He is the youngest star among the memory elite. With only nine years old he won the World Memory Championship Children’s Competition in 2008. Although the rivalry in this age section isn’t too strong, he got brilliant scores in Bahrain. In 30 minutes he memorized 513 binary digits – moderate for a grown-up athlete but outstanding for his age. Memory-Sports journalist Florian Dellé spoke with his former student from Berlin.

I would let the shoe bounce up and down on the chair and let it jump from one armrest to another. Your stories has to be as crazy as possible.

Memory-Sports: When did you start your memory training?

Konstantin: I watched the North German Championship in 2004 as a spectator. After that I joined a memory class in a club for highly advanced children.

Memory-Sports: How did you come up with that subject?

Konstantin: We’ve got mail from the club, that a new memory class is starting soon. So we went to the competition to get an impression. I learned that memory training is related to numbers. And since I always liked numbers a lot, I wanted to learn the techniques.

Memory-Sports: What do you remember about your first steps?

Konstantin: I remember clearly my first personal best with 24 digits.

Memory-Sports: What techniques did you learn for starters?

Konstantin: We learned the Master-System with 100 images and created a journey with 26 stations – for half a deck of cards. Today I have 227 stations.

Memory-Sports: What have been your first competition?

Konstantin: That was the North German Championship in 2005. I placed sixth and it was a lot of fun.

Memory-Sports: Have you been very ambitious from the beginning?

Konstantin: Actually I first started to train at home, when I placed only seventh in 2006. So I trained for the next championship in 2007.

Memory-Sports: The World Memory Championship is on a whole new level than the North German Championship. What did you like most about that event?

Konstantin: That it has been over several days. So we got the opportunity to see a little bit of the small country Bahrain. Did you know that it only takes half an hour from north to south on the main island? There are 23 islands all together and only three are settled. On the second largest is the airport, in the north of the largest one are most of the markets and in the south is the Formula 1 racing track.

Memory-Sports: No I didn’t know that! – What is the best thing about a memory championship?

Konstantin: You can get in competition with your rivals and find new friends. I met Timo Sprekeler for example. He became North German Champion in 2008, where I wasn’t competing. I bet him then at the following German Championship. Recently I met him again at this years North German Championship, but we weren’t competing against each other. He already joined the juniors and I compete still in the children’s group.

It isn’t fair that there are no rankings for children. Otherwise I would definitely be among the the best.

Memory-Sports: What is your favourite discipline?

Konstantin: Numbers, because I am good at it. Also you have to be less creative than with Names & Faces for example. It is just easier. On the other hand I wasn’t so bad with the names either.

Memory-Sports: Do you train a lot?

Konstantin: Only for competitions. For the World Memory Championship I started training two months and for the North German Championship about three weeks before the event.

Memory-Sports: Do you recognize your improvements?

Konstantin: Yes – I got 96 binary numbers last year and this year I already got 192.

Memory-Sports: What is your best training result?

Konstantin: Only 180. So it was my personal best, too. But I was lucky: The last row was an unbroken sequence of zero and one. When I saw that pattern it was easy to memorize.

Memory-Sports: What do you think could help, to make the sport more popular?

Konstantin: It would help to beam all the numbers for example on a big screen. That way the spectators could try it themselves. Another interesting thing would be, to see what the competitor is just writing down.

Memory-Sports: Can you please give us a few hints how to make a good story? How would you associate a shoe and a chair for example?

Konstantin: I would let the shoe bounce up and down on the chair and let it jump from one armrest to another. Your stories has to be as crazy as possible.

Memory-Sports: Are you quick with your images?

Konstantin: Yes, I can recall my Master-System in 95 seconds – that’s less than one second for each image.

Memory-Sports: Do you have any particular goals?

Konstantin: I want to get under the top 100 in the world ranking list. For that I have to get about 2800 points. At the German Championship I already got 1800, but it doesn’t count, since it was a children’s competition. It isn’t fair that there are no rankings for us. Otherwise I would definitely be among the the best.

Memory-Sports: Who is your role model?

Konstantin: Boris Konrad, because he’s got the world record in Random Words – and I am good with words, too.

Memory-Sports: When will you compete again?

Konstantin: This year at the German Memory Championship and then in November at the World Memory Championship again.

Memory-Sports: Thank you for the interview.

Konstantin’s Memory Statistics

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It is time for the second chapter of How to become a Memory Champion. The last time we spoke about the method of loci, with which we created an Elephant Path. Today we will talk about how to use it and create a story worth remembering. It is all about the right associations. Learn what you should do and what you should leave out.

Step 1: Imagine it, Hear it, Feel it!

It is the most valuable lesson in memory sports: Imagine your stories before your inner eye. You have to SEE your stories become alive. It is a huge beginners mistake to create a story to remember but not visualizing it. When I started with memory techniques, I just spoke the words of the story in my mind, but I lacked figuring it out in all its details. This process doesn’t necessarily need a lot of time. But you have to be there yourself if you create any kind of tale for memory purposes in your mind.

For example, Einstein credited his discovery of special relativity to a mental visualization strategy of “sitting on the end of a ray of light”, and many people as part of decision-making talk to themselves in their heads.

Some people prefer to use other sensory channels. Although I just used four different visual words to describe this task, you can also try to hear or feel what’s happening in your story. Try out what’s working best for you. If I remember correctly, former German Junior Champion Katharina Bunk used a card system with auditory associations. Since she memorized a deck of cards in 45.8 seconds, it seems pretty affective for her. You can also combine all the different channels to get a great overall sense for your story. By the way:

The other two senses, gustatory (taste) and olfactory (smell), which are closely associated, often seem to be less significant in general mental processing, and are often considered jointly as one.

Quotes: Wikipedia

Step 2: Think out of the box!

Let’s assume your first station in your path is the kitchen table. Your goal is to memorize random words. This is one of the easiest disciplines in a memory championship, because you don’t need anything else than your ready Elephant Path (or Journey, how most of the English speaking athletes call it) and your creativity. The first word you have to memorize is the word “banana“.

What would be your first thought for a possible association? I guess you would imagine putting the banana on the table. I can assure you, that this idea is definitely the worst you could come up with.  If you are going to memorize dozens of words this way, in most of the cases you wouldn’t remember much. You would just recall, that something was lying on the table. But why is that? Why can’t we remember that story?

The answer is trivial: because it is boring! It never made its way to the long-term memory. Since our brain is getting millions of data every second, it has to filter everything by relevance. If something seems irrelevant, our mind wont keep that information (some neuroscientist believe that we keep every single data we ever experienced, but even so, we can’t remember it at will). Although we made the first step and defined the location to look for the information in the little universe in our head by using a path, we still can’t remember.

But it is easy to change that lack of relevance: we just use our creativity!

So let’s come back to the banana and the table: What can we do instead of simply putting it on the table?

1. We eat the banana and put a forth of the peel under each leg. Now we can use the table like a Skateboard and slide through the room.
2. We coat the table surface with the mushed banana. It feels great now!
3. We turn the table and use the banana like a pistol – “We going straight – to – the Wild Wild West”.
4. What would King Louie do? He would build a throne out of the giant banana – right on the table. That way he can be higher than his fellow apes.

But careful: Be sure you just use ONE banana in your story. Otherwise you would remember the word “bananas” – and that would be wrong in a championship!

Step 3: Use your emotions!

Try to think about your past life: What events do you recall first? How clearly can you remember them? You will recognize, that the best memories in your head are always full of emotions, like birthdays, Christmas, your first day in school, your first kiss, marriage, the birth of your children. If you are asking any person about what they did on the 11th of September 2001, they can tell you every detail about it – but they have no idea what they did the day before.

So what you should do is, to fill your stories with emotions. Be happy or sorry for any living creature in your invented tales. Feel empathic for everything what’s happening in your mind as long as you are memorizing data.

Step 4: I like to move it, move it

Do you remember, what we did with the table, after we put the banana peel under the legs? I guess you do – and not just because we thought out of the box. The fact that there was a certain movement in the story, increased its relevance dramatically. I can assure you, that all the images I create include any kind of animation. Especially my numbers are full of motion because I use a Person-Verb-Object-System. But I will come back to that in another episode of How to become a Memory Champion.

Step 5: EXAGERATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One of the greatest tools when creating an image is to hyperbolize it. It will jack up your stories a lot. One thing I do with most of my images is to increase or decrease the size dramatically. Why should I remember an elephant on my sofa with its real dimensions? It would probably kind of difficult to imagine, because the elephant is far too big for the couch. But if you shrink it to the size of a puppy, it will be adorable and funny. You can’t forget it anymore.

Step 6: :devil: Use sexual fantasies! :devil:

I don’t think, that I have to explain it to you, but just for the integrity I do: There is no stronger impulse in a human being than sex! Even survival often comes after that biggest of instincts. So we can and will use that drive to push our memories on to a new level. If you are too conservative to take that chance of improving your memory, you will miss a huge chance. My advise: bite the bullet. You have nothing to loose, because it is your own mind and nobody can criticize you about it.

And if you don’t tell, nobody will ever know… :angel:

Step 7: Colourize it!

Well, your brain is always cheering out loud, when it comes to beautiful colours. What do you remember more: A gray and cloudy day in fall or a sunny day on a flower field? It speaks for itself. Use it for your images. You don’t have to dye every single association you are creating – that would probably overdo it. But especially if you are creating your paths and systems (for numbers, cards, abstract images), you should use many colours to help yourself establishing a proper image in your mind. It will also help you afterwards to recall your images, because a colourful story is more interesting.

Step 8: Repeat, repeat, repeat…

Actually, this last step falls out of the previous advises. Repetition is less necessary for the perfect association but hugely important for any kind of memory. In memory sports, a rollback of the images you just created can stabilize your stories dramatically. But it is a twisted sword: If you are going for an enormous amount of data in a short time, you probably wont have enough time to repeat. In that case you will have to trust your associations you did only once. But most of the athletes are repeating their images at least once. Some memory athletes like MemoryXL-President Boris Konrad are iterating their images several time. That means, that he is relying more on repetition, than on the perfect association (correct me if I am wrong, Boris). His old world record of 106 words in 5 minutes (recently broken by Katie Kermode with 109 words) speaks for the effectiveness of this method.

So you see, there is a lot of improvement you can do with your associations. If you are using these advices and combine them with your own preferences and experience, soon you will become one of us – a Memory Athlete!

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This is the first part of your guide to become a memory like an elephant. Over the next weeks, Memory-Sports.com will give you an insight in the amazing techniques of all mental athletes. You will learn how to memorize numbers, cards, names and words and discover the fascinating world of Memory Sports.

The Method of Loci

It is as old as ancient democracy: The method of loci, used by Greek and Roman senators to hold their intoxicating speeches in front of the senate. It was proscribed to use any kind of notes, so they were using this brilliant technique to jack up their memory. Rhetorical geniuses like Cicero went through their palaces, gardens and any other kind of locations (Latin: loci) and memorized  the order of every single object in their paths.

To remember a speech, they broke it into peaces and created symbols for every single part. Then they put those symbols into the different loci . To recall them they visualized the path and went from one station to another, where they remembered the symbols and translated them back into the speech. According to Cicero in “De Oratore”, the method of loci was invented by the Greek poet Simonides about 500 BC.

Quote Wikipedia:

Cicero (De oratore, ii. 86) tells the story of the end of Simonides relations with the Scopadae. His patron, Scopas, reproached him at a banquet for devoting too much space to a praise of Castor and Pollux in an ode celebrating Scopas’ victory in a chariot-race. Scopas refused to pay all the fee and told Simonides to apply to the twin gods for the remainder. Shortly afterwards, Simonides was told that two young men wished to speak to him; after he had left the banqueting room, the roof fell in and crushed Scopas and his guests (XXV. c. Simonides). During the excavation of the rubble, Simonides was called upon to identify each guest killed. He managed to do so by correlating their identities to their positions at the table before his departure.

What Simonides did is easy to reproduce, since remembering a route from A to B in its detail has once been part of the survival strategy of mankind. You can try it yourself: Close your eyes and remember the objects in your room. You will know exactly where your bed, your sofa, your table and your computer are. Imagine to go outside your room – can you see the corridor and the other rooms? Can you even leave the house and wander through your garden? Maybe you can jump to your workplace and see your office. You just discovered the method of loci!

The Power of the Elephant Path

Why is the method of loci so powerful?

1. On one hand it is using your natural memory for locations. Even if you have the feeling to easily loose orientation, you still are able to remember your own room in its detail.
2. On the other hand it provides a logical order. You just have to walk through your room clockwise or counterclockwise and all the objects will be in a specific order.

I will call each route we create with this method an “elephant path” (or just “path”). It is a track created by animal footfalls and represents the most easily navigated way between an origin and a destination. Each time it is used, it becomes stronger and grows wider. A memory athlete is using his paths over and over again, too. And since the elephant is also a symbol for a strong memory, it seems like a perfect name for the easiest way to a better memory.

A beautiful harmony, don’t you think?

Step 1 – Pick your Location

To use this technique and become a memory athlete, you have to choose your first location. It can be anywhere you like but you should pick the one you know best for your first elephant path. That could be your room, your flat, your house or your workspace. If you like, you can also create an imaginary path. But it is harder to memorize in the beginning, so I advise you to choose a real location first. A memory athlete creates several paths for championships. But for starters one should be fine.

Step 2 – Define the Way-Points

If you picked your first location, you have to define all the objects you want to use as way-points in your elephant path. They will be the stations you have to pass, each time you are memorizing any kind of information with it. The number of way-points will determine the length of your route – and therewith the amount of information you can store on it. You can have ten stations or a thousand. One single room can easily include twenty way-points. I suggest that your first elephant path should have about fifty stations. If you stick to some rules, your path will become more efficiently. But those rules are just a guideline – you can break them whenever you like. Since every person got a different mind and different affinities, you probably have to bend the rules to make them match your personality. By the way: This regards every single aspect in memory techniques!

• Do imagine your way-points in every detail
• Pick the way-points you first think of – they are in most cases the best
• Keep a certain order of the way you walk your path (i.e. clockwise)
• Use noticeable way-points every 10 steps to create proper segments
• Don’t make your way-points to small (i.e. a pencil)
• Don’t make your way-points to big (i.e. a house)
• Don’t make them to close together
• Don’t make them to far away from each other
• Don’t use similar way-points in the same path

Step 3 – Memorize your Path

Don’t be afraid of memorizing your path – it is as easy as taking candy from a baby!

Since you already know the location and you’ve finished defining the way-points, it will be very easy to memorize your new elephant path. Just try to recall it in your imagination. If you miss a few points, try to imagine yourself walking through your path and count each and every single way-point on it. Do that repeatedly and you will strengthen your path each time. After a while you can increase your speed dramatically: With a well trained path you wont need longer than a split second for each way-point. This process is quick and natural.

Step 4 – Use it!

With your new elephant path you are able to associate information like words with every way-point. It will help you to remember the correct order and can easily be used over and over again for different purposes. This is because you are naturally forgetting your associations after a while, if you are not recapitulate them again. This happens in a short period of time and depends on your memory. Some brilliant memory athletes will remember their images for up to two weeks without repeating them. Personally I have the mindset to never recall my associations a second time after training or a championship. I don’t need the information any more so I can let my brain forget it. That sounds counterproductive but it helps a lot to use my paths as soon as possibly again (in my case about a day). If you are looking to memorize something for the rest of your life, a simple path wont probably be enough, because you could not use it again for other information. There are different methods to do so, like Mind-Maps or the Self Enhanced Memory Matrix (SEM³) by Tony Buzan or the Wardrobe System by Dr. Ullrich Voigt.

If you are asking yourself, how the whole association thing works, be patient – I will soon describe it to you. In the meantime play around and get ready with your first path.

Thanks to Smashing Magazine for their perfect timing to give away free hand drawn illustrations. I was just looking for an elephant.

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She was a lovely and normal teenager. But about two years ago Dorothea Seitz started to train memory techniques. Now she is still lovely but stands out of the crowd: In October 2008 she went to Bahrain and competed against 43 memory athletes from all over the world – and became Junior World Memory Champion. Dorothea is able to memorize 189 words in 15 minutes and is not afraid to turn eighteen to compete against the adults. Memory-Sports.com spoke with the sixteen years young lady:

A competition is always a struggle against yourself. It is not about what others think of you, it is about achieving what you aspire.

Memory-Sports.com: When did you first hear about memory sports?

Dorothea Seitz: It was in early 2007. I read something about it online and wished for a book according to the techniques. The one I got was “A Sheep Falls Out of the Tree” by Christiane Stenger. I was fascinated how quick my progress was.

Memory-Sports.com: Did you imagine to follow Christiane’s footsteps and become Junior World Memory Champion?

Dorothea Seitz: No, but I always thought about how great the feeling must be, to be some kind of champion.

Memory-Sports.com: What is your favourite discipline?

Dorothea Seitz: In the beginning I trained binary numbers exclusively. Although it is the discipline with the least daily meaning, I really liked it somehow.

Memory-Sports.com: Did you have any expectations for the North German Championship 2009?

Dorothea Seitz: I always expect too much from myself and get disappointed. My goal was to reach the 4.000 points, but I didn’t. And I wanted to compete with the adults, to prepare for next year, when I become eighteen.

Memory-Sports.com: So you keep on memorizing and don’t stop on top of your success?

Dorothea Seitz: No, it would be to easy to call it quits and keep the title. A competition is always a struggle against yourself. I want to accomplish my personal goals and prove it to myself. It is not about what others think of me, it is about achieving what I aspire.

Memory-Sports.com: Since it is your last year as a junior, which championships are you planning to visit?

Dorothea Seitz: I will go to Hamburg this summer and compete at the German Championship. And of course I will fly to Bahrain once more to the World Memory Championship – to try my luck again.

Memory-Sports.com: You would have placed third, nearly second in the adults event at the North German Championship, if it wouldn’t have been noncompetitive. Are you confident to get into the act, when you will join the adults events next year?

Dorothea Seitz: I am pretty encouraged, especially since I thought about giving up the memory sport on the first day of the competition. But that’s the case at every championship I compete. Now I am highly motivated to go on, since I got a few results I never accomplished before at a tournament. Actually I am satisfied with every discipline except Speed Cards.

It’s fun to train my brain and seek for bigger and better challenges.

Memory-Sports.com: With some of your scores you are already able to hold the candle to the most of adult memory athletes in the world. In Random Words for example, you memorized 189 words in 15 minutes – that’s rank 5 in the world. What do you think about that?

Dorothea Seitz: Words are something I am good with, because you don’t need so much of a technique rather than your natural memory. With numbers and binaries you need much more training, to become excellent. I prefer language orientated disciplines, like Poem, where your techniques don’t have such an impact on your results.

Memory-Sports.com: What are your goals in Memory Sports?

Dorothea Seitz: To get better in the world ranking list, which is difficult in the moment, since the junior scores are not part of it. Apart from that I will go on, because the other athletes are great. And of course it’s fun to train my brain and seek for bigger and better challenges.

Memory-Sports.com: Did you experience anything negative because of the sport?

Dorothea Seitz: Most of the people don’t know it and think strangely about what I’m doing. My classmates call me “World Memory Champion” and “Super-Brain”. They don’t mean it basely, but it’s very annoying. People who don’t know me better, define me through this accomplishment.

Memory-Sports.com: Do you think, there is any potential for memory sports to become a sport for masses?

Dorothea Seitz: I wish it very much. But even on my school, with many highly skilled students and a special class for memory training, there are only a few interested in it. It would be great if the sport would make it big.

Memory-Sports.com: Would you like to compete against your inspiration Christiane Stenger?

Dorothea Seitz: Sure, but I don’t think that she still is in training. She is not competing any more and I doubt getting the chance to match with her.

Memory-Sports.com: You are following Christiane Stenger in other aspects, too: There is a rumor, that you are writing a book about memory techniques – is that right?

Dorothea Seitz: Yes, I was asked to write one and I agreed and signed the contract.

Memory-Sports.com: Do you have any help?

Dorothea Seitz: No, I will work on it allone. On one hand I will write about the history of the techniques and my personal experience. On the other hand I will go into detail about mental arithmetics, speed reading and other possibilities to train the brain. It will probably be called “Neurons on the ready, go!” because that’s the start signal on the championships. I want to popularise Memory Sports and show to the people, who are always missunderstanding me, what I am doing. It will be released in April, 2010.

Memory-Sports.com: We are looking forward to it. Thank you for your time.

Dorothea’s Memory Statistics

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With the official launch of Memory-Sports.com, it is in my duty to keep you posted about upcoming memory events. But what‘s about the past two decades of stunning championships? I gathered ten interesting facts about the dawn of memory sports:

1. When did it all started?

In the year 1991 Tony Buzan, father of the Mind-Map, and Raymond Keene, the British Chess Grand Master set up the very first World Memory Championship.

2. Who is the most successful memory champion?

That depends:

• Most World Memory Champion Titles: The British author Dominic O’Brien has won the World Memory Championships eight times altogether and became a memory legend.
• Best Brain: The No.1 memory champion of all time is the British athlete Ben Pridmore. With seven world records in 18 different disciplines he is dominating the sport.
• Financially: One of the most financially successful memorizers is the American journalist Joshua Foer. He only competed once at the USA Memory Championship in 2006 and won. After that, he sold his first book, Moonwalking with Einstein, for a reported $1.2 Million to Penguin for publication in 2009.

3.    How many different championships are there?

There have been 26 different competitions altogether. Six are taking place regularly for five years and more.

• World Memory Championship (since 1991)
• German Memory Championship (since 1997)
• USA Memory Championship (since 1998)
• Australian Memory Championship (since 2001)
• North German Memory Championship (since 2003)
• South German Memory Championship (since 2003)

4.    How many countries have national championships?

There are thirteen different nations with either national only or open championships. The youngest among them are France, Poland, Thailand and England (although the British had the World Memory Championships taking place there from 1991-2006).

5.    What kind of disciplines are there?

On a memory championship you have five to ten different disciplines. The common standard for regional events like the North German Championship is seven disciplines. The common standard for national and international events is ten disciplines (the decathlon).

The fastest discipline with one second for each number is:

• Spoken Numbers

Then you have the speed disciplines with five minutes memorisation time:

• Speed Cards
• Speed Numbers
• 5 Minute Binary Numbers
• 5 Minute Words
• Historic Dates
• 5 Minute Names & Faces

The only discipline with ten minutes is:

• 10 Minute Cards

The medium range disciplines with 15 minutes are:

• 15 Minute Numbers
• Abstract Images
• Names & Faces
• Poem
• Random Words

The long disciplines with 30 minutes are:

• 30 Minute Binary
• 30 Minute Cards
• 30 Minute Numbers

And the World-Memory-Championship-only disciplines with one hour are:

• Hour Cards
• Hour Numbers

6.    How can I become a Memory Grandmaster?

There are three different conditions for a Grandmaster:

• Memorize a deck of cards in less than two minutes
• Memorize ten decks of cards in an hour
• Memorize 1.000 Numbers in an hour

7.    What can I win at a Memory Championship?

You can win national honour and a bigger self confidence. You also train your brain for good and keep yourself focused. That’s not enough? At the World Memory Championship the total prize fund is US$ 30.000.

• The Winner receives $10.000
• The Silver Medallist receives $5.000
• The Bronze Medallist receives $3.000
• Rank 4 to 10 are receiving $1.000 each

For each of the 10 disciplines:

• $250 First Prize
• $150 Second Prize
• $100 Third Prize

8.    What is the most famous discipline?

That depends on the preferences of each competitor, but altogether I would say Speed Cards. This discipline is always the last one at a competition and also the only one (except for the other card disciplines), where you hold something other in your hands than a sheet. It is also the most fascinating discipline to watch, since every competitor gets his own competition timer (sponsored by Speed Stacks) and a big digital display for the audience. The official out-of-this-world-record is 26.28 seconds (for 52 cards!). Congratulations Ben.

9.    Are there any children competing in memory championships?

Of course there are: Germany arranges special championships for children (age 6-12) and juniors (age 13-17). At all the other championships they compete against the grown-ups. The children and junior World Memory Champions are Konstantin Skudler (10) and Dorothea Seitz (16).

10.    How will I know about upcoming championships?

Relax, I will keep you posted. In the next weeks I will put up a competition calendar, where you can check all officially announced championships. Another way is to visit the “Upcoming Championships”-page on the Memory Sports Statistics.

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Far away from the western hemisphere, on the other side of the planet, a beautiful piece of land harbors an incredible flora and fauna. The Romans called it “terra australis incognita” – “the unknown land of the south”. Nowadays it’s not that unknown anymore and so it’s not that inconvenient that excellent memorizers like (nearly) 36 years young Simon Orton hold up the Australian National Flag to the world of memory sports. The four times Australian champion is the founder of the Memory Sports Statistics – the official home of the world memory ranking list. Further more he is also the creator of the Online Memory Challenge. Memory-Sports.com spoke with him about the Australian community and his influencing websites:

The advantage of my Online Memory Challenge is that you don’t have to remember a password. You can put all your energy in memorizing the numbers and words.

Memory-Sports.com: When did you first hear about memory techniques?

Simon Orton: I bought the book ‘How to develop a perfect memory’ by Dominic O’Brien. That was ten to twelve years ago. I saw the book in a shop and found it interesting but I had no intention whatsoever to compete in a tournament. When I first found out about the Australian Championship, that was at the beginning of 2003 and the competition was in August. So I trained about six months for it.

Memory-Sports.com: What is your favourite discipline?

Simon Orton: Speed Cards, although I’m not great at it. It’s fast, it’s colourful and I think it’s easier for non memorizers to understand what you’re doing. I guess it’s kind of an impressive party trick.

Memory-Sports.com: How would you describe a memory championship to outsiders?

Simon Orton: We have ten disciplines, each testing a different area of memory. In general we have a limited period to memorize as much as possible. And then we get points for how much we can recall.

Memory-Sports.com: Do you think that typical championships are interesting for visitors?

Simon Orton: Probably not, unless they know the people who are competing. My Mum has come down with me for the Australian Championship a couple of times. And even for her it’s not that exciting. The scores are interesting, but watching the competitors for half an hour isn’t.

Memory-Sports.com: Do you have any suggestions to make a competition more fascinating for visitors?

Simon Orton: I guess the shorter disciplines are more interesting. The long recall periods, where there is nothing happening, are pretty boring. I remember my Mum once said: ‘After about twenty minutes one of the competitors stretched his arms – that was the highlight of the discipline’. Things like Speed Cards and Spoken Numbers are good to watch, because people get involved.

Memory-Sports.com: What do you think about the American system with the heads-up situation in the Championship Round?

Simon Orton: I guess that’s a good approach. But it may be more luck involved in something like that. But it’s definitely more interesting for spectators.

Memory-Sports.com: You have been Australian Champion three times in a row. Why didn’t you compete last year?

Simon Orton: It was a combination of reasons: One was the cost of getting to the championship. Another one was the training time. If I went to the championship, I would want to do better than the year before. And that would take a reasonable amount of training. I didn’t have the time to put that effort in. But I think another reason was that I didn’t really felt challenged and wanted to let someone else win. I lost the motivation after winning three times in a row.

Memory-Sports.com: Are you thinking about competing this year?

Simon Orton: I’m thinking about it, but I haven’t decided whether I will or not. The same consideration would apply, I guess. With the Online Challenge I got more training this year – that’s much more than I normally do. So yeah, I probably would like to go back to compete.

Memory-Sports.com: How is the Australian community?

Simon Orton: Small – small, but a good group of people. There are really only a handful of people who compete regularly. I just see them once a year because they live in different states in Australia. But it’s always fun to catch up with them.

Memory-Sports.com: Why are there only so few competitors in the Australian Championship?

Simon Orton: I think I have just been too dominant and obviously intimidated everyone.    The last time I competed in 2007 there was a lot more publicity. They hired a PR person and I had quite a few Interviews and TV appearances after winning. That was good but the next year in 2008 there were only two Australian competitors. For some reason the promotion of the Australian Championship isn’t working at the moment.

“I like Speed Cards because it’s fast, colourful and easier for non memorizers to understand what you’re doing – and it is an impressive party trick.”

Memory-Sports.com: Let’s come to your website, the Memory Sports Statistics. How did it start?

Simon Orton: Ben Pridmore suggested the idea for a site with a page for each competitor, showing their personal details and best scores in each discipline. That was in 2005 when Ben started the Yahoo Memory Sports Group. Soon after that I started putting together a database of all the results, because they hadn’t all been in one place. And once I had the database, the next logical step was to make a site to show all these results. It all happened about three and a half years ago. Gradually I added bits and pieces here and there since then.

Memory-Sports.com: Do you work on the website just by yourself?

Simon Orton: Yes. A lot of people helped me in the beginning, mainly in terms of providing the competition results. But it’s just been me doing the work on the site.

Memory-Sports.com: You have not just the one and only official ranking list in the world. There is a Score Calculator, you can compare competitors with each other and you inform about battled and upcoming championships. Any other plans for features like this?

Simon Orton: I had a few ideas but lately I have been focussing on the Online Challenge site. One of my ideas was a Grandmaster page, which would show who is a Grandmaster. And for the competitors who are not yet Grandmasters, how many of the three requirements they already have. I think that would be a good addition. The other thing I had thought about is translating the site into different languages.

Memory-Sports.com: Tell us a little bit about your Online Challenge.

Simon Orton: The idea is that people from around the world can compete simultaneously on the Online Memory Challenge website. I started it at the end of 2007. It worked well, but the first version wasn’t very flexible and had just three disciplines: Words, Speed Numbers and Speed Cards. Since then I build a second version of it, which included the training functionality. People can now train on the website any time they want. And I included Binary Numbers as well. It’s been something I have enjoyed working on and it has become quite popular. I have about 50 registered competitors and 30 regular competitors. Over the last year I was working on that in a lot of my spare time.

Memory-Sports.com: How does it work exactly?

Simon Orton: The regular competition is every Sunday at 10 AM Greenwich Mean Time. But just in the last couple of weeks I opened it up, so that competitors can schedule competitions at any time they like. Since then there have been a lot more challenges, sometimes once a day and sometimes even more than once – in general maybe three or four times a week. Whoever is available at the time can compete. There is also a ranking list with the idea to compete regularly.

Memory-Sports.com: So if I want to compete against a friend on the other side of the world, I can create a challenge and begin?

Simon Orton: That’s right. The other thing is the option to receive an email, when anybody is creating a challenge and be informed about the time. So if you are available you can come and compete.

Memory-Sports.com: Can everybody join a competition?

Simon Orton: Yeah, I tried to cover most of the common languages in the world. The random words can be in Chinese, Japanese, Russian, French, German – there are about eleven languages available. The idea is that everyone interested in memory sports can compete. I don’t think we have anyone from China yet, but we have a competitor from Japan, plenty of Germans, Russians and a couple of English.

Memory-Sports.com: What do you say about the easy way to cheat in such a competition?

Simon Orton: There are definitely some elements of trust in there. But since there is no prize money, there is no great incentive to cheat. People keep it honest in general – I don’t think anyone’s been cheating so far. But certainly it’s very easy to cheat if you want to.

Memory-Sports.com: What can I do, if I want to join the challenge?

Simon Orton: You can email me at simon.orton@gmail.com and just send me your name. I will set you up as a competitor and email you a personal link to the challenges website. The site for outsiders is http://web.aanet.com.au/memorysports/omc/challenge.php. The registered competitors have an extra ID at the end of their link, which tells the system who they are. If you are not registered you can still see the challenges as they happen as a spectator. But you can’t do the training and compete. The reason I’ve done it like that, is that I don’t know how to make a login page. But the advantage is that you don’t have to remember a password. You can put all your energy in memorizing the numbers and words.

Memory-Sports.com: Good one, Simon! Thank you for your time.

Simon’s Memory Statistics

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