WHEAT RIDGE, Colo. — A Wheat Ridge college student is taking his amazing memory skills to China next week to compete on the country’s most popular game show. “Pretty crazy, never expected this to happen,” said Johnny Briones, who attends the Colorado School of Mines in Golden.
The Chemical Engineering student has devised a system of memorizing numbers and playing cards that helped set a new USA record last April for memorizing a deck of cards in just 60 seconds. “If you can memorize a deck of cards in a minute, memorizing 20 equations is pretty easy,” said Briones.
On March 7, he will go to China for a week to tape an episode of “The Brain.” The game show features a team of four Chinese contestants against another country’s team with special skills of brain power. “I want to bring home a win for Team USA,” said Briones.
We tested Briones ourselves by shuffling a deck of cards, giving him a minute to look them over and then asking him to repeat them from the bottom of the deck. He repeated the first 51 cards only to get stuck on the last card before correctly identifying the King of Spades.
His trick is to visualize each card as a person, action or object. He says for him the King of Spades is always the movie character Scar from the Lion King. “I saw Scar just breathing fire everywhere,” said Briones.
He may be only 20 years old, but Briones is convinced anyone at any age can improve their memory. “Three keys to memory is imagination, location, concentration,” said Briones, “Ten to fifteen minutes a day, you practice using these techniques I learned, you’ll have a ten-fold better memory.”
You can learn more about American’s youngest Grand Master of Memory by visiting his website .