Every sport needs a super star, a legend that makes it more interesting for the fans: In the 90′s it has been the always perfectly dressed Dominic O’Brien who won the World Memory Championships more often than anbody else until today. In the last decade however memory sports most valuable player was by far the bold bearded man with the black hat. He has the fastest memory in the world and probably the best humor among all athletes of his kind. Memory-Sports.com spoke with the self-appointed “Geek” about his roots, role models and rivals.

When I was at school I was a typical geek.

Memory-Sports: Tell us a little bit about your youth.

Ben: My youth was completely uninteresting to anyone who wants to know about memory sports. When I was at school I was a typical geek (a late 80s, early 90s geek – I didn’t touch a computer from one week to the next), I was good at maths and I spent every spare second at school playing chess or cards with my equally geeky gang of friends. I did memorise a poem once, at the age of 12, for a school event (Macavity the Mystery Cat), but only because Mrs Slater the English teacher told me to. I suppose you could say that set me on the road to becoming a World Memory Champion, but I don’t think it really did.

Memory-Sports: What was your first contact with memory sports?

Ben: The short answer that I give to people who ask me this question is “I went along to the WMC in 2000 to see what it was like, and I’ve been hooked ever since.” The full answer is a little bit more complicated, but only a little:

In 1997, I read in Mensa Magazine about a brand new event called the Mind Sports Olympiad, which was an Olympic Games for mind sports, with competitions in everything even vaguely mind-related, over the course of a week at the Royal Festival Hall in London. I decided to go along and take part in the World Intelligence Championship, a brand-new competition that involved five full days of IQ puzzles. It was great fun (I came fifth out of about twelve competitors), and I also had the opportunity to check out some of the various other board games, card games and mental skills competitions taking place there. One thing I didn’t notice at all, as far as I can remember, was the World Memory Championship, which took place as part of the MSO that year.

In 1998, when the MSO had relocated to the Novotel in Hammersmith with a greatly reduced budget but was still a lot of fun, I entered a lot of other competitions as well as the Intelligence, and for the first time consciously registered the existence of the World Memory Championship. On the first day of the WMC (it was a two-day competition back then) I heard that the favourite discipline there was memorising a pack of cards, and I was curious to know just how difficult that was. So I bought a pack of cards and that evening I tried to memorise it, by repeating the cards to myself until I’d got them all memorised in sequence. It took me 48 minutes.

I tried to memorise a pack of cards, by repeating the cards to myself until I’d got them all memorised in sequence. It took me 48 minutes.

The next day, I was sitting at a desk ready to start the Mental Calculations World Championship, somebody came in (I think it was David Levy, who in those days was one of the ‘big three’ along with Tony Buzan and Raymond Keene who ran the event) and announced that Andi Bell had broken the world record in speed cards with 34.03 seconds. The disparity between those results fascinated me, and I wondered how fast I could get if I kept practicing. So I did keep practicing over the next couple of years, whenever I had a spare moment. I got down to about fifteen minutes in the end, still without using any kind of memory techniques – I had heard them mentioned in an article (an interview with Demis Hassabis, who said he was planning to learn how to do it) but dismissed the whole journey method as some rubbish that someone had made up to sell books, which couldn’t possibly work.

In 1999, at the Decamentathlon (a competition composed of puzzles in ten different mind sports, including memory), I met Tom Groves, who impressed everyone by memorising a pack of cards perfectly in five minutes and who apparently really did use those memory techniques I’d heard about. But I still wasn’t really convinced. Anyway,  I was still interested in the memory championships, so when I found a gap in my MSO schedule in 2000, I decided to compete.

I tried my hand at the first discipline, hour numbers, without any memory technique, and unsurprisingly got a pretty bad score, and then the second discipline was the poem, which to my surprise (and everyone else’s),  I won. That was fun, I thought. Maybe if I could get good at the other disciplines, I could do well in this memory thing. Some of the other competitors managed to convince me that memory techniques really do work, so I went out and bought a book (Use Your Memory, by Tony Buzan) and read the chapters about cards and numbers – I ignored everything else in the book that wasn’t about the specific events tested in the World Memory Championship. I created a couple of journeys and a set of images for cards, and started practicing. The next day in Hour Cards, using my new system, I managed to memorise three packs, and I was very impressed. I still wasn’t fast enough to memorise a pack in under five minutes, but I got it down to seven and a half that night. I was addicted to memory techniques for life from that point onwards.

Memory-Sports: Who was your role model in your early days as a memory athlete?

Ben: In those days, there was only one real role model for everyone – Dominic O’Brien. He was by far and away the best memoriser in the world, and he always won the World Championships comfortably. But his main rival was Andi Bell, and I quickly became a fan of his. In 2000, just before the competition started, Andi came up to me (he had his hair in a ponytail back then, and looked very cool) and said “Hi, I’m Andi, I’m one of the other competitors,” and we had a friendly chat. I was very impressed when I found out a bit later that he was a former world champion and one of the hot favourites. In a lot of mind sports the really good players don’t talk to the nonentities at all, so this was something a bit different. And it turned out that the ‘word on the street’ was that Andi had the potential to be much, much better than Dominic if he could just get his best results more consistently (which he did eventually achieve in 2002, completely blowing away Dominic and everyone else), so I looked up to him as my major inspiration in the early days.

I looked up to Andi Bell as my major inspiration in the early days.

The only thing Dominic said to me during the 2000 WMC, by the way, was “Was it you who was whispering?” – in the spoken numbers, somebody could be heard very loudly whispering the first few digits to himself over and over while the rest of the digits were still playing. But it wasn’t me, it was the guy in front of me. Also in the early days I took a lot of advice from the other British competitors, especially Robert Carder and Tom Groves, who helped me a lot.

Memory-Sports: What made you to come up with the highly sophisticated “Ben System”?

Ben: By 2002, I was a regular memory competitor, but I knew that I had reached the limits of the system I was using. With a basic list of 52 images for cards and 100 for numbers, if you try to memorise a 1000-digit number in an hour, each image will appear an average of five times. If you try to memorise ten packs of cards, each image will show up ten times. And that’s too much,  it’s just not possible to go any further with a system like that. I managed eleventh place in the WMC that year (it was so much easier to do that back then!) using that system and a terrible category-based system for binary that I’d invented myself but which didn’t work at all (I always wanted to avoid translating binary digits into decimal and then converting them into images, so this system was my first attempt at ‘improving’ on the systems everybody else used by creating one of my own. It didn’t work, but that didn’t discourage me), but I knew I could never get any better than that if I didn’t start using a more advanced technique.

In November 2002 I left my job, which I was fed up with (I’d been there since April 1996), borrowed a lot of money at a high interest rate (this debt followed me around and stopped me having any money for a long time until I finally paid it off last year) and devoted some time to ‘working out what I want to do with my life’. This included a holiday in Las Vegas, a one-month course learning to teach English as a foreign language and a lot of sitting around my flat in my pants, watching cartoons. But it also involved taking a bit of time to think about memory techniques and how to make mine better.

The first step was to change to a 1000-image system for numbers. I didn’t want to do it using three Major-system consonants, though, because I thought I would learn them more easily and use them more quickly in competitions if each image was a simple one-syllable word. So I had the idea of using a vowel for the middle digit. So I created a list in that way, and practiced with it (placing three images on a location instead of two, just to see if that would work) until I was fairly sure it was better than the 100-image system I’d been using before. But I didn’t have much time for training, because of all the time I was spending sitting around in my pants, watching cartoons. It was only when I’d completely run out of money and had to get another job that I really started working on my memory system too.

I didn’t have much time for training, because of all the time I was spending sitting around in my pants, watching cartoons.

The inspiration sort of came out of nowhere. As far as I can remember, I was idly thinking to myself ‘What can I do with cards? Person-action-object just doesn’t work for me [I’d tried that in my failed binary system], but how else can you increase your number of images and not have the same old 52 things over and over again? An image for each pair of cards? How many would that be? 2704. That’s not much more than 1000, it sounds possible. But how to convert them into a word?’ I thought about number-suit-number-suit, but that sounded too cumbersome. And I really liked my consonant-vowel-consonant system for numbers. Hey, I thought, there are only sixteen combinations of two suits. Sixteen consonants, thirteen vowels, thirteen consonants – can I do that? Sure, let’s try!

And from that, I realised that there were also sixteen combinations of four binary digits, so I could do that as 4-3-3 and use the same images to make an image for each ten-digit binary number, which is the perfect number to fit each line of 30 digits in a location! And, if I just amended a few of my 1000 decimal images (I still used ‘b’ or ‘p’ for ‘9’ in my first list, and so on), I could have a universal list of 2704 images that would cover EVERYTHING! What a cool system that would be! And so that was the moment of inspiration that turned into a couple of months of work creating images and trying to learn them all.

Memory-Sports: I know you hear that question every know and then. But one last time and you can always say “Read it on Memory-Sports.com!”: How does your system work in detail?

Ben: That really needs an article to itself. I’ll rewrite one of my old forum posts and turn it into a comprehensive “Ben system” guide, some time. But basically, it’s just an image of an object or person for each 3-digit decimal number, 10-digit binary number or pair of two cards, three objects in a location. Simple as that.

Memory-Sports: How long and intensive did you train your system before it was ready to go in a memory championship?

Ben: Very intensively – I realised I was onto something good straight away (this was in spring of 2003) and I spent every spare moment practicing. Luckily, my new job, which was awful in every other way, was a 35-minute train journey away from my home. So I was trapped on a train every day with nothing better to do than to learn my list of images. And when I got home, I would use those images in practicing cards, numbers and binary over and over. It was impressive how very quickly I exceeded my previous best in the marathon disciplines. Speed events took longer, but eventually, I was better than I’d ever been in those too. I never used my old system again after I’d created the new one, that would have been too confusing. So although it wasn’t completely ready to go, I used the new system in the MSO championship in August and to everyone’s surprise won it (beating Gunther and Dr Yip, who were two of the best in the world at that time), and then finished third in the WMC in October in Malaysia. I’m still improving, so you could say my system still isn’t completely ready to go…

Memory-Sports: You are still the MVP in memory sports but athletes like Johannes Mallow, Simon Reinhard, Gunther Karsten, Wang Feng, Su Ruiqiao and many more are getting extremely close. How do you deal with that pressure?

Ben: It’s no fun to be the number one. It is so much easier to improve if you’ve got someone to chase. I just try to remember that everyone on that list is better than me at at least one discipline, so I know I can keep improving if I work at it. But when it comes to a competition, I love the pressure – I always get my best results when I absolutely have to get a good score or lose the championship.

It’s no fun to be the number one. It is so much easier to improve if you’ve got someone to chase.

Memory-Sports: Do you think you can stay on top for much longer?

Ben: It depends whether I keep in training, and whether anybody else comes up with a new system that’s better than mine. Right now, I firmly believe that my system is the best there is, and I’ve got a head-start over anybody else who wants to use it, because I’ve been doing it since 2003. But I have to keep improving every year, because everybody else is improving too. And some day, I’m sure somebody unexpected is going to turn up at a competition with a new technique and will completely wipe the floor with me.

Memory-Sports: How much do you train these days?

Ben: Not NEARLY enough. I haven’t really done any training in the two months since the world championship in November. Even when I’m really motivated, I don’t come close to the levels of obsessive training I did back in 2003 and 2004, before I won the WMC for the first time. Sometimes I feel in the mood to train, and sometimes I don’t. I just have to hope that my motivated moods coincide with memory competitions.

Memory-Sports: Have you thought about an even greater system than the Ben System?

Ben: I have, but not seriously. Right now, I don’t need a better system, but that could all change some time soon. Maybe inspiration will strike me, but I’m not really trying to think of improvements at the moment.

Memory-Sports: Give your opponents some hope: What is your greatest weakness?

Ben: My opponents don’t need hope, they all know I’m inconsistent nowadays. Any one of six or seven rivals could have beaten me this year if they’d been at their absolute best. But my weakness is my lack of training, my hopelessness at Names & Faces and my lack of motivation to win the WMC again, compared to someone who’s never won it before.

My weakness is my lack of training, my hopelessness at Names & Faces and my lack of motivation to win the WMC again, compared to someone who’s never won it before.

Memory-Sports: What do you expect from the next World Memory Championship in China?

Ben: I’m hoping for another competition like 2009, with a whole lot of great memorisers producing amazing performances. The last World Championship was the most exciting ever, and I just hope they’re going to keep getting better!

Memory-Sports: Where do you see the sport in 2020?

Ben: The 2020 World Memory Championship will take place on the Moon. Tony Buzan will have recently made contact with the Royal Family of Moon-Men and agreed to hold the WMC there in return for five thousand tonnes of moon gold. Since space travel will still be restricted to astronauts, there will be no competitors at the 2020 WMC (although the press releases will still describe it as the biggest ever – the Moon-Men of course will not be eligible to compete because they’re not citizens of the World). However, down on Earth, there will be competitions in at least twenty countries, and in all of them the standard will be higher than we can even begin to imagine here in 2010. Probably.

Memory-Sports: Under these circumstances I think I should join NASA. Thank you for your time.

Ben’s Memory Statistics

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Wow, it has been a whole month since my last post on Memory-Sports. Maybe this was some kind of winter depression but although it is still freezing in Berlin, I have got my energy back. Many cool things will come these days for both Memory-Sports and Memory-Masters. But first things first. 63 of you have voted for their current number system. Let’s have a look at your results.

And the winner is…

[poll id="9"]

I already have guessed it and you approved my theory: The Major System is the most popular memory system for numbers. We can speculate why but I think it is more than obvious: It is simply the best system for beginners. Its phonetic basis makes it logical and well structured. It is extremely easy to understand. Hence its simple code it can be reconstructed quickly even if one forgot the peg word. That helps a lot to memorize the entire 100 pegs.

So if you are just thinking about creating your first system, you should read my article about the Major System and go right ahead.

It makes me a little bit nostalgic when I think back to the year 2003 when I started with my Major System. I was in the German military service and I never left the barracks without my 100 flashcards in my pocket. It made this time much more enjoyable!

Who are the “Others”?

This question is not only interesting for fans of the TV series “Lost”. Obviously there are 22% of the votes for mysterious other number systems. I anticipated that there might be a few using others than the ones named in the poll but 22% is astonishing. Where are these votes coming from? Is this the unknown Chinese system every western memory athlete wants to know about? Or do we  see a rise of creativity in new and more effective systems to beat a certain Englishman sooner or later? Please write some comments if you have voted for “others”. This might get very interesting. (nerd)

PO & PVO – Here are the Hybrids

19% have voted for the Dominic or the very similar PO System. This means they use 200 peg words to memorize a number with a person and an action. Let it be a faithful Tiger Woods giving away roses or a CIA agent loosening his belt – these systems are full of surprises. Although they are less creative because you cannot decide what Tiger Woods does, 10,000 combinations (100×100) can be most interesting and so much more diversified than a “nose” popping up a dozen times when training for Speed Numbers. 8% (including me) are even going one step further and add 100 objects to their system. With PVO you have incredibly ONE MILLION combinations. Sometimes I have to be careful not to laugh out loud in a memory competition because of the silly image I just created.

Big Daddies

The following numbers proof the growing seriousness of memory athletes: 13% are using a 1,000 peg word triple Major System for memorizing numbers. And 6% go with Ben’s system which is also using 1,000 pegs with the capacity for ambitious (or should I say “crazy”?) upgrades for binary numbers and cards. If you don’t know how much work it is to create and memorize such a big daddy, let me tell you that: : I failed to do it for about seventeen million times due to motivation lost. @

Conclusion

The sport is growing! When I started in 2003 Gunther Karsten has probably been the only person in the world with a triple Major System. Nowadays some people simply skip the double systems and go straight for 1,000 images. Nevertheless there is still the largest fan base with the double Major System. We can only speculate when this will change.

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It’s been quite a while since my last episode of How to become a Memory Champion. The last time I introduced you to the disciplines where you have to memorize random words. Today we will have a look at the discipline Historic/Future Dates.

It has nothing to do with history

You are very good with history? You have hundres or thousands of dates already in your head? This is marvelous, but it  wont help you at all. The dates you have to remember in a memory competition are all fake. Otherwise you could probably win this discipline without even looking at the dates presented to you – because you already learned them. Therefor you will get fictional dates with random years from 1000-2099. There will be no day or month to memorize  – only the year is of interest.

• Historical Dates: 5 minutes memorization / 10 minutes recall
  • World Record: 110.5 dates by Johannes Mallow

The Rules

Memorizing Period

• 110 different historic/future dates, with 40 dates on a page will be given (you can ask for more).
• The historic/future dates are between the years 1000 and 2099.
• All historic/future dates are fictitious or general (e.g. Peace Treaty signed).
• The length of the event text is between 1 and 10 words.
• Statistically the whole range of years will be used and no year (and no event) will be presented twice.
• The 4-digit number of the historic/future years are on the left side of the event and the events are written down under each other.

Recall Period

• Contestants will be given 3 sheets of Recall Paper with 40 historic/future event texts written on each.
• The historic/future event texts are in a different order from that of the memorizing phase.
• Contestants must now write down the correct year in front of the event texts.

Scoring

• A point is awarded for every correctly assigned year. All 4 digits of the year written down must be correct. Half a mark is deducted for an incorrectly assigned year.
• Only one 4-digit year can be written down in front of the event.
• The points are added up (max. 110 points).
• In the case of tied winning scores, the winner will be decided by counting the mistakes (incorrectly assigned dates) of the contestant – the contestant with less incorrectly assigned dates is the winner.

Tutorial by Jennifer Goddard

How to Memorize Dates

This is actually relativly easy because you don’t need any journeys. You only have to asscoiate your number-pegs from your major system (or whatever system you use for numbers) and associate it with the action of the date. There are now several ways to do so.

1st-level Dates

Since your major system is providing you with pegs for every two-digit combinations you have to memorize two pegs together with the action of the date.

For example:

1320 – Dinosaurs are getting cloned

You could now take your pegs for the numbers 13 (team) and 20 (nose) and associate them with a dinosaur: A soccer team is jumping on the nose of a T-Rex.

This is a very simple method to connect the date with the action. If you have a ready number system you could jump right now into action.

The downside of this method are for once that you have three elements to connect with each other.  And secondly you will have many stories with your pegs from 10-20 because all dates start with these eleven numbers.

1.5-level dates – conditions

To reduce the repetition of your pegs you can come up with something to get rid of the first digit. I you look at the rules you realize that ten out of eleven dates are starting with the digit 1. Therfore it will be enough to memorize only the last three digits. With a 1st-level major system decoding only two digits this will be difficult so you have to differentiate between the 11 different centuries. This can be achieved with several ways:

• Give them different states (a nose made out of jelly, stone or metall) each representing another century
• Different colors, smells, sounds
• Add one of eleven locations to each association (does it happen in the stadium, the bus or on top of a skyscrper?)

I worked with such a system for quite a while. It is not that easy but it works and it is much faster than making 1st-level connections.

For example:

1058 – King Charlie learns to fly

The King gets wings made out of jelly and flies over a stream of lava (58).

1158 – King Charlie learns to fly

The King gets wings out of stone and flies over a stream of lava. He looks now like a gargoyle.

1.5-level dates – overlapping

Nowadays I use another method: You also get rid of the first digit. Then you take the digit number two and three and recall the peg for this number. Next you take the digit number three again and also number four and recall that peg. Now you combine these two. If you are having a Person-Action system it is even better. The great plus of this way is that you can reconstruct one number if you remember the other one.

For example:

1170 – The pope is uniting all religions to a new super christianity

I take now the 17 (duck) and the 70 (kiss): A duck is kissing the pope.

If it is a date in the year 20xx I will simply use a special peg created only for this porpuse which could be anything you like. It will become very hard to forget the dates that way.

2nd-level dates

Like no other discipline in memory sports it pays of big to use a triple system for Historic Dates. Like I wrote above it helps alot to just get rid of the first digit because in most cases it is the same. So if you are able to bring the last three digits in only one peg you have an massive advantage in speed and clarity of your images.

For example:

1174 – Aliens are landing on earth

Simply take your peg for 174 (tiger) and associate it with the aliens: The aliens are riding on tigers.

Normally I don’t suggest a system to anybody but in this case I am very certain that a triple system is by far the best way to get great scores in this discipline.

Training is everything

Like all memory disciplines you have to train this one. It might be frustrating in the beginning when you compare your results to the world record. But you have to realize that Johannes Mallow is using a triple system and put a lot of effort into his training. I’d like to suggest you to train with Memocamp because the date function is excellent. There is an English version available now!

Historical Dates on Memocamp

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Each memory athlete has to learn and train one to several memory systems. In most cases they have at least 100 peg words using methods like the Major System, the Dominic System or the Ben System. If they are really ambitious they go for even bigger systems with up to thousands of pegs. A great software to support memorizing those pegs would be the free Mnemosyne Flashcard Program.

Recently I stumbled upon this beautiful program watching a tutorial video from my associate Charles Cave. He is writing with me for our website Memory-Masters.com and has his own memory blog Building a Master Memory.

The Features

• Efficient scheduling algorithm, so you don’t waste time on things you know well
• Support for languages using different scripts through unicode
• Support for pictures, sounds and html formatting
• Can be integrated with LaTeX to display mathematical formulas
• Support for three-sided cards, e.g. foreign words where you are interested in written form, pronunciation and translation
• Can be run from a USB key
• Can display some basis statistical info on your learning process
• Keeps a detailed record of your entire learning process for analysis
• Your cards can be organised in categories, which can be activated and disactivated to control your learning process
• Clean, deceptively simple user interface, yet fully customisable for advanced users through configuration files and plugins
• Available in several languages
• Support for a large number of import and export formats (text, XML, Supermemo, Memaid, …)

Why this program is so amazing

1. First of all it is free!
2. Whatever you memorize you have to repeat in certain intervals. More often in the beginning and less frequently over time. The ideal repetition is after an hour, a day, a week, two weeks, a month, two months, half a year, a year, two years and so on. Doing this you will most certainly remember your stuff forever. This program will schedule your learning in exactly this way.
3. Motivate yourself by saving learning time. Only repeat what’s really necessary.
4. You can create nearly every thinkable flashcard with this tool.
5. Use the over hundred free learning sets and learn cool and interesting stuff on the fly.

Watch the tutorial

I think I made my point. If you are still not convinced have a look at Charles screencast. He will demonstrate a few features.

To the download page

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He is the tripple Norwegian Memory Champion and author of the international bestseller book “Memo”. The 28 years old Oddbjørn By is famous for his memory in Skandinavia. Memory-Sports.com spoke with him about his book and creative ways to use memory techniques.

I have been into really big trouble with girlfriends who think I should remember better when I forgot what they have been talking about during dinner. Girls should write down any important information, hand it over and give us five minutes to memorize it.

Memory-Sports: Have you been good in school?

Oddbjørn: Before I started with memory techniques I was just a normal student with poor motivation for learning. That changed in January 2004. Since then I’ve been using the techniques for many things like studies in university and salsa dancing for example.

Memory-Sports: What has been your first contact with memory techniques?

Oddbjørn: I read about some techniques to remember numbers on the Internet. It was similar to the Dominic System. Then I started to compete with a friend in Speed Numbers. Via email I came in contact with former world memory champion Andi Bell and he convinced me to come to his World Memory Cup in Weinheim. There I learned a lot from other athletes.

Memory-Sports: The Memory World Cup has been a one time only event and it happened outside of the rules of the World Memory Sports Council. Please tell us about it.

Oddbjørn: It’s been my first competition so I had no experience. But I felt it was very nice. We have been only a few competitors so it was a small and friendly gathering. Although there was a lot of controversy about that competition but it was a nice alternative back then.

Memory-Sports: What has been your next step in Memory Sports?

Oddbjørn: I went to the World Memory Championships Manchester in 2004. Later that year I started writing the book because I felt it was something every student in Norway should know about. I spent one year to write it. And then it was published in January 2006.

Memory-Sports: Your book is called “Memo” and one of its topics is Speed Exams. Please describe what you mean by that.

Oddbjørn: This is what I was doing mostly for fun. I was trying to test the memory systems as much as possible. So I signed up for exams in subjects I didn’t know about. I got some summaries from friends who have been participating in that subject. And then I just memorized summaries and went to exams. It went really good. So I’ve been doing that quite often at my university ever since. Not mostly for fun. It is also very motivational to learn stuff very quickly. But of course to go really into that subject you should follow the lectures. Therefore this is probably not a perfect approach for a student. But sometimes they should try this just for fun.

Memory-Sports: You are writing about the three big different number systems in your book: The Dominic System, the Triple System (or Ben System) and the Major System. What are the main differences between those three in your opinion?

Oddbjørn: For competition the Triple System has huge advantages especially for Historical Dates. But the drawback is that it takes a long time to master. Therefore I think that a Double System is very good for beginners. But in the end I don’t think that it is such a big difference between the systems. It’s about that your method becomes automatic and that your associations are coming quickly. The slight differences doesn’t matter that much.

It is very motivational to learn stuff very quickly.

Memory-Sports: What would you tell someone in a few sentences who wants to improve his learning but never heard of memory techniques before?

Oddbjørn: First of all I would say that it is impossible to remember everything. Of course you can remember the whole Bible or Koran if you spent thirty years of your life. But we don’t have thirty years for our exams. So even if we cannot remember everything, we can use these techniques to remember a lot. The way to do this is for example to use the Journey Method. I would recommend to write down important keywords and to memorize them. For an exam about the Second World War you could memorize keywords like “The Marshal Plan”, “The Blockade of Berlin” and “The establishment of NATO”. You could then memorize a marshmallow (Marshall Plan) outside the front door of your house and so on. In the exam you just walk this journey and pick out the keywords. But also a very important thing is not to write down everything you memorized like a robot. Maybe some of those keywords are simply not necessary for this particular exam.

Memory-Sports: Have you learned a lot using memory techniques?

Oddbjørn: Yes I have been really hungry to learn after I learned these methods. For example I learned seduction techniques with it.

Memory-Sports: Seduction? We should talk about this again with a nice cup of coffee when we see each other in London.

Do you make a special journey for every subject you want to memorize? Or do you use them twice or even more often?

Oddbjørn: If you want to memorize something for a long time you should use new permanently information in the same journey. But you can use it again to memorize temporarily information like a deck of cards.

Memory-Sports: Can you give us some advise in how to create a journey?

Oddbjørn: I would really recommend to use buildings and having one point in each room. The walls of each room are deviding the single stations of the journey from each other. To avoid ending up with an empty room after memorization you should make your associations close to the wall or interact with the room in some kind of way. Also I would recommend to walk through the walls or the roof. To get more points you could start outside of the building like the garden. In my experience the journey shouldn’t be too long. It is better to seperate the journey into several smaller ones. Personally I prefer something around thirty. But a good length could also be about fifty to hundred stations. Than you have better control of the points. Finally you should’t have too similar journeys because you could get confused.

It is better to seperate a long journey into several smaller ones.

Memory-Sports: Let’s talk more about memory competitions: You are the thrice Norwegian champion. When will be your next national event?

Oddbjørn: The next competition in Norway is in 2010. It is hold every two years. I hope it will be an Open the next time.

Memory-Sports: It’s been a while since your last championship outside of Norway. When are you entering the world stage again?

Oddbjørn: Hopefully in this years World Memory Championship in London. The last years I was busy with publishing the book in Sweden and Denmark. Now I fianally have the time to compete again. If I am in shape I will maybe come to Sweden as well.

Memory-Sports: Speaking of which: How are your skills these days?

Oddbjørn: I think it’s very good in Spoken Numbers but in Binary Numbers for example it is rubbish.

Memory-Sports: Which is you favorite discipline in Memory Sports?

Oddbjørn: That is Spoken Numbers because of the drama. If you memorize a hundred digits but you forget the second one you face dramatic consequences. And I like that you are forced into that speed.

Memory-Sports: What kind of system are you using?

Oddbjørn: I use the Double System for numbers. Only for recreational porpuse I use the Triple System from time to time. I am quite slow with it.

Memory-Sports: For what did you use memory techniques in your daily life?

Oddbjørn: I’ve been learning languages because if you remember a lot of vocabulary you get really motivated. You can come really far if you remember for example 1.000 words in Spanish, Italian or German. Also I’ve been using the techniques for presentations. So instead of just reading from a paper I used to memorize my speeches. Even for Salsa dancing I used it to remember the steps and moves. As I told you before I memorized seduction techniques with it. Finally I used it for daily situations like having an idea when I am on my bike. It is really painfull to forget a good idea. So I used to memorize it in an idea journey. When I come home I can recall it and write it down. It is not that I usememory techniques every day. Some days more and some days less.

Memory-Sports: Did your general memory improved even if you don’t use your techniques?

Oddbjørn: Since I became famous in Norway I HAD to remember. Because if I forget the name of people they will start with jokes about it. But I also think that forgetting in the daily life has something to do with being on autopilot. For example if you forget to post a letter on your way home from work, it’s probably because you’ve been driving on autopilot. I have been into really big trouble with girlfriends who think I should remember better when I forgot what they have been talking about during dinner. That’s how it is to be a memorizer.

Memory-Sports: Oh yes, I know that problem. It’s not that we don’t listen on porpuse but sometimes we are just not concentrated enough to memorize everthing they are saying.

Oddbjørn: I think girls should write down any important information, hand it over and give us five minutes to memorize it.

Memory-Sports: Indeed! Thank you for your time.

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Oddbjørn’s Memory Statistics

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He is the hottest newcomer of this season. In only three championships in a row he climbed from zero to rank 22 in the world. He has prooven an extraordinary ability with memory sports in competition. His scores with the MemoryXL trainer and with the Online Memory Challenge are close and or even above most of the world records. The elite is already shaking with him in competition. It will only be a matter of time and experience before he aims for even higher positions. Memory-Sports.com was asking him about his techniques and his amazing synesthesia.

Everyone who is interested in memory sports should give it a try. It certainly isn’t that difficult how many might think. It rather is a lot fun.

Memory-Sports: What do you do for your living?

Dennis: I make an apprenticeship as a computer scientist and work on my A-Levels via distance study. Occasionally I teach math and computer science at the University of Cologne.

Memory-Sports: That keeps you quite busy, right?

Dennis: It’s ok. I still have more free time than others.

Memory-Sports: How did you come to memory sports?

Dennis: I watched Dorothea Seitz last year in November. Thereupon I bought the book by former Junior World Champion Christiane Stenger. I think it is called „Warum fällt das Schaf vom Baum?: Gedächtnistraining mit der Jugendweltmeisterin“
(English version: A Sheep Falls Out of the Tree: How Anyone Can Develop a Fantastic Memory)

Memory-Sports: What do you mean by „I think“, Mr. Memory Athlete? *both are laughing*

What has been your motivation to start to train your brain?

Dennis: I just thought it is super interesting and totally different to common sports like football or swimming.

Memory-Sports: What did you do after reading the book?

Dennis: I started training binary numbers and Speed Cards. They said in television that Dorothea was able to memorize a pack in two minutes. I wanted to do the same. At this point it took me ten minutes for a deck. The first six months I trained about 30 minutes up to an hour each day. Later I trained one of the seven basic disciplines once a day which resulted in doing each of them at least once a week. Today my effort decreased.

The first six months I trained about 30 minutes up to an hour each day.

Memory-Sports: What has been your first memory system?

Dennis: I started with the 2^nd-level Major System (100 pegs) and a 52 peg system for cards. Soon I realized that this is not what I wanted and I worked on creating bigger systems. That’s been after about four to five weeks of training.

Memory-Sports: What exactly do you mean by “bigger systems”?

Dennis: The 3^rd-level Major System (1.000 pegs) and the 2^nd-level card system (2.652 pegs). But ever since I went back to a Person-Object System (PO) for the digits because I like it better.

Memory-Sports: Your effort is awesome! But what is your problem with the 3^rd-level Major System?

Dennis: It is a similar problem with the words: I place several objects on each location and mix them up. Using a PO is more effective to save locations and make sure to keep the order at the same time. On the other hand it is quicker to use the 3^rd-level Major System because you have fewer pictures to remember.

Memory-Sports: Only three memory athletes are using a 2^nd-level card system: World Memory Champion Ben Pridmore, German Champion Simon Reinhard and you. How long did it take you to create all the 2.652 pegs?

Dennis: About a week. I spend about four nights to gather the pegs and three days to memorize them and be able to use the system in practice. For this purpose I took a week off from work. It was worth it because I finished it in that time. But there are still about 400 pegs which cost me more time to remember than all the others.

Memory-Sports: How did you create your 2^nd-level card system?

Dennis: Just like with the digits I used PO for the cards. From each combination out of the persons and objects I associated a third peg. For example Britney Spears (person) and the axe (object) reminded me somehow of an executioner. Doing this it was quite fast to create and memorize all the 2.652 pegs.

Memory-Sports: That is very clever. It is indeed much quicker to memorize your new system by using natural associations from your previous pegs to create your new ones, instead of using a certain code like Simon and Ben did. On the other hand you have to remember your old associations first instead of just “reading” the cards. Regarding your own experience with that matter, what method would you suggest to others who are looking forward to create such a huge system?

Dennis: I think everybody should find out for himself how to do it. One may like Ben’s method better, another one mine and a third one a completely different technique. You cannot trivialize it.

Memory-Sports: Tell us a little about your first competition experience.

Dennis: My first championship has been the North German Championship in April 2009. Two weeks before that I was somehow discouraged and at the competition I was extremely nervous. Nevertheless I ended up second.

Memory-Sports: Your position has been great but even better has been your score: 3.190 points is amazingly good for a newcomer – especially since it was only Regional Standard (seven disciplines). You jumped from zero to somewhere in the sixties of the world rankings. What did you learn most from your first event?

Dennis: That the difference between training and competition results is much bigger than with other sports like football or chess. The memory sport is extremely unmerciful with mistakes.

Memory-Sports: Even before your first competition you have been treated like a secret favorite. Why the entire rumor about you?

Dennis: I think that was because I got a perfect score with the MemoryXL software. That probably scared several people in the first place because the highest level is extremely difficult. For example you have to memorize 400 digits in 5 minutes without a mistake.

Memory-Sports: A newcomer with the ability to memorize 400 digits in 5 minutes is indeed very scary. The gossip seems absolutely understandable under these circumstances. Didn’t those expectations put you under a lot of pressure?

Dennis: I might have thought about this too much and ended up with far worse results than in my training. My pretensions have been influenced by the expectations of the other athletes. In my next championship I only aimed for my own goals instead of listening to others.

Memory-Sports: And it obviously paid off. You have won your second competition shortly after that.

Dennis: Exactly. At the Cambridge Memory Championship in May I got closer to some of my training results. In Speed Binaries for example I memorized 630 digits. On the other hand I failed in other disciplines again. I hope this will stabilize soon.

Memory-Sports: Meanwhile you competed in two more championships: Out of competition at the South German Championship and at the German Memory Open. What is your experience after four memory events?

Dennis: I learned not to think about failure in the first place. You cannot change it before the discipline and you can’t do it after it as well.

Memory-Sports: What has been your most important success in memory sports so far?

Dennis: That would be the result in 30 Minute Binary at the German Memory Championship where I ended up with 2.421 digits. I wanted it to work out and it did.

I learned not to think about failure in the first place. You cannot change it before the discipline and you can’t do it after it as well.

Memory-Sports: Very impressive! Let us have a look at your personality. You told me once that you have synesthesia. Can you tell us something about it?

Dennis: Synesthesia is an entanglement of different senses. In my case I see numbers and letters in colors. The five for example is pink. That results in seeing a much more colorful world than a normal person without that ability. If you look at a book page the letters only appear in black. For people like me it is multicolored because every letter has a different color.

Memory-Sports: Do you think that your synesthesia is a benefit for your life?

Dennis: The advantage is that I see the world more open minded. The structure of each text reminds me of shapes. But that brings me to its disadvantage too: If I say that out loud people think I am crazy or on drugs. They just don’t know this ability and cannot understand it. There are only very few people I know with synesthesia. Junior World Memory Champion Dorothea Seitz is one of them.

Memory-Sports: Does your synesthesia benefit you in memory sports?

Dennis: Especially with binary digits it does. As soon as I translate a block of three binaries into a single decimal digit it will turn into a certain color. If I translate 111 for example it will turn red because the seven is red (read more about binary systems: How to become a Memory Champion – Part 5). It gives me a much better overview over the whole page. Meanwhile I am able to see the blocks of three digits nearly immediately in the right color.

Memory-Sports: Does your synesthesia influence you beside letters and digits?

Dennis: I can taste the voices of some people. That means I will literally have a certain taste in my mouth when they talk with me. But that only happens once in a while. Your voice for example is neutral. In all my life I met about 350 people whose voices tasted like something. It is still a mystery to me why some people taste like they do. The voice of German Chancellor Angela Merkel for example tastes like beer.

Memory-Sports: Really? That is a funny coincidence since we Germans are well known for our beer. Have you met people with – let me say – less delicate tastes than beer?

Dennis: Yes, it happened to me with my old German teacher in school. But what his voice tasted like is – ahem – negligibly.  *laughs*

Memory-Sports: Ok, we better leave it at that. Did you suffer in your youth when you realized that you are not like the other kids?

Dennis: I wouldn’t call it suffering, but there certainly have been strange situations in school. For example in the first grade: My teacher wrote something on the blackboard with a colored chalk to improve the readability for us. But I couldn’t read it because it was flickering the whole time. When I told him that he should use white chalk instead because the red and green glint confuses me I earned very strange looks from him and the entire class. You have to know that synesthesia is additive. When you see a digit written in blue but your personal color for it is red it will result in an unsteady change of the two colors. That can be very confusing.

The voice of German Chancellor Angela Merkel for example tastes like beer

Memory-Sports: What will be your next step in Memory Sports?

Dennis: I will compete in Sweden in September and of course at the World Memory Championship in November. My goal for this year is to achieve 6.000 championship points and get my Grand Master of Memory.

Memory-Sports: World Memory Champion Ben Pridmore called you one of the hot candidates to succeed him in the future. Do you plan to get the memory crown?

Dennis: I certainly aim for it but I don’t think it will happen in the next two years because I lack experience. Ben is doing it for so many years now that his know-how is far more superior to mine. Directly attacking the crown will take at least two or three years of experience before it gets realistic. It just is very difficult to keep a top level over all the ten disciplines.

Memory-Sports: Do you have any last words for the readers?

Dennis: Everyone who is interested in memory sports should give it a try. It certainly isn’t that difficult how many might think. It rather is a lot fun.

Dennis’ Memory Statistics

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