As many of you will see, this blog will cover mental feats of both of the type used by competition memorizers and lightning calculators and the type used by magician. The term "magician" implies that there is some sort of cheating and, in the context of this blog, that legitimate memory technique isn't being used. While cheating is stock in trade for magician, anything that can made amazing (especially by making it hidden) is a potential tool for the magician, including classical and modern memory techniques.

In recent years, memory technique has become more popular among magicians and mentalists, especially where the memorized deck is concerned. To the competitive memorizer, the term "memorized deck" means taking a legitimately shuffled deck, and memorizing the order as quickly as possible. To the magician and mentalist, however, it usually means taking the time to memorize one particular arrangement of cards, and using it (and the knowledge of it) as a tool to amaze.

To understand the basics and value of the memorized stack as a tool, check out Doug Dyment's "Introduction to Full-Deck Stacks" and Simon Aronson's "Memories Are Made of This" in "the Magicians Only" section of his site. (A few minutes with Google should yield the password)

The biggest names in memorized stacks are currently Juan Tamariz, Simon Aronson, Martin Joyal, Doug Dyment and Richard Osterlind.

Hopefully, this will help clear up future references to the concept of the memorized deck on this blog.