USA National Memory Championships 215
bigtallmofo writes "Could you memorize 1,000 digits in under an hour? How about remember the exact order of 10 shuffled decks of playing cards in under an hour as well as one shuffled deck in less than two minutes? If so, you could be counted among 36 grand masters of memory worldwide. Slate is reporting that other spectacular memory feats were performed at the 2005 USA National Memory Championship. Congratulations to Ram Kolli, a graduate student in computer science at Virginia Tech, and this year's champ."
The visual memory technique really works... (Score:5, Interesting)
- Imagine you're going to send an email to everyone in your department.
- Imagine, now, that email lists are somehow unavailable.
- Starting with yourself, identify all the people in your row.
- Go one row over, and identify all those people.
Do the same for the rest of the rows.
For those of you who sit in circles in the office, just work your way around from right to left (or left to right).
You'll be surprised at how many people you can remember!
It works with restaurants, too, but since you're not likely to know those people, faces and habits will most likely stick out, rather than names.
Many local students? (Score:2, Interesting)
A game these guys would pwn at... (Score:5, Interesting)
Take a deck of cards, shuffled. Remove 1 card randomly and place it face down on the side of the table. All of the players sit in a semi-circle in front of the dealer.
The dealer than plays 1 card face up in the center of the table. ~1 second later, he plays another on top of the card. Repeat 51 times, showing the players 1 card in the deck at a time. When the last card is played, cover the deck up in the middle of the table.
The players (and dealer if he didnt cheat) has seen all cards - save one. The pur-chance-guessing-game ensues: what is that card that is face-down on the side of the table?
Ok, this is just a little wierd... (Score:5, Interesting)
It's that much easier to remember something like that than just three cards? I guess it's like they actually translate the entire deck into a sort of language. Then they just translate it using the same language every time.
Re:A game these guys would pwn at... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just assign all the cards a numerical value from 1 to 13. Now, assign the suits a letter, eg. S=Spades, C=Clubs, H=Hearts, D=Diamonds.
Now as long as you can add, you only have 4 numbers to keep track of
At the end of the dealing, you should have three numbers that are equal to 91 (the sum of 1 through to 13), and one number that is less,
eg. S91, C91, H91, D80.
This tells you that the initial card was the Jack of Diamonds (11 count for D). Simple
I'm sure there is an easier way, but this was the first thing that immediately popped into my head when I read you post.
Have fun the next time you play!
When it fails (Score:3, Interesting)
Ed Cooke (Score:5, Interesting)
Casinos! (Score:4, Interesting)
The private "agency", that Casinos use to scope these potential card counters, probably compile a dossier of these mentats.
Don't bother, just rip the casino off while you can.
memorized zip codes (Score:5, Interesting)
As I recall, he calls himself "the zip code guy".
Re:Casinos! (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to make money at a casino, don't try to beat the casino at their own game. Play against chumps who are bad at poker.