As much as I teach real memory feats, I'm not above the occasional fake demonstration. Many of them, like the one taught on Scam School in the video below, are quite ingenious in their methods.

If you don't believe me, just check out the 15 pages under Simulated Memory Demonstrations in my Memory Effects list.

I've run across several fake memory demonstrations that were less than convincing, so I have an appreciation for the simple and direct methods. Watch the presentation up to about the 2:50 mark, and see if you can figure out the method.



If you're not familiar with the key card concept Brian mentions, here's the Scam School episode in which he teaches it.

Any thoughts yet? OK, go ahead and watch the rest of the video for the method now.

This type of presentation was originated by Morris “Moe” Seidenstein (1909-2003), who first published it in his book Moe's Miracles as “Move A Card”. The original method relied more on a trained memory.

As an alternative to real memory work, I think the use of two key cards to highlight a range of cards in ingenious. The video is a little unclear on the exact process of returning the card to the deck between the key cards, but a quick reading of the Scam School forum thread for this episode will help clear up that confusion.

The last comment on that thread does bring up the possibility of having 8 to 10 cards between your key cards. How do you handle that? This is where a legitimate trained memory comes in handy, but the work is simpler than you may think. If you practice the Link System in conjunction with Bob Farmer's playing card mnemonics, facing 8 to 10 cards or more will be a snap. If you want to practice this way, try shuffling more than once. You might be surprised just how many cards you can remember!

As a side note, this does bring up how truly randomizing a standard riffle shuffle can be. Both the recent Gilbreath Principle episode and episode 31, titled How to Predict the Future!, teach you how to make surprisingly specific statements about a legitimately shuffled deck, even without looking at it after the shuffle.

Play around with this, and tell me about your experiences and ideas in the comments.