I was watching Richard Jeni's comedy special and he was doing cracks on people in infomercials. He said "you know the guy who says that this product can help you remember? Do you remeber his name? It was Harry Lorayne." I thought that was very interesting that he said that. I looked on his website and it didn't say he was a magician. Kinda weird ehh

I knew of Harry Lorayne as a "memory guy" before I knew he was a magician. I bought one of his memory books about 10 years ago and liked it a lot. His memory system is excellent and can be applied to just about anything - including magic. In fact, in the book, he teaches you how to shuffle a deck of cards, have someone take a few out and then look through the deck and name the missing cards.

Fredd

On a side note, sort of, Harry has posted I believe here on the Café that sometimes he would have a deck of cards with him at a memory class after talking about memorizing the other 51 so you could spot the one they took...

Well since they didn't know he was a magician they apparently took the classic force 100% of the time easier than anything, so he just took a quick look and announced the cards leaving the students amazed...very sneaky memory guy

I must be missing something with these last two posts. If someone takes a few cards out of a deck or one card out of a deck...Then I look through the deck. Why wouldn't I be able to tell what cards are missing?

It's doesn't take super memory to have a deck shuffled, a few cards removed then look through the deck and determine which ones are missing. It's not like we don't know what the 52 cards in a deck are.

What's missing here? I do a trick which uses a "memory" presentation and the gilbreath principle, but it's not done as described above.

Well the memory approach is that you actually do it at high speed.

Unless you are going "A-K" and by suits, it is actually very hard to do this quickly without a memory system... The memory method actually uses your memory to memorize all the cards and determine which is not there, not just count to make sure every card is there... the memory is faster imho.

It isn't a "trick" or effect... it is just a memory exercise... the thing is that Harry would do it so quickly that he could barely look at each card before the reveal, thus amazing his students with his mastery of memory techniques(but really a classic force).

You have to get that memory students are not magicians and therefore not trying to have an "effect" just an exercise. Harry could do this very quickly for real, but if feeling lazy or tricky, why not throw in a bit of sleight of hand?