- [Chris Ramsay] Nelson Dellis.
- Oh man, the pressure.
- [Chris] The pressure.
- I'm rusty.
- [Chris] Nelson, because of you,
I learned how to memorize a deck of cards.
But, I want you kinda to show off
and flex on my audience right now, okay?
- Alright.
- [Chris] Because they're a bunch of magicians.
They love magic.
Me memorizing a deck in ten minutes,
it's okay, but to be able to what you do
might actually be practical.
What do we got here?
What's this thing?
- This is just a timer, stack timer that
I use to, like, measure my time.
I stop it when I'm done.
- [Chris] Do you have to hit it with both hands?
- Yeah.
- [Chris] Really?
- Yeah, yeah.
- [Chris] Wouldn't it be easier just to
have a timer that, just, you could
stop with one hand?
- Yeah, I think, because it comes
the stack, cup stacking world.
Where I guess, you have to have both hands
to indicate that you're starting and finishing.
- [Chris] Oh, interesting.
- With cards, it doesn't matter.
- [Chris] Okay.
- Some people, you know, they start with like,
their deck here and just like...
- [Chris] All right, sir.
So, your record time, again, is?
- 29 seconds. In the privacy of my own home.
But, uh, with you guys,
I'm probably gonna take about a minute or so.
Just to make sure I nail it, rather than for speed, yeah.
- [Chris] A minute would be great.
Whenever you're ready.
(upbeat music)
- [Chris] One minute. What is that, 19 seconds?
- [Nelson] Yeah.
He's just kind of going over it, in his mind, I guess.
- It's crazy.
(upbeat music)
- It looks painful.
- [Chris] It does look painful.
Now, for those of you at home, wondering.
He's deep in his mind palace.
He's wondering the rooms.
- Okay.
- [Chris] He's back, he's back.
- And I'm back, wow.
(Chris laughs)
Bring me back.
- [Chris] So, a minute and 20.
Before you go into it, do you like, double back?
- Yeah.
- [Chris] You went through it and then you went through,
is that something you always do?
- I do that when I'm performing.
- [Chris] Okay, so, at home, you would trust yourself more?
- You would allow yourself to make a mistake?
- Yeah.
I don't do that in competition.
I try to just go through it once, to be the fastest.
The way you reconstruct the deck,
you get another deck in factory or
- [Chris] Yeah, in, right.
- Ace to king, whatever.
- [Chris] And you gotta put it in that order.
- And so you put it, which is helpful because,
if you have the ones that, maybe you missed some
or you have gaps, you can see what's left.
- [Chris] I see.
- Whereas here, I'm gonna recite to you
and then I have to mentally remember.
- [Chris] It's a lot easier to do it in competition.
- I think it's a little easier,
more forgiving, if you have a gap.
More pressure, too. Yeah.
- [Chris] Okay. All right, so let's see.
- Okay. All right, so, jack of hearts,
uh, six of clubs, ten of diamonds,
nine of spades, three of hearts,
I didn't even look at the last one.
Um, but let me figure it out. Hold on.
- [Chris] It's not a joker.
- Thank you.
- Is it ace of hearts?
- [Chris] Bam!
Minute twenty, baby!
- Thanks.
(hands smack)
- [Chris] That's amazing!
- Thank you, thank you.
- [Chris] Yo, that's crazy.
The mind palace that you put that into,
we're gonna check back with you, in like,
a few months from now.
I'm just gonna FaceTime you and be like,
"Hey, lets go.Name them."
(Nelson laughs) - Okay, perfect.
- [Chris] So you can't be in front of your computer.
- Because you're doing that to me,
now, I can't use that memory palace.
- [Chris] Exactly, I'm locking it in.
(Nelson laughs)
I'm taking your memory palace from you.
- Yeah, exactly.
(air whooshing)
- This video is brought to you by Skillshare.
(coin falls into machine)
(button clicks)
(camera whooshes)
(lights buzz)
(buttons click)
(screen clicks on)
(taps on glass)
All right, guys, today, we are fortunate enough
to have a sponsor for this video.
So, thank you, to the folks over at Skillshare.
And, if you don't know this by now,
Skillshare is an online learning platform
with thousands of classes.
And having a premium membership to Skillshare
gives you unlimited access to their website.
Whether you just want to fuel your passion,
or curiosity, or your career even further,
Skillshare is a perfect place
to keep you learning and thriving.
So, for instance, if you're very interested in learning
how we do these super cool cinematic sequences
and intros to some of our videos,
you can follow some Skillshare courses
that'll help you get that.
And learn, basically, the cinematography basics.
There is a course by Zak Mulligan,
where he teaches just that.
You can learn everything from a-z,
putting together a shot list, how to create better shots,
and how to just be a better cinematographer.
And, also, if you compare
it to in class workshop and lessons,
it's a lot cheaper.
It comes out to less than ten dollars a month
if you subscribe annually.
And, because Skillshare is sponsoring this video,
there's a link, in the description,
where you can click that and it'll automatically
get you two months free trial to Skillshare.
So, if ever you were looking for a way
to expedite your learning process,
whether that be in the creative world,
in social media marketing, or in animation,
or in design, if you want to design your own playing cards,
whatever it may be, Skillshare has got a course for you.
So, link in the description, click that,
you get two months free.
Thanks, Skillshare.
Hey, what's up guys?
And welcome back.
This, to my left, over here, is Nelson Dellis.
- What's up, guys?
- Nelson is a four time USA Memory Champion.
He is a memory monster!
(Nelson laughs)
He is a mnemonic...
- Beast.
- Beast of, of massive proportions.
I can even, words can't even describe
how good this guy is at memorizing stuff.
I featured him on a few videos.
If you guys haven't checked those out,
I strongly suggest you check them out
before learning how to memorize a deck of cards today.
You're gonna want to check those out,
how to create a mind palace.
And also, how to use the major system,
which is turning numbers into letters
and turning those letters into images.
Before we go on, as well, if you guys are really interested
in learning this stuff, and exploring the full potential
of your memory, A. Check out Nelson's channel.
I've linked it below.
He covers a lot of in depth memorizing,
How to memorize Morse code, all sorts of really cool stuff.
And also, he's got a book out.
- It's called 'Remember It'.
And, it's just got, chock-full of memory tips.
- So, anything you want to remember, at all,
that you ever need to.
Whether you want to probably compete or whether you
want to just have a better memory to learn stuff.
- Yeah. - Anybody can do this
And I am living proof of this.
I started my memory journey about 12 days ago.
And I can memorize an entire deck of cards,
front to back, back to front, in like, six minutes.
- That's awesome.
- It's nuts!
- Yeah.
- Its absolutely, I didn't it was possible.
I thought you had to be like, gifted or like,
autistic or something.
- No.
- To be able to like, remember stuff.
But apparently, no, it's tricks.
- Its a trainable skill.
- Yeah. It's just something you practice.
And it's not that hard. And its not daunting.
So, if I can do it, guys.
You guys can do it, 100 percent.
- Yeah.
- Today, what we're going to teach you,
if you've already followed along with the other videos,
we're going to teach you how to memorize and entire deck
starting with the face cards.
Baby steps. Grab a deck of cards, and grab every face card.
So, it's 12 cards.
And separate them into suits.
We got hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs.
We're gonna run through sort of how to memorize these
using a system called the PAO System.
- It stands for person, action, object.
- And, in a quick nutshell, what does that mean?
- Basically, we're grouping these cards
into smaller sections so that the whole deck
seems more palatable.
And we're turning them into really super memorable
images or scenes.
- Awesome. All right, so, let's get started here.
- [Nelson] All right, so, lets first start with
what each of these suits would represent.
So, the best way to kind of approach it is to think
in categories.
The best is to go as intuitive as possible, right.
You don't want to have to memorize extra
if you don't have to.
So, hearts I always suggest you make your family
or close friends.
Because hearts, you love them, right?
Diamonds could be celebrities, whoever comes to mind
when you think of money or fame or something like that.
Spades could be friends or kinds of wild card category.
Maybe you love Star Wars, maybe you love magicians.
Maybe those could be that category.
- I use them as fictitious characters.
- Okay.
- So, you know, anything from cartoon characters
to horror villains to super heroes.
- Perfect, yeah.
And then clubs, another suggestion could be sports
or athletes because they use clubs for some of those sports.
Again, it doesn't matter what you choose,
just as long as you decide on it.
- And you have enough in that category.
Enough memorable people or faces that you can attribute
to 13 different images.
- Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- So, you know, don't make it like, oh, the cast of Friends
because you'll be missing like four people.
Or something. - Yeah.
- You know what I mean?
- A wide sized pool to pull from.
- So, for me, these started off as sports figures
and I didn't have enough so I quickly translated
them into magicians because ...
- Okay.
- Because I know way too many magicians,
you know, than I need to.
- So, next, what were gonna do is,
once you have all these people,
you're gonna come up with an action and an object
for each one of those persons.
And, this should be, also, very intuitive.
So, whenever you think of,
who's your king of hearts?
- Uh, my dad.
- It's his dad.
So, or if it's your dad, or whatever,
think of the most, the first thing that comes to mind
as an action that your dad does.
What does your dad do?
- My dad, he loves to ride his motorcycle.
- So, you picture that. That's his action.
Riding a motorcycle.
- Yeah.
- And then, you think of an object.
So, in that case, it almost wrote itself.
- Super easy. It's gonna be the motorcycle.
- A motorcycle, right?
So, the king of hearts is his dad riding a motorcycle.
That's the person, the action, and the object. Okay.
Then you do that for all the cards. Right.
- So let's do an example here.
- Yeah.
- So we have the king of hearts,
which is going to be my dad.
And he's riding a motorcycle.
Um, now, lets choose one of the diamonds, here.
[Nelson] Sure, what's queen of diamonds for you?
For me, queen of diamonds is Oprah Winfrey
flying on a jet pack.
- Okay.
- Because I remember this Dane Cook skit.
Dane Cooks is a comedian.
And he was like, "and Oprah, she'd come in and she'd like,
you know, wiz in on her jet pack and like, spell Oprah
with like," do you remember that skit?
- Yeah, I remember that.
- So, for some reason, that stuck in my head
and I think that's the first thing I think about, so.
- And that's a perfect example.
Because most people might not think of that for Oprah.
But, for you, you did.
So, that is what people should do is go with whatever
you first think of.
- Right. So, Oprah, Oprah Winfrey flying a jet pack.
- [Nelson] Flying a jet pack, okay.
- [Chris] So let's put this here.
So we've got my dad riding a motorcycle,
Oprah Winfrey flying on a jet pack, and uh,
let's take like a fictitious character here.
- Yeah, so what's the jack of spades for you?
- Jack of spades is James Bond shooting a gun.
- Nice, okay.
- So, J for James.
- That makes sense.
- It's easy enough. James Bond is a fictitious character,
and I think, I always try to like link up the actions
and objects to make sense to each other.
It's like, James Bond fishing with a spear.
Like, it would be James Bond
fishing with a fishing rod, you know.
- Right, right, right.
- It wouldn't be too much of a stretch.
- Yeah.
- James Bond shooting with a gun. I see that.
(Chris sings James Bond theme song)
(James Bond theme song)
The, with the thing.
- The barrel, yeah.
- Yeah.
Is it a barrel or is it like, just like the aperture?
It looks kind of like an aperture thing.
- I thought it was supposed to be...
- It's a barrel? - A gun barrel.
- [Lee] It's a barrel.
- Lee said it's a barrel.
(Nelson laughs)
What does he know?
These. We'll just concentrate on that for now.
- [Nelson] Yeah.
So, this is what happens next.
So, everybody has a person, action, object.
Now, what happens is, when a deck is shuffled,
you know, you're gonna see all these cards in order.
You're gonna start from here and go to there.
Um, you're gonna look at three cards at a time.
And every three groups of cards, you're gonna
read them as the person doing the next card's action
with the next card's object.
So, you're basically going to get all these kind of weird
combinations of all the PAO's that you've designed
for all these cards.
In this case, we have king of hearts which is our person.
- [Chris] My dad.
- [Nelson] Your dad. Then we have Oprah but it's in the
action spot, so we use the action from her.
Which is?
- [Chris] She's flying.
- [Nelson] She's flying. And then, finally,
we have James Bond but it's his object.
He's in the object spot.
So what's...
- [Chris] It's a gun.
- [Nelson] So, we have your dad flying on a gun.
- Right. That's exactly what I see.
- Yeah.
(Nelson laughs)
- So, I see my dad, kind of, like,
kind of like he's like, riding a motorcycle
but he's actually riding it through the air.
And its a gun that's like projecting
fire out of the back of it, right?
(Nelson laughs)
So he's like flying out of this like, uncontrollable gun
that just won't stop firing, you know?
And I see my dad's beard in the wind.
I'm seeing all these like, crazy images.
I smell the gun powder, you know what I mean?
These are just things that I'm trying
to add onto that image to make it more memorable.
- And that's super helpful because you're really adding
a color and memorableness to this picture when you add
those little details.
- Yeah, I found I can remember a lot more,
not just when I put those images together,
but when I start thinking of little, tiny details.
Uh, such as smells, textures, sounds,
even sometimes making the people, like deforming them.
Like, their teeth falling out for no reason.
Like, these are just really abstract thoughts.
Or they're naked, you know?
Probably not my dad. I'm probably not gonna, oh God.
- That's one image.
Those three cards are now this one unforgettable image.
And if that's the first image in your series of cards,
you're gonna put that at the first location
of your mind palace.
- Right, so, my mind palace would be this office,
would be my parking spot outside.
So, my dad would be flying around the parking lot
on a gun, you know, and then that's it.
- And then, the idea is that,
you do that for the rest of the deck.
When you're recalling the deck, you go to your mind palace,
the first location, there's that bazaar picture of your dad
flying around on a gun.
And then you would translate it back to king of hearts,
queen of diamonds, and jack of spades.
- And, that would actually be super easy to do.
A lot of people think it's going to be difficult
for them to think of that,
but it's surprisingly really easy to recall the actions
and objects associated to the person or the card.
- Yeah.
- A lot easier than you would think and I would suggest,
personally, this is how I did it, learning from
Nelson's channel, I took all 12 cards, all 12 face cards,
assigned a person, action and object to all of them,
and practiced those 12 over and over.
I shuffled them, you know, and then dealt them out,
and tried to remember them in the order that they
were dealt out, put them back together,
and then recite them.
And, uh, that's helped me out.
Once I did that, I moved on to number cards.
- Yeah, so, once you're comfortable
with the idea of PAO,
obviously you've gotta give images, PAO,
to all the rest of the cards, right?
And so, number cards is a little more challenging,
they don't have faces on them.
You gotta go by something other than what it looks like.
And for this, they can refer to the other video
that we did together describing the major system
where you take a number and you turn it into a letter
and you can use that to kind of help figure out
who your characters are in those categories.
- Some of mine are pretty explicit.
(Nelson laughs)
So I'm trying to like...
- Choose the safe ones.
- Trying to take the PG ones because, uh,
you know, a lot of time, as crazy as it seems,
but raw nudity, you know, sexually oriented images
tend to stay in your head.
- You can't forget them
- A lot easier. Also, violence, you know.
- A little gore.
- Yeah, a little gore.
These type of things always sort of come up a lot easier.
Um, so here. - Okay.
- These are my three cards that I choose.
So, let's say that these three
were the next order.
- [Nelson] Yeah.
- [Chris] For me, this a diamond, so it's like,
for me it's rich and famous people.
- [Nelson] Yeah.
- One, being the letter T or the sound "tuh" or "duh".
- [Nelson] Yeah.
- [Chris] I chose Taylor Swift.
- [Nelson] Nice.
- [Chris] Singing into a microphone.
That's how I see Taylor Swift.
- [Nelson] Yep.
- [Chris] Singing into a microphone.
Super easy, super simple.
- Two, which is the "nuh" sound in the major system.
And this is fictitious people.
- [Nelson] Spades, yeah.
- [Chris] Fictional character, so it's Nemo swimming
in an aquarium.
- [Nelson] Perfect, yeah.
- [Chris] And then, hearts are friends and family.
Here, I have a five. And five is the L, right,
in the major system.
And so, it's actually Lee, my camera guy.
- [Lee] Hey-o.
- And he's, uh, stretching on a carpet.
Now, this, okay.
(Nelson laughs)
So, the video you're seeing here,
alright, is straight from my camera roll.
This is, yeah, I'm showing it, Lee.
- [Nelson] Nice.
- This is me trying to edit
and this is what I gotta put up with.
The Lee stretching on a carpet really resonates with me.
(Chris Laughs)
- Nice.
- So, that's what I've got here.
So, now we would have Taylor Swift.
- [Nelson] Yeah.
- [Chris] Swimming.
- [Nelson] Person. Swimming, action.
- [Chris] On a carpet.
- [Nelson] On a carpet.
- [Chris] Or in a carpet. Or on a carpet, right?
In my head, now, I'm just imagining, like,
an ocean made of carpets, right,
and Taylor Swift, she's got gills, like a mermaid,
and she's swimming through it but she's getting
rug burn as well at the same time and she's losing
hair, for some reason, it's just like.
That's what I'm seeing.
- Got it, yeah.
And one little technicality.
So, obviously, there's ace, two, three, four, five,
six, seven, eight, nine, and ten.
So, we consider the ace as equivalent to like, one.
Right, so, use the one too translate to the T or D sound.
- Right.
- And then, the ten, think of it like a zero.
- So, it'll be like the "zuh" or "suh" sound.
- I mean, some pointers that I kind of like, figured out
from you know, reading his stuff
and listening to his videos.
One is make sure your actions don't repeat.
- Yeah, you want everything to be quite unique
from each other so that, obviously, you don't confuse
you know, if you have two images of people flying.
- Yeah.
- Which one is it gonna be?
Which card is it?
So, make sure that flying is only for, you know?
- Yeah.
- Oprah.
- Yeah, the actions can look the same
or can sound the same, if you want.
But, as long as in your head,
I guess you can differentiate the two, like, distinctly.
Any other tips you want to give our audience?
- Yeah, try to make your images meaningful.
It's 52 images, so, some people might,
you might fill them up for the most part,
but there might be a few stragglers of cards
that you can't quite find a good fit for.
For those, I would suggest just choosing
people that you want in your system.
You know, if you love Game of Thrones,
put Tyrion in there.
Uh, if you have a new girlfriend
who's on your mind all the time,
put her in the cards, right.
Because nothing is easier to memorize
than something you care about.
- Also, make sure your actions
and objects and people are super concrete.
So, an action like talking.
Like, talking is like, is one of those weird
things like what are you saying?
Like, it's just gonna be too hard to imagine.
So, maybe it's my dad screaming.
(Chris Screams)
That's much more like, vivid as an image than...
- Right.Yeah, yeah.
- You know, something a little bit.
- And also, another point is, these images
are to stay, right, so every time you see that card,
depending on it's position,
you're always gonna think of the same person.
You're always gonna think of the same action.
You're always gonna think of the same object.
You know, you're just mixing
in different orders every time you memorize.
But nothing changes.
If you were gonna change them up every time,
then it would be really hard to remember
what image was what so you want it to be consistent.
- All right, guys.
So, let me know your thoughts
below about learning all this memory stuff.
I know this is new to this channel.
This is Friday bonus videos,
you never know what you're gonna get.
And I'm super stoked with this content.
Because for me, personally, it's just something
that I'm experiencing and I want to share with you guys.
If you like it, let me know in the comments.
And if you're already into this type of stuff,
I want to hear about it and uh, here,
let's do a little test.
What are these three cards?
Queen of spades, jack of hearts, king of clubs,
what is happening there?
Let me know in the comments below.
Person, action, object.
Let me know, in the comments, what this is.
Please keep it clean, folks.
Or try to, at least.
- For me, its Jennifer Connelly sailing on a golf club.
- [Chris] And, what if it was this?
(Chris Laughs)
- Oh, I'm not gonna say that one.
(Chris Laughs)
If you've seen the movie Requiem for a Dream,
the last two scenes, you maybe know.
- That's hilarious.
- That's what Jennifer Connelly is doing.
(Chris And Nelson laugh)
All right, guys.
Thanks so much for watching.
Like, subscribe, check out his channel.
Nelson's got a ton of videos.
Check out his book if you're interested in learning
more about this stuff.
And we'll see you on the next video.
Peace.
- See you guys.
(accordion music)