Ron White memorizing cards at the 2009 World Memory Championship in London. In this attempt Ron shuffled through a deck of cards in 1 min and 17 seconds (roughly) and then (not shown in the video) attempted to assemble a second deck of cards to match the deck he has just seen. It was not a success, he flip flopped two cards.
Here are the rules for this event:
The object of SPEED CARDS is to commit to memory and recall a single pack of 52 playing cards in the shortest possible time. There are two trials for this event and the best score is awarded.
Mental Athletes will have 5 minutes to memorize a freshly shuffled pack of 52 playing cards. For those Mental Athletes who expect to memorize the complete pack in less than 5 minutes, a judge is nearby with a stopwatch to record the precise moment memorization stopped. The recall will take place once the entire 5 minute memorization period is complete.
Once the memorization period is over, the Mental Athletes will have 5 minutes for recall. After the memorizing phase everybody gets a second stack of cards which is in perfect order (i.e. diamonds 2, diamonds 3, diamonds 4 ….. etc.). Now this second stack of cards has to be put in the same sequence as the just memorized one. After the recall phase both stacks will be put beside each other on the table with the card on the top where the checking should start from. Now the Judge will compare each card from the memorized stack with each card on the recall stack being at the same position. If there is a discrepancy then only the cards to this point will be counted.
The Mental Athlete who recalls all 52 cards with the shortest memorization time wins the event. If no one correctly recalls an entire pack, one point per card CORRECTLY RECALLED IN SEQUENCE will be awarded. The first mistake made ends scoring. The best score from the two attempts will count.
