Cheat Codes to Magic?

In this post, you’re going to discover the stunningly effective secret employed by myself and many of the best magicians alive. This system requires zero upfront sleight of hand, gimmicks or stooges…and it produces some of the most powerful effects ever devised in magic.

But before I do, a preface:

This system is what I believe to be the ‘future’ of card magic, requires no sleight of hand to get started, and allows you to perform professional-grade magic without busting your knuckles for decades…

…but you will have to put in some work. 

However, as I’ll show you…this is the ‘smart’ kind of work. (rather than just ‘hard’.)

In fact, you can put the work in just once, and it’ll repay you for the rest of your magic career. 

Sound good?

Let’s dive into it…

1. The Overview
2. How to Get Started
3. Other resources

The Overview

The technique I’m talking about, as some astute readers may have pieced together, is the ‘memorized deck.’

A memorized deck is a deck in which the position of each of the 52 cards (from 1 to 52) has been committed to memory.

The two benefits to this are as follows:

If someone names any number from 1-52 you know will know instantly what card lies in that position…

…and if someone names a card you know exactly at what number it lies in the deck.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

But dig into it just a little and you’ll start to realize how many possibilities this opens up. 

In fact, the overview above is perhaps a little too basic. 

What the memorised deck REALLY is is a deck in which every single card acts as a ‘key card.’

I won’t get deep into ‘key cards’ here, but any experienced card handler should instantly recognise the power of this. 

(This distinction is not unique to me. I was first introduced to this concept while reading Juan Tamariz’ incredible Mnemonica.)

Nearly EVERY effect in card magic can instantly be made stronger with the addition of a memorised deck. 

I believe that’s an undeniable fact. Using a memorised deck won’t ‘detract’ from your effects, it can only add to them. 

With that in mind, the question is not “should I add the memorised deck to my arsenal?” but rather “why isn’t it already in there, and what needs to change to make that happen?”

How To Get Started

Okay so you’re interested in the concept but you want some sort of shortcut?

How can YOU memorize a deck without spending months hammering the information into your brain?

It’s actually pretty easy.  

How do we enjoy anything these days? We gamify it. It’s called Stack Trainer and this app will give you the ability to learn stacked decks in a way you never could before by making the process more ‘fun’ than it is ‘work!’.

My cousin and I both love and swear by this app, so if stacked decks are your thing, make sure you head on over to the app store and give this one a download. 

Other Resources (recommended reading)

It would be nearly impossible to capture the complexity and utility of this device in a short blog post like this, so I’ll instead direct you to the best places to start your real study of this technique.

The undisputed ‘king’ of the memorised deck is the great Juan Tamariz, followed closely by his American contemporary Simon Aronson.

Both of the above magicians have excellent work on the mem deck that should be ‘required reading’ for all stacked deck workers, but there are several other excellent resources worth mentioning. 

Here they are:

1. Juan Tamariz’ Mnemonica
2. Simon Aronson’s Bound to Please 
3. Michael Close’s ‘workers’ books
4. Pit Hartling’s ‘In Order to Amaze’
5. Woody Aragon’s ‘Memorandum’
6. Asi Wind’s ‘Repetoire’
7. Matt Baker’s ‘Buena Vista Shuffle Club’
8. Chan Canasta, A Remarkable Man
9. Lew Brooks’ ‘Stack Attack’
10. Denis Behr’s ‘Handcrafted magic’

An extra word on Mnemonica:

Mnemonica contains (bar none) the greatest secrets of stacked deck magic…but you’re gonna need to put in some work to make them your own.

No ‘wearable Triumphs’ or ‘automatic Cards to Pocket’ here.

Just hard-hitting show-stoppers devised by ‘el Maestro’ (the magician universally recognized as the greatest in the world.)

You can’t just buy a ‘stack watch’ (yes, that’s a real thing) and expect Tamariz’s skills to be downloaded into your mind. You need to study his work, and that journey starts with Mnemonica.

The good news is, it’s going to be one of the most exciting journeys of your life.

Highlights will include:

• ‘Mnemonicsis’, found on Page 97 (and used by pros like David Blaine on unsuspecting audiences and celebrities around the world)
• Juan’s A.C.A.A.N (this is about as close to the Holy Grail of card magic as you can get) found on page 82
• A little-known principle of mathematics that, when applied to the stack, will allow you to perform 8 of Mnemonica’s most stunning effects in a row (even though you’re genuinely shuffling the deck the whole time!) found on pages 169-171.
• A complete method to open a fresh deck of cards and be in stack in mere minutes. Used correctly, this will absolutely fry other magicians (and best of all, you do all the ‘dirty work’ in front of them). Found on page 14.

And that’s barely scratching the surface of what you’ll find in this book.

There’s just 11 copies left on Amazon, so if you want to pick it up and get it shipped to you ‘mucho rapido’, I’d secure yours ASAP using the affiliate link below:

https://amzn.to/36ZA6V3

Why I think the mem-deck boom is only just beginning:

Here’s the craziest part about all this.

Most magicians are still only just ‘waking up’ to the power of the memorised deck. Many of the ‘old school’ crowd raised on the bread-and-butter approach to sleight of hand looked down on the mem deck for decades…until magicians like Tamariz came along and destroyed them using it. 

We’re currently enjoying a mem deck ‘boom’, but my prediction is that we’re only at the beginning. 

Here’s why:

Some magicians still think it’s ‘too much work’ to memorise a deck of cards. So they go back to their close-up mats and spend another 10 years working on their second deals. 

Do you see the irony here?

(I mean, seriously, you’re telling me you’d rather spend ten years drilling the pass vs a couple weeks of memorisation that open up an entire new world of magic?)

This attitude is slowly changing as people realise how powerful this tool is for the relatively low cost of learning it. 

In the future, the memorised deck might be as essential a tool as a double lift. Maybe that sounds crazy, but that’s what I hope.

Well, that’s everything for now, but keep your eyes on this space because we will be updating this post on memorized decks regularly and I mean regularly!!