need to rehearse my skills many times before ever attempting to try them on an unknown group of people like your professor did. Contrast that type of memory skill with the one I mentioned upthread about learning the lyrics to a song. Many years ago I learned the lyrics to Frank Zappa's "Dumb All Over." To this day, I can recite the lyrics word for word without even thinking about it. I don't exactly know how many words are in the song but I can assure you it's way more than 52. The time needed to learn the lyrics is irrelevant. Maybe I learned them in an hour or maybe it took me three years. It doesn't matter. The skill I used is one that virtually all of us possess. Even a person with a less-than-average memory skillset has the ability to memorize a song without the need for special training or practice. Would you and Zooterkin agree with me that most people have the ability to memorize the lyrics to a song without needing to acquire special training and practice to do so? Would you also agree with me that the two types of memory skills mentioned here, i.e. memorizing lyrics over any amount of time vs. memorizing the names, hometowns, and various other tidbits of thirty strangers to accurately recall within one hour, are different? I would suggest they are different. I would further suggest the skills Mr. Karol uses in his card trick are closer to learning lyrics than they are to the more advanced skills of your professor. In other words, it wouldn't take much practice to do what Jim Karol did. |
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They seem to me as more of varying degrees of practice rather than different skills. That is, I know the lyrics of *lots* of songs. But, for the most part, I have to sing them - at least in my head - to get the lyrics to come to me. There is something about the connection with melody and cadence that make it easier to remember. Its the same with the myriad number strings I have memorized - bank account and credit card numbers, SS number, phone numbers, etc.... All of them have a particular cadence, and the cadence serves as a sort of mnemonic for me. I assume for others, too. And, I assume these sorts of memory tricksters are simply well versed in using mnemonics to help them remember things. |
The internet seems to think it's possible, although the most charitable estimate says it takes hours of practice.
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Let's take it a step further.
Take a look at this video. (This one doesn't allow the YouTube tags.) Jim Karol on Ellen Does anyone notice anything interesting that stands out in this version of the trick? |
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Here's a small hint: |
DA, between this thread and the elevation car thread, you are my new forum hero.
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I just got caught up trying to do the fancy formatting. |
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As for his course, I wouldn't drop money on it. I don't doubt that it would be effective, as he would teach the same method that others teach, but undoubtedly would be charging much more. What matters is the effort you put in, as everyone uses very similar techniques. My suggestion - find an old cheap book by Harry Lorayne (all of his books cover similar material), or perhaps one by Dominic O'Brien (I have never read any of his books, but I am sure they are the same thing, just likely with some updated methods). Also the book Moonwalking with Einstein is great. It has been a lot of years, but I can still do things like tell people what day of the week they were born on within two or three seconds and memorize the names of a classroom of students after having them say their names once. But it probably took me more than 5 minutes to find where I parked my car at the mall earlier today. |
I wouldn't buy the memory course, either, but not because there isn't some value in it; there may well be a lot of value in it (I don't have it), but this sort of memory help is available through a few select books without spending big bucks. Harry Lorayne, mentioned above, is a great place to start. Some stuff by Derren Brown, too, though his stuff is buried in the midst of other things.
As to how difficult it is to memorize 52 cards, as is said above, with practice and memory techniques, one can do it in a few minutes with the right training and practice, though that is not how Karol did it on Stern or Ellen. As DA points out, he has one stack that he has memorized. You can take as long as you like to learn that stack, and it appears that Karol took a deck, shuffled it until he was satisfied that it appeared random, and memorized it. That's how I'd do it, too, but there are even easier ways that I won't go into except to say that in setting up the stack one can make it appear random while in reality the suit and value of one card gives a clue to the suit and value of the next so even if you forget the stack you can get back on track by working the simple algorithm that's built in. As to the professor who memorized the class names and details, that takes practice but again, not so much as it at first seems. I was at a seminar with thirty people I had never met about six years ago. The seminar leader spent the first half hour instructing us to do something similar. The first person in class gave their name, hometown, job title, and one or two other things. The second person repeated what the first person said then added their own info. The third repeated the info of the first and second then added their own and so on. By the fifth person, people were stumbling a lot and needing reminders. By the 10th, very few remembered anything of consequence. Perhaps three or four people got about 50% right, but in a stumbling fashion. At the beginning, I saw that I would be the last person to go so I immediately began employing some techniques I had read about but never used, and I attempted to cement every person's info in my mind. When it got to me, I turned my back on the room and recited all the information without error not quite as fast as Karol in the video but at a steady rate. Everyone was impressed, and I was pleased with the little validation of the things I'd read. You have to actively engage to do it, though; you can't half pay attention and expect it to work. |
That Ellen clip shows two magic tricks. Then on the MemoryMaster website, there is this claim:
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The second trick on the Ellen clip is a standard implementation of the Invisible Deck. A kid can learn to do that in 15 minutes. Nothing real there either. The hot tin foil trick on Stern is another standard of magic -although it uses a dangerous chemical so it isn't common anymore (I have heard of non-chemical ways of doing this but they won't have the effect it had on Stern). Also not real unless you count regular old chemical reactions as magic. I have a problem with magicians passing off what they do as "ABSOLUTELY REAL." Especially when the things they are passing off as real are very standard well known magic tricks. |
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The Harry Lorayne books: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...=Harry+Lorayne
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Derren Brown books: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...s=Derren+Brown
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Dominic O'Brien books: https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...inic+O%27Brien
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Just to beat a dead horse, memorized deck work is a popular sub-branch of card magic these days. If you're interested in it's use in a magic context, you can get Juan Tamariz's Mnemonica, Simon Aronson's Bound to Please, and Woody Aragon's Memorandum.
Ask for them wherever you buy magic books. |
The prep-work to memorize a personalized and reliable memory palace and peg system is the hard part. It could take months to lock down. But once in place, any list is trivial to memorize.
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Please review the upthread spoiler by DevilsAdvocate, this one: Quote:
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I assure you i know the point. Not using standard-Stack, the deck is standard. Memorization of stacks generally involves personalized neumonic tricks. No sense wasting your time going at it cold. While one could spend months or years, any memory expert can do a deck in a few minutes. Clearly Karol pre-drilled this stack, but I assume he can peg it rather quickly with the usual methods.
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Jum Karol's classic Force is very sloppy I wil say that.(a year later lol)
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I remember reading as a kid 50 years ago Jerry Lucas' book on memorization. In the first chapter he talked about memorizing a list of 20 different items, and while I can't remember them all, there was an envelope, an airplane, a basketball, a song and a bucket.
I used to be terrible at remembering names but since I have to do it at work, I've become much better. A trick I use is when I meet someone I try to associate them with someone else who has the same first name. |
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I still use the number/letter/word/image associations for PINs. |
The alphabet was mentioned in this thread a couple years ago, and setting things to music definitely helps memorization. When I recite the alphabet, I almost always hear the song that ends "Now I know my ABCs. Next time won't you sing with me?" in my head.
I can recite the preamble of the Constitution from memory, but the cadence tends to match the song from Schoolhouse Rock. Thanks to an episode of Cheers, I'll never forget that Albania borders on the Adriatic, its land is mostly mountainous, and its major export is chrome. Coach was helping Sam get his GED and introduced him to the idea of remembering facts by associating them with music. |
I agree he uses a mem deck. Years ago I started learning the Aronson stack after reading some books by Michael Close. I didn't stick with it so the stack didn't stick with me. But Simon Aronson and Michael Close have some really astonishing effects using this technique (such as a gaff-free Invisible Deck).
As to really memorizing a shuffled deck, this is a standard phase of formal memory competitions. I believe the world record for correctly memorizing a randomly shuffled deck is just over 15 seconds. Astonishing indeed! |
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