Ben Pridmore Archives

15 Jun,2012

Ben Pridmore, Three-Time World Memory Champion

Ben Pridmore is an accountant from Derby, in the United Kingdom, with a memory most people in the world would envy. He has won the World Memory Championship three times – 2004, 2008 and 2009, and holds a total of eight championships. two current and one former world record – so far. As of December 2011 Ben is ranked number four on the world-ranking list for Memory Sports.

Pridmore’s 2009 World Memory Championship victory was his eighth consecutive memory competition win since coming in second at the 2007 World Championship. He also was able to break the long-standing world record for memorizing a randomly shuffled deck of card in under 30 seconds, with a time of 24.68 seconds.

Winning the World Memory Championship requires winning 10 different types of memory competitions over a three-day period. The “Holy Grail” of the tournament is the 30-second barrier in memorizing a 52-card deck of randomly shuffled cards.

According to Tony Buzan, originator of the World Memory Championships, “In physical sports terms, it is equivalent to the 4 Minute Mile. When Roger Bannister finally broke that record in 1954, it was by the tiniest of margins — 6 tenths of a second… a mere 0.25%. Ben Pridmore’s breaking of the 30 Second Barrier by 3.72 seconds is an unprecedented demolition of what seemed to be the ultimate barrier. It pushes back, to a gigantic degree, the boundaries of human mental capacity. It is the equivalent of Roger Bannister having broken the Four Minute Mile by 29.76 seconds” (German lawyer Simon Reinhard broke Ben’s record in 2010, but Ben plans to earn it back.)

Ben also holds the world records for memorizing the most binary numbers in 30 minutes (4140); memorizing the most cards in one hour (1456 cards or 28 decks); and has memorized over 25,000 digits to Pi.

Besides memory, Ben is famous for his mental calculation skills, the ability to do mathematical calculations with only his brain, and no calculators or outside aides. He took part in the Mental Calculation World Cup in 2004, 2006 and 2010. In addition, he has also won several medals at the Mind Sports Olympiad including becoming the 2001 World Champion at the ten-disciplined mind sport competition that takes place in one session – the “decamentathlon,” designed to find the best all-around games player in the world.

Ben has been immortalized in music. He was prominently featured in the hip-hop music video for American composer DJ Shadow’s single “Scale It Back.”

“It’s really great to say you are the best in the world at something,” says the 35-year old bachelor, “even if it’s for something stupid like memorizing things.”

According to Ben, “I’ve developed memory systems that work for me, and practice concentrating. You need to get your mind to thinking about one thing at a time.” He says he turns the cards into images of objects and people and places then along a path. He also says it takes lots and lots of practice.

Like most memory experts, Pridmore creates a mental story, comprises a sequence of images that he has permanently memorized as representing number groups, playing card pairs etc. He often forms his story around his old school, Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School, in Horncastle as the basis for these memory sequences.

The World Memory Championship has been taking place every year since 1991. “Memory Champions are made, not born” says Buzan. “The thousands of hours of training which Ben and his fellow memory wizards put in confirm the recently reported scientific fact that genius can be learned. This feat is the result of training the relevant part of brain to ultimate performance — by hard work, and hard play! The brain can be trained, as Ben has amply demonstrated.”

Is Ben Pridmore good at remembering everything? “Not at all,” he said. “I am notorious for not remembering names and faces.” Everyone has his or her Achilles’ heel.

About the author:

Ron White is a two-time U.S.A. Memory Champion and memory training expert. As a memory keynote speaker he travels the world to speak before large groups or small company seminars, demonstrating his memory skills and teaching others how to improve their memory, and how important a good memory is in all phases of your life. His CDs and memory products are also available online at BrainAthlete.com.

Source:

Wikipedia – Ben Pridemore: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Pridmore

World Memory Championship: http://www.worldmemorychampionships.com/TDE_CMS/database/userfiles//Current%20Memory%20Records%202011%20v4.pdf

World Memory Championships: http://www.worldmemorychampionships.com/world_rankings.asp

The Telegraph – World Memory Champion reveals his secrets: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1559499/World-memory-champion-reveals-his-secrets.html

14 Nov,2011

Ben Pridmore Shares How To Memorize a Deck of Cards

What if you could get inside the head of one of the ALL TIME greats at memorization and see what he sees when he memorizes. Well, in this one of a kind video you can.

Ben Pridmore is a former World Memory Champion and has held the record for the fastest to memorize a deck of cards in only 24 seconds!

In this fun video he memorizes a deck of cards and then you get to see the images in his head! FUN

DJ Shadow “Scale It Back” from Ewan Jones Morris on Vimeo.

16 Oct,2011

World Memory Championship 2011 News Update Oct 16

The World Memory Sports Council would like to apologise to competitors for the recent uncertainties that have surrounded arrangements for the 20th World Memory Championships. We can confirm that our hosts, New Mind, assure us that, everything is now in place to ensure that the 2011 World Memory Championships will go ahead in the sumptuous five star HJ Grand Hotel in Guangzhou.

A number of competitors have chosen to wait till the last minute before committing to participate in the Championships, in case of last minute changes. However, we are now satisfied that the concerns that the previous concerns that Council has had regarding the level of arbiters and other arrangements has been satisfactorily resolved..

In the current state of the global economy no country is immune from challenges, and China is no exception. We are grateful to our hosts that, despite these challenges, they have found a way to ensure that this important milestone competition can take place, even if some aspects of the arrangements have had to be scaled back to reflect this. The most important aspect of the World Championships is to provide an opportunity for competitors around the world to meet, compete together and to celebrate their achievements. This will most certainly be the case in Guangzhou this year.

We call on all competitors now to join us all for this historic 20th competition and to use the event to celebrate two decades of this amazing Mind Sport. The two founders, Tony Buzan and Raymond Keene OBE will be there along with eight times World Memory Champion Dominic O’Brien. Three times World Memory Champion Ben Pridmore will be competing to win back his crown from current World Champion Wang Feng. Chief Arbiter Phil Chambers, supported by Jennifer Goddard, Gaby Kappus and arbiters from the Philippines will be heading up the arbiting team. Will you be there as well? If so, please act now and register.

There are just three weeks till registrations close on November 6th to give us sufficient time to prepare all the competitors papers and translations. Registrations after that date cannot be accepted. If you require an official invitation in order to obtain your travel visa, please contact us .

We thank all competitors for their patience during the uncertainties of previous weeks, We now look forward to making this a fitting and memorable celebration of this growing and important sport.

Thank you!
Chris Day, General Secretary, The World Memory Sports Council

Copyright © 2011 World Memory Sports Council, All rights reserved.
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14 Sep,2011

Trust Your Memory

I was preparing for the 2009 USA Memory Championship and so I contacted the then World Champion, Ben Pridmore, and I asked him for advice. His input straight forward and simple….trust your memory.

That was it….trust your memory!

What did he mean? For example, when you are memorizing a deck of cards the faster the time the better (if you get the order correct of course). Yet, sometimes in this effort to get it correct I would find myself looking at each card for 4-5 seconds to really cement it into my memory. My time on memorizing a deck of 52 shuffled cards at one point was 5 minutes! Not a good score 🙂

Ben was suggesting that I glance at each card much quicker and trust my memory that I would retain it instead of obsessing over it for 4-5 seconds. Interesting strategy I thought and Ben was the World Champion so I put his theory to the test. WOW! I was going faster than I thought possible for my brain to recall it and Ben was right! My memory was retaining the cards.

It is much like speed reading. Most of use read slow not because that is the fastest that we can go but we really don’t understand how much our brain takes in going at fast speeds. Think about driving down the road at 70mph and all the signs, billboards and movement you are able to take in. Howard Berg, the World’s Faster Reader says that ‘turning the pages’ is what slows him down the most about reading! Learning to trust your brain to move faster and comprehend or trust is big.

Trust your memory, trust yourself and you will be amazed at how good your memory and brain really is.

This article was shared by two time USA Memory Champion and memory speaker, Ron White.

5 Sep,2011

2011 UK Memory Championship

New World Record at the UK Open memory Championships

For the second year running MWB Business Exchange sponsored the venue for the UK Open Memory Championships, this time in a luxurious City of London office complex in Houndsditch. Supervised by Chief Arbiter Phil Chambers and eight times world memory champion, Dominic O’Brien, competitors and arbiters travelled from as far as America, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, and Germany to take part.

This included two first time competitors Martin Mwaka from the UK and Jay Adams from the USA.

World Ranked number three and ex World Champion Ben Pridmore was there in his famous Pocket Dragon tee shirt, and complete with his legendary lucky hat and was joined by Nelson Dellis from the USA, James Ponder from Essex, Mattias Ribbing from Sweden.

James Paterson from Wales broke the only World Record of the competition in the 5 minute Names and Faces by memorising 126 breaking the record set by Katie Kermode in 2009 at the Welsh Championships. First time competitor Martin Mwaka achieved a Bronze medal position in the Speed Cards.

However, it was Ben Pridmore who strolled to victory with 6489 points followed by Nelson Dellis of the USA with 4248 and James Ponder with 4177.

The prizes were presented by MWB Centre Manager Helene Reymon who, along with her colleagues, made us all very welcome.

MWB has also agreed to host the event in 2012 and the dates for your diary are confirmed as August 23rd and 24th.

Article was re-posted from http://worldmemorychampionship.com/latest_news.asp

4 Sep,2011

Ben Pridmore World Memory Champion

Many nations have a national memory tournament and to become a national memory champion is indeed a major accomplishment, yet being the World Memory Champion is a significant accomplishment. One man who earned this title on multiple occasions in England’s own Ben Pridmore. I have interacted with Ben over email and met him at the 2009 World Memory Championship. Ben is not only a genius (literally) he is also a man with a good nature and good heart. I am a fan of Ben Pridmore the person and the World Memory Champion.

The following is a short video clip on the World Memory Champion (at the time of this post he is no longer the current World Memory Champion but don’t count Ben out for another title)