Huantsan Day 1

**Check it out here to see where I am real-time! https://share.delorme.com/NelsonDellis** About 3 years ago to the day I was here, in Huaraz, amidst the stunningly beautiful Cordillera Blancas, sitting down for dinner at a suspect and not-so-clean Peruvian restaurant, thinking to myself this is not going to end well. 15 minutes after finishing that meal, I found myself wishing everything inside of me would come out, like NOW. And it did. Whatever bug that was, it followed me up the valley to high camp on Alpamayo until I couldn't even gather the strength to move myself even a few feet without collapsing.

That was my experience the last time I was here (for the happy video version of this experience, watch HERE), and here I am again, attempting to tackle a new peak: Huantsan. First climbed in the 1950s, it's very exposed and a long and difficult climb. To boot, there was a Swiss team here a few weeks ago attempting it and had to bail because the higher up ridge was not looking so good.

Needless to say: EXCITING.

I flew out to Lima mid-day yesterday, grabbed some delicious ceviche and lomo saltado for dinner once I arrived, then hopped on a 7-hour bus-ride to Huaraz just before midnight. I didn't really fit well in the seat, but it was comfortable enough and I was able to sleep some. When sunlight hit, I was woken up by some rapid Spanish-speaking "host" who shoved a BINGO game card in my face. OKAY I GUESS IM PLAYING BINGO THEN. He then whipped out a deck of cards and did something I didn't really understand and then I won. I'm not sure what I won, but I won something ::SHRUG::

Got into Huaraz early morn with both my bags - BRAVO TRAVEL GODS, BRAVO - and cabbed it to my hotel, which was situated right across the street from the place I stayed last time I was here. Cool. I walked into breakfast, where Phil and the rest of the team were eating. I introduced myself, joined in, and we all started talking mountains. I love this about climbing. It's not everyday I can just talk about mountains in this depth. No one really gets climbing unless you climb. Anywho, everyone on the team seems even-keeled, level-headed, super friendly, and motivated. As a close loved one of mine likes to say: NGNL (NO GAMES, NO LIES). WE GUN GET SHIT DONE (or at least try our asses off in doing so).

Dinner was splendid at 'El Horno' in Gringo Plaza (fantastic wood-oven pizza). Then we came back to our hotel and snoozed all night long. Got about 10 hours of sleep. YES. Woke up, packed, and we walked down the street to get sandwiches for a little day hike we had planned and OOPPPPS.....twisted my ankle. Pretty bad actually. How embarrassing. Not even while doing something cool. Just walking. Anyways, I sucked it up and we trekked up to catch a picturesque view of the peak we are gonna climb next to a beautiful mountain lake. Only I got lost because I was hobbling slowly up the mountain and it took forever to find my way down (and it was painful). Anyways, we leave tomorrow morning. I'll be fine. I have a stupid swollen ball on the outside of my left ankle, but I'm icing it and should be better over the next few days. Tomorrow is just a 3-4 hour hike, so I'll manage. UGH.

In the mean time, I'll be training my memory up at altitude like I always do. If you're following along on my climb, it would mean a lot to me if you took this memory quiz I've been working on getting tons of people to take. It's short and easy. Just DO IT. Thanks :D www.extremememorychallenge.com

That's all for now!

Upcoming Climb: Huantsan

Have you ever heard of Huantsan? A 6,369m (20,896 ft) peak? Probably not. But what about after I show you this picture:

Look familiar? Nothing still? How about now?

There you go. Although the Paramount Pictures logo mountain isn't definitively Huantsan (it's not confirmed, only speculated), it's awfully similar, don't you think? It also depends on the angle at which the mountain is seen from as well. There are sides of the mountain that look nothing like it and there are other mountains in the same mountain range that at the right angle also resemble it (Alpamayo and Artesonraju). But Huantsan looks the most similar, and a lot of people agree, with that shelf/ridge on the left side riding up to the summit.

Either way, I'm heading out to Peru on July 5th for a 3 week expedition up this relatively unclimbed (maybe has fewer than 50 summits?) peak in the Cordillera Blanca. Even cooler than that is that I'll be climbing with Altitude Junkies, the folks I climbed Everest with in 2013. Phil Crampton will be our leader, who's famous for saying things like "I brush my teeth with beer" and "I once used the oil from a tuna fish can to help lube up my butthole when I was constipated on Everest a few years back" (or something to that effect). Needless to say, he's a mountain man and a 7-time Everest summiteer. Beside him are a few Sherpas I also climbed on Everest with, namely Pasang Ongchu Sherpa and Kami Neru "Mad Dog" Sherpa. Then there will be about 8 climbers. A cozy little team. It will be an epic climb. The region of the Andes is stunning and remote and all of the good things that make me happy and push myself. All in the name of making life memorable.

And since we're on that topic....how's your memory? Have you taken my little memory test yet to see how you compare to me? If you haven't, please do! This is for research. If you haven't done it yet, go here and take the short and fun memory test! It's easy and painless: <<HERE>> Love you!

As for my climb, I will be blogging from the mountain and you'll also be able to track my progress via gps. Stay tuned!

Nepal Earthquake

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HOW TO HELP

1. BY TEXT - This is the quickest, most mindless way to help. Text GIVE NEPAL to 80088 to donate $10 (I believe you can give up to 3 times). Share it to all of your phone contacts. Make it spread like wildfire. Donations go to Global Giving (more info here). They are trying to raise $1,000,000, already at over $500,000.

2. RED CROSS - Again, there are many organizations providing relief over there, but Red Cross is something we all know and can get behind. The have committed an initial $300,000 of aid as well as 19,000 non-food relief kits which include clothes, kitchen sets, tarpaulins and mosquito nets. Make a donation here.

3. SAVE THE CHILDREN - Save the Children is an international charity that has been in Nepal since 1976 and is therefore in an really good position to help after years of operating within the country. Also, 10% of funds are going towards preparations for future disasters. Make a donation to their Nepal Earthquake Children’s Relief Fund here.

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As many of you already know, there was a massive earthquake on Saturday near Katmandu, Nepal, a place that is very dear to my heart and memory. Katmandu is a very unique city, with amazing people, culture, food, landscapes, etc. But it is not a city that was designed to withstand a 7.8 magnitude earthquake. The death tolls broadcasted over the news have been seemingly "low" to begin with, but that number is starting to spike as more bodies are being found and the destruction is being dug through. As of this morning the toll is nearly at 4000 and I would imagine that number to rise over the next few days (10,000+?). It is absolutely horrible and devastating.

Nepal is one of the most beautiful places on earth, and for so many reasons. It's so hard to imagine that a lot of it has been completely flattened. In moments like these it is difficult to figure out one's place in the world. Why does this happen? Why them, not us? But it's better to ask how can I help? What can I do?

So, I ask you to help. Above are some recommendations of how you can do that. Personally, I made a donation to each of the 3 efforts I mention and I plan on heading out there as soon as I can to physically help out in any way I can. Please donate. Anything, really. Many of the people there have absolutely nothing, especially after the earthquake.

I have to mention Everest here. I have a lot of friends in the Katmandu region especially in the Everest region. Many of them had been climbing last year when the avalanche disaster abruptly ended their season. And now this. There haven't been official reports, but I'm assuming the 2015 Everest season (south side, at least) is now over. Thankfully none of my friends and Sherpa family that I know and am close to were hurt. All are safe. Although you can see my friend Kuntal running for his life in this instantly-viral video of the avalanche that happened at Base Camp as a result of the earthquake (he is okay too). See the video here. WARNING: It's a bit hard to watch. Some other climbers I know were at higher camps when this happened, so were technically "safe" (the main avalanche came off of Mt. Pumori, which is right next to Base Camp), but then the issue has been now, how do they get down? The routes below them are completely destroyed. From what I've been told, there have been helicopter rescues bringing climbers down. Communication from out there is sparse, but I believe most climbers are heading down to Lukla to hopefully try and head back home.

2015 Extreme Memory Tournament

In case you haven't heard, 4x USA Memory Champ (aka me, Nelson Dellis) is hosting a brand-new memory tournament called the Extreme Memory Tournament, for the second year in a row. For those who don't know, 4x Australian Memory Champ Simon Orton and Nelson created this event and the memory training software that comes with it just over a year and a half ago. The idea: 2 days of competitive, gripping, extreme, mind-bending memory matches. Head-to-head action, all digital, in a live setting that can engage the audience. Simon Reinhard, one of the top mental athletes in the world will be defending his 2014 XMT title! When: May 2-3, 2015 (both days 8am-4pm) Where: Dart NeuroScience Center, San Diego, CA Tickets: FREE, but RSVP here: Day 1 // Day 2 Who: The top memory athletes around the world! Check them out!

2015 USA Memory Championship Recap

I"m going to try and not write a post about Lance"s Mustache....but OMG LANCE"S MUSTACHE! I don"t think anyone will remember the 2015 USA Memory Championships, but they will remember that "stache. And his 29 second deck of cards record (Watch here).

Here"s a recap of the event and how it went down (also, as a pre-emptive TL;DR: I won my 4th USA Memory Championship).

For the first time in my 7 years of competing, I was actually in NYC as a resident rather than a visitor. In the past I would always travel up a few days before, get comfy in my hotel, do all the things I typically do before a memory competition, compete, then fly home. But this year, home was just a train ride uptown. Weird, but cool. And different.

The night before, I stayed in my apartment training some last minute things. Mostly training the final tie-breaker event which had been changed suddenly just a week prior to "two decks shuffled together with 90 seconds to memorize as many cards as possible." It had been 3 minutes before, which was super doable. But the 90 seconds, while still doable, was way harder under stress. Anyways, at this point before the competition, I was pretty unsure of how I was going to perform the next day. Last year, after I won the 2014 championship, I told myself I would take a month off memory training (I hadn"t taken a SINGLE day off since the end of 2009). That month ended up being 6 months. In those 6 months I went through a lot of shit that distracted me, which kept it increasingly harder to get back on track to train. I"d have spurts where I"d get back into it for a bit and while I"d be a bit rusty, after a couple days I would be back in fighting form. But I knew I wasn"t going to improve if I kept that up, I"d only maintain. Then the World Championships came around in December and I found myself training a little more, but not as much as I would have liked. It was enough to get me an 8th place finish surprisingly. After that, went through a pretty devastating Christmas holiday, coming out into the new year in a pretty shitty place. About mid-feb, something hit me and I said fuck it, and decided to move to NYC. I had had a job offer sitting there, but didn"t really want to take it until that point.

It was a tough transition, and I"m still in transition, but good god was it the best thing I could have done for myself. I keep telling people when they ask me how I like New York, that it was EXACTLY what I needed. I got a place, got serious, back on track, and started training every morning and night around my job. I wasn"t going to break any massive records this year, but I sure as hell was going to be at the top vying for the title.

So the morning of the competition came around, I woke up nice and early, put on my pre-memory competition playlist jamz, did some drills, ate a bowl of milk and cheerios with chopped fruit, then headed out to the subway.....without my wallet. FORGOT. MY. WALLET. Ugh, worst memory champion EVARRRR! Lucky for me, I had a camera guy filming me so he shared his subway pass (in exchange for capturing that totally embarrassing moment on film). Got to the venue about an hour before it started and was a bit taken aback by its lack-luster feel. The event this year was held in a different place than it had been the past 17 years (not the Con-Edison building but rather in the basement of a random, blah, Armenian church).

Anyways, they put me in the front row as per usual, with Lance Tschirhart (who I expected to break every record and win the whole thing) sitting in the table/seat right behind me. Lance had a magnificent mustache that reminded me of the cops from Super Troopers. Meow. Alex Mullen was in the table to my left, looking in tough mnemonic form, and then Johnny Briones (aka mini-Bruce Lee) was on the far left. Livan (the other finalist from last year) got stuffed all the way in the back, the lucky bastard, getting to avoid all the attention. All in all there were 64 competitors, about the average amount we"ve seen in the past few years.

Names and Faces

First event, memorize names and faces for 15 minutes. 20 minutes for recall. Either my memory is really good or the set they use for pictures is running thin. I swear I remembered all of those faces from past years. Anyways, it was rather easy. Made it through all 117 faces (that"s 234 names) with time to spare and got to review a lot. I knew I was going to get a 200 score. Recall was easy. Ended up with 201 correct names memorized, a new USA record, woo! I hate this event, why am I so good at it?

Speed Numbers

I knew I was gonna have trouble here. Back in past years I"d hit 380-410 in training, but this year my best was 345 a few times. I think I had done speed numbers in practice a total of 20 times before the competition....so I was not in good form. The first attempt I went for 320, but made mistakes for a total of 258 digits. The second attempt felt better and I went for 340, and thought I had maybe one mistake, but apparently it was more. Got 262. Not great, but not horrible. Both Alex and Lance got 300 (320 and 360 respectively - both new US records).

Poetry

I"m also good at this event, even though I hate it. WHYYYYY?? The poem was great. Tony Dottino, the organizer of the event, commissions his brother to write the poem every year. This year it was about Disney World, which is a place I have some very strong/recent memories from. The memories were kinda painful to think about, but they helped online casino me learn the poem really easily. I knew I had a US record. Sadly, I didn"t know that someone else had 1 point more than me and thus, had the new US record instead. Curses! The worst part is I wrote one last word at the end of the poem: "you." But I erased it because I wasn"t 100% sure it was correct. Coulda at least tied the record. Poop.

Speed Cards

The record was 60 seconds flat (in US competition, from last year) and I was hoping to nail a sub 60-second time on the first trial, then go for low 30s the second. I was slow on the first try, with 67 seconds (UGH). Alex hit 39 seconds and Everett (a new comer who had only just started memorizing cards a year prior - GO EVERETT!!) hit 41 seconds. Lance made 55 seconds. So 3 US records just like that. Damn. Second attempt I went for sub-40 seconds and hit 38 and change. But I flubbed it. Didn"t matter because Lance made a fool of us all with a perfect 29 seconds. Awesome. That"s up there with the best.

After the first 4 morning events, I was in 1st place overall. And still quite commandingly. Cool. Didn"t expect that. The afternoon top-8 was Me, Alex Mullen, Lance Tschirhart, Johnny Briones, Everett Chew, Erica Want, John Graham, and Aaron Mirman.

Random Words

For this event, the top 8 go in the back to memorize a list of 200 words for 15 minutes, then come back out on stage and one-by-one, say all the words. If you make a mistake you"re out. We continue until 3 of the 8 are out. In the past it was enough to memorize 100 to be safe and usually the 3 would get out before you would have to say anything near the 100th word. I went for 140 just for shits, and because the competition was harder. Don"t remember where we got out exactly, but it was somewhere in the 80s I think? Then we kept going and it was me and Johnny past 120. He ousted me at 141 (I think he memorized 150 something). Grrrrr....Johnny!

Tea Party

5 competitors left. We had to memorize a bunch of information on 6 random audience members (name, phone number, address, etc.). I didn"t practice this even once this year. It"s gotten too easy for everyone, I think. We all ended up nailing it. And all 5 of us were headed into the finals. I think they"re gonna have to make this event harder next year.

Double Deck O" Cards

Two decks of cards in 5 minutes. Recited on stage one-by-one. One mistake and you"re out. I thought for sure we would all nail this and have to go to the tie-breaker I mentioned earlier. I really thought I was going to lose. Things were good on stage until Alex stumbled on a card early on (like the 13th card or something?). In my head I was like "nooooooo wayyyy this is happening!" He couldn"t bring up the card to mind fast enough - it happens :( Sadly, he was out. He passed the microphone on to Lance, who I guess was in the wrong place in his memory palace, and said the wrong card. He was out too. "What the hell???" My two scariest opponents were out before I had even taken a breath. I knew Johnny could keep going with me, but was thinking that Aaron might possibly not know both decks (he was a newcomer as well). He made a mistake somewhere along the way and it was down to Johnny and I. We got through the first deck no problem and Johnny made an error on the 63rd card suddenly and there I was, being congratulated on my 4th championship. I couldn"t freaking believe it.

In the moment I was thinking to myself, damn...I don"t deserve this; I wasn"t the best out there. But looking back on it, I take that thought back. I was the best that day. Maybe not in certain events, but overall, and in context of what the competition is, I was the best. Everyone kept telling me how cool and poised I looked compared to everyone else. I didn"t understand that because in my head I was a fucking mess. But I guess it was an organized mess, and looking back at video of myself, I looked cocksure as hell. I liked that.

Anyways, the win felt good. Not my greatest. 2014 was my favorite. But this was the icing on the cake of a nice 7 year run. It"s cool to say that I"ve won 4 out of the last 5 competitions. Annoying to think I could have won 6 times if I hadn"t have been careless twice in the finals, but this competition isn"t about "almosts".

Now to focus on bigger and better things: onwards to the XMT!!!

2015 USA Memory Champ!

I won! Again! For the 4th time :) I'll provide a detailed blog soon. But for now, enjoy a few clips from my recent appearance on the Chinese television show "Super Brain": My short profile video (awesome! haha):

My memory challenge (memorizing a maze):

Enjoy :)

Lots to catch up on, but first...

Hello everyone! It's been a while. A lot has been happening, and I will post many updates in the week to come chronicling all of that. But first, for those that are interested, here is the full length video of a speech I gave last October at the amazing Chicago Ideas Week event (I spoke right next to George Lucas!!! GEEK MOMENT!). Enjoy :) (also the longest my beard has ever been, memorable no?). https://vimeo.com/111762435

2014 World Memory Championships Recap

As we all placed our hands down on our Speed Stacks Timers, the tension in the air was palpable. "Neurons on the ready..." the arbiter yelled out, his words piercing through the deathly still air. Then a slight pause and...."GO!"

We were off.

Each of us chugging a pint of Kingfisher beer as fast as possible. No sooner had I grasped my own beer and opened up my gullet, I heard the slam of a timer to my left. Tsogbadrakh, the fiercely competitive memory guru from Mongolia, had chugged his down in a mere, astonishing 5.85 seconds. I glanced over at him with eyes agape, still trying to down the rest of my own drink, with beer streaming down the sides of my face like an amateur. "How the hell..." I thought ("I just open throat. Pour beer in", he later explained) just as I heard the more experienced ale-drinker John (a fellow American and first time memory competitor) slam down on his timer in quick succession. "NO!!!" I thought. I spilled the rest of my drink all over my face in attempt to hurry my chug, and then slammed on my timer. 10.97 seconds. Only a few milliseconds after Boris (the German to my left), who ALWAYS manages to beat me in almost every thing I do at memory competitions just by a hair...go figure.

Pitiful. But not as pitiful as the the three brits still drinking down their drinks across from me. Ben, Jake, and Phil poorly representing their country. Shame on them.

This was what the 2014 World Memory Championships culminated in. After three full days of memorizing for hours upon hours, from morning "till evening, we all deserved a bit of a drink and some silly antics. We had discussed possibly inducting a few new members into the KL7 club, but were unclear about some of its specifics (if anyone but Ed Cooke can induct, if the 49 digit number has to be memorized pre or post pint, if a kiss on the cheek is allowed or if it has to be a full-on snog, or if this club is even a real thing or a joke). Anyways, we opted for a straight up speed drinking competition. And then we ate Indian food...in China. Trust me, it was easier that way. I had had an authentic Haikou-ian Chinese seafood the night before and I quickly learned that I never wanted to try that ever again. So Indian it was.

Oh right, there was an actual competition too...let me talk about that. I came in tied for 8th (apparently that means 9th? I don"t get how the stats work), which was totally unexpected for a few reasons. For one, poor practice. Ever since I won the US Memory Championship back in March, I decided to take my first training break in 5 years. That one month turned into seven before I decided to get serious again. And I never got too serious about it unfortunately. I definitely was not ready going into this competition. Second, jet lag/lack of sleep. I missed my first connecting flight, which resulted in me getting bumped a whole day later into Haikou, China. Which gave me a grand total of 5 hours of sleep before the 3-day competition started (and that was after flying for over 30 hours from across the globe...so....fuck me).

Day 1

I was half asleep when this day started and carrying a massive headache. My mind had no idea what was going on. But the first event was a chill one for me and one that I"m naturally pretty decent at: Names & Faces (15 minutes). International competitions usually use crazy ridiculous names, but these seemed to be a tiny bit easier than the norm. I wrote down 150 names, which after mistakes were graded, gave me a score of 125. Nice! A new US international record. Yanjaa (a relatively new female Swede competitor who rocked all of our socks off) nearly broke the world record with 185 names. She was a beast at that.

Next up, 30 minute binary memorization. I absolutely hate this event. And my mind was definitely not looking forward to reading pages and pages of 1s and 0s. Nope. I would have rather enjoyed flagellating myself with a wet bus ticket. But I forced it and managed to get through 1750 digits or so. Made a couple of mistakes and ended up with a score of 1615 digits. Not horrible, but slightly less than my PR from last year, 1655.

Lunch, and then one-hour number memorization. Last year I went for about 1800 and got a score of 1515. This year it felt pretty smooth, given my fuzzy head and extreme desire to be fast asleep at that point. But I made it through almost 2000 digits (1950 to be exact). After some mistakes, I ended up with 1555, another US international record. BOOM!

Dinner. Nyquil. Bed. Sleep.

Day 2

I woke up having slept a solid 8 hours and feeling awesomely refreshed. First event was Abstract Images (random blobs in order). I hadn"t practiced this at all but I have a pretty good system for it. I went for what I went for last year, almost 250 images, but ended up with 205. Meh.

Next up speed numbers (5 minutes of memorization). This is usually my best event and I practice this a ton, but I was seriously rusty. Anything over 300 digits would have been glorious. The first run felt great and I went through 306 digits. I had them all, except I wrote a 9 somewhere in there when it should have been a 2. And I knew it had to be a 2 too. Ah well, that happens some times. That gave me a score of 286. Decent, but not my best.

Historic dates. I matched my score exactly from last year: 49 dates in 5 minutes. Cool, since I hadn"t even tried this event since last year"s competition. Insert deep belly chuckle laugh HERE.

Speed numbers, second trial. I psyched myself out on this one and got stuck on some images (which finally showed my lack of practice)...I didn"t even bother with the recall because it was only 280 digits, less than my previous score. Boo. Brad helped me feel better about myself by explaining how miserable it is to be online slots vegetarian (just kidding, he loves it!).

Lunch, and then the final event for the day: one-hour card memorization. I laid out the 20 decks in front of me and was hoping to get through all of them. I had a good pace through the first 10 decks but then I started second guessing myself so I spent a lot of time going back over them. That ultimately led me to have enough time to just go through 6.5 more decks by the time was up. During recall I had 2 decks which felt weird and I had to guess a little bit. My score ended up being 13.09 decks, which makes no sense because .09 of a deck of cards is 4.68 cards. How does one memorize 4.68 cards? Not sure. Anyways, Dammit!! That was a deck and a half less than last year. Oh well. Still decent, I guess.

Gross Chinese dinner. Bed. No sleep.

Day 3

Couldn"t sleep at all. Frick.

We started with Random Words (15 minute memorization), which is one of my favorite/best events. I had actually practiced a good amount here. One day I"ll go for the world record. But not today. I went for a rocking 266 words. I soon checked in with my fellow competitors and found that Simon Reinhard had written down 257, and Boris only 252. Could I win this event?? I felt pretty good about it. But nope, I ended up with a small spelling mistake that gave me a score of 255. UGHHHHH. Apparently writing "cosmetic" instead of "cosmetics" costs 10 points. I could have had gold. Oh well, silver will have to do (and it was a new US international record anyways, so let"s have a party!).

Next up, Spoken Numbers (1 digit spoken per second). I"m usually pretty good at this, but again, limited practice. Brad Zupp, another US competitor (also the guy who took my record of 101 digits in this event last year with 112) was aiming to beat his record. FYI, I was aiming to beat his record too. We get 3 trials on this one. On the first I went for 120 and thought I had it, only I confused one image and that gave me a wonderful score of 14 digits. Brad messed up too, thinking the first few digits were a countdown when in fact they were the actual digits to memorize, LOL. 2nd trial felt good until I suddenly stopped paying attention at digit #60. Okay then. I ended up with 56 digits (apparently I truly stopped listening at digit #56). Brad felt confident and managed a sweet and sexy 150 digits. Well done. I was happy for him. Asshole. I was pissed. I needed that record back. So trial 3 I went for 152 digits (I had told Brad I was going safe with 100 or so, but at the last minute I said fuck it, I"m going for it - classic Nelson). I wrote all the digits down but one image was a 50-50 guess. I felt like it was one, but I wrote the other for some reason. Damn....that gave me a less than 56 digit score (since it"s graded up to your first mistake). So Brad walked away unscathed. CURSES!! But seriously, congrats....LOSER! I"m not bitter.

For the final event, I calculated, I"d need to memorize a deck of cards in at least 70 seconds to beat my total championship score from last year. That"s quite safe for me, so I felt pretty good about it. I actually managed 69, so that went perfectly. I was super cool under the pressure. A lot of other competitors flubbed their decks, so I was sitting pretty in the top 10. That also gave me the opportunity to go for a US record in the second trial. I was going to need sub-40 seconds for that, but I was nervous, and tired as hell, so only mustered a slowish 43 seconds. I made mistakes on the recall anyways, so it wasn"t counted. Meh. Oh well. Good thing I nailed the first attempt.

So I ended up tying for 8th place. Which for some reason, in the standings they have me down as 9th, behind the other guy, who has 8th, even though we have the same score. WAT? Anyways, overall, a great competition. A bit strange, being in a random unheardof town in China, but still cool. Maybe next year I will actually train.....and drink my beer in less than 5.85 seconds.

Ace of Diamonds

I (Nelson Dellis) was followed around for a couple years (2011-2013) by a certain film-maker (Ana Overgaard) and here is the final result. A short documentary called "Ace of Diamonds" (since when I memorize cards, I am the Ace of Diamonds). I don't know why she was so interested in capturing my story, but she did, and here it is. Over the past year it's been selected for numerous film festivals and even won Best Documentary in one of them. Sweet! If you have a few bucks to spare, download the film and learn a little about me (I helped create the XMT) and memory sports as well: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/25579

XMT 2015

The 2015 Extreme Memory Tournament has been announced and good god is it exciting. Upping the competitor count from 16 to 24, with an online qualifier to determine most of those competitors. A new 5th event, more prize money, more awesomeness. Check out the blog post here for more details.

Updates updates updates

Hey there, it's been a while. I've had a quiet little stint over here as things have settled (post USA Memory Championship win back in March and the XMT in April). But in other ways it's been incredibly busy on the book writing front.

For those of you who don't know, I sold my book (finally after trying for a few years) to National Geographic publishing and have been working on the manuscript furiously for the past 6 months. The title is still not 100% decided upon yet, but you can bet your bottom dollar that it will have some of the following words in it: remember, memory, and memorize. Just saying!

It's going to be a pure how-to book, i.e. how Nelson Dellis memorizes anything and everything. If that interests you, you can buy it March 6th, 2015. We've got an amazing artist doing all the illustrations (one of the reasons I chose Nat Geo as my publisher is because they were all on board with my desire for lots of pictures - after all memory is all about visuals and pictures), so this book is not only going to read great, it's going to look friggin' fabulous.

As for what's coming up in the next few months. Not quite sure. Right now I've only got my book on my mind. But, there will be a Kilimanjaro climb early 2015 as mentioned before. Information for that will be coming soon. I want all of you readers out there to come join me and climb for memory!

XMT 2014 Recap

April 26-27th saw the first ever annual XMT competition, held at the Dart NeuroScience building in outer San Diego, CA. The 2014 XMT went on without too many hiccups, and boy was it entertaining. More than I ever would have expected. I mean I guess, with the top 16 competitors in the world all under one roof, and a big prize fund, how could it not be?

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DAY 1

A week ago today, the first ever XMT (and first head-2-head-style memory competition) began. My day started early, getting to the venue to set up all the laptops, make sure all signs and posters were up, and that everything was working smoothly (fingers crossed, praying to the wifi gods!).

As competitors and spectators started to trickle in, I started getting a little nervous, not sure how this first day of competition would pan out, how people would receive the event as a whole, and if the bloody software would work as expected! But I knew that once the first round of events had gone through at least once, we would be good to go.

Johannes Mallow started things off against Gunther Karsten (who doesn't really compete anymore but made a special appearance) in words. It went off without a hitch and Johannes won 35-27. Not bad. The next few iterations went totally fine, then came names, which also went fine (although scores were a bit low). Cards came next, and while nobody had really hit their stride yet, Ola Kare Risa managed the fastest time so far with a deck in 41.46 seconds. Then finally numbers came around and Jonas von Essen did a quick 20.95 seconds to memorize a 60 digit number perfectly. YES! We were through.

The rest of the day worked pretty much like a well oiled machine, cranking out match after match. We had 96 matches to go through, and while at times it did feel like a long stretch near the end of the day, people seemed to be liking the flow of the competition (in the future, the idea is to have 4 matches play at a time, which will improve the flow and speed of the first day considerably). Some of the most notable moments/matches:

• Just before the mid-day break, Johannes hitting a cards score of 32.59s, then Ola just after hitting a time of 30.40s! One personal best after the other!
• Boris screaming out the loudest German curse word I've ever heard after getting a really fast time on numbers and thinking he got everything correct, when in fact he swapped two sets of 3. Andi ended up winning across from him, going slow and steady.
• Johannes getting the best time of the day in numbers with 16.57s!
• Simon getting the best time time of the day in cards with 26.32s!
• Jonas and Simon going for some really fast times in numbers (15s and 14s) with nothing to lose as the leaders in their groups (they missed a few digits).
• Watching Simon attempt a near world record cards attempt at 21.95s (missed a few cards).
• Watching Ben and James battle it out for the last slot for Day 2. James missed it by 7 cards.

A great first day for the books! Not too many problems. Only one match had to be reset and a few scores didn't get entered as they should have. But it was all fixed on the fly and I think for the most part no one noticed.

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DAY 2

As for day 2, we entered it in full stride, feeling a lot more confident having had the first day under our belts. But now we were introducing something that had yet to be fully tested, Surprise Events. I had run through each of them a few times on my own and felt fairly confident about them, but they were tough to come up with. Initially I had a ton of ideas for this part of the event, but then I had to consider skill level, language, and other factors of the competitors to make it all as fair as possible. That totally nixed the majority of my ideas, so I had to plan a bit more carefully. Anyways, I settled on a few that I thought were fair and interesting enough.

The Quarter Finals were exciting. Especially the match between Ben and Jonas. Ben had just squeaked in the day before and was fighting for his life. You could tell. He was totally on his game. But going up against Jonas isn't easy and in the end Jonas came through. Mark also pulled an incredible upset over the favored and higher ranked Ola (4-1).

In the Semis, Simon coasted through easy over Mark, but Johannes beat Jonas in what was (in my opinion), the best match of the competition. Jonas was up 3-0, needing just one more win to move on to the finals. But somehow, Johannes battled back and brought it back to a 3-3 tie. The final event between them would be Names, an event that both are quite good at. The score during that match was low and hovering around 10-10. Johannes put in a name that got him up one 11-10. Jonas entered an incorrect name but then moved his cursor to the correct face for the previous name he had entered. Everyone held their breath thinking his was going to also type the same name there.....but he didn't. Time expired and Johannes was the winner. PHEW for him!

The 3rd Place match had Jonas as the favorite, and he ended up coasting to victory 4-0. I guess Mark couldn't gain any rhythm there. Simon, on the other hand, in the Finals, had all the rhythm in the world and was flirting with going completely unbeaten on day two. He was absolutely solid on every match. Johannes eked out a victory near the end there and some of us were wondering if he was about to pull a second come back. Simon laid that question to rest when he memorized 43 words over Johannes' 35 in the final match, claiming the Extreme Memory Tournament Champion title for himself.

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WHAT'S NEXT?

Overall, the tournament went a lot better than I expected. Everyone had such great things to say (especially Simon, who walked away with a total of $32K! Well done!). The exciting thing now is seeing where this thing goes. Simon Orton (co-creator) and I are already scheming and what's definitely for sure is that there will be many other XMT competitions to come!

Sherpa Support

The word on whether this year's Everest season is over or not is yet to be decided. It will ultimately (and rightly so) be decided by the Sherpa community on the mountain in the next 4-5 days. In the meantime, there are a few ways you can help out the Sherpa families who lost someone dear to them in the recent avalanche:

1. The American Alpine Club - They've set up a Sherpa fund where you can make any size donation: https://americanalpineclub.org/p/sherpa-support-fund

2. Alex Lowe Charitable Foundation - Using gorgeous photos of Sherpas and the Everest region taken by some of the most well known mountaineer/travel photographers in the world (Jimmy Chin, Cory Richards, Renan Ozturk, to name a few), you can buy a print for $100: http://sherpafund.bigcartel.com/products

Help if you can!

Everest Avalanche

At this point I think it's hard for anyone to NOT have heard about what recently transpired on Everest. While I am not there this season, a lot of my good friends are (both Westeners and Sherpas). Thankfully none of them were caught in the massive collapse that occurred on the 18th near the top of the notoriously dangerous Khumbu Ice Fall (Although Mark Horrell and the Altitude Junkies team were on their way to the base of the Ice Fall when it happened. Read here). To get an idea of what the Ice Fall is like, watch some of my footage from 2011. It's a complex labyrinth of crumbling snow and ice and moves up to 6" per day, hence it's incredible danger. Nearer to the end of the video, you'll see roughly the region where the avalanche happened (where the crevasses start to get wider and the ladder bridges get longer):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NliMLaT56aM&noredirect=1

According to Alan Arnette's blog, there were at least 16 deaths, all of them Sherpas. This is one of the biggest tragedies to hit any 8000 meter peak. That it happened on Everest makes it that much more of an attention grabber, since so many climbers flock their each season. In 2012, on Manaslu (another 8000m peak), there was an avalanche that took the lives of 11 people, but the recent Everest avalanche trumps that one by quite a bit. More than anything, it has woken up the Sherpa community who are now demanding a number of things from the Nepali government before they consider getting things back moving on the mountain. And things won't move on Everest if the Sherpas don't. They are the reason ANYONE can climb this mountain.

Will the mountain shut down for the season? Already some teams have packed up and left. Alpine Ascents, who had Sherpas killed in the avalanche, already announced that they would. Also, the Discovery Channel wing suit jump has also been nixed. Will more follow suit? For one, the Sherpas will dictate whether or not climbing will resume. If it doesn't, the season will end most definitely. In fact, the Sherpas have put a 7-day ultimatum on the Nepali government. If their demands are not met, the season will be cancelled. Here are some of their demands (taken from this Himalayan Times article):

• Increment of immediate relief announced for avalanche victims • Provide 1,000,000 Rupees (~$10,000) each to families of deceased • Set up a memorial park in the name of the deceased in Kathmandu • Cover all expenses for treatment of the injured • Provide 1,000,000 Rupees (~$10,000) to critically hurt who cannot rejoin mountaineering activities • Set up mountaineering relief fund with 30% of royalty collected from issuing permits to different mountains • Double the insurance amount to the mountaineering workers • Provide additional chopper rescue to mountaineering support staff if insurance fails to cover the cost • Provide perks and salaries, except summit bonus, through concerned agencies to Sherpas if they want to call off climbing this season • Manage chopper to bring logistics and equipment from different camps if mountaineers decide to abandon climbing this season • Don’t take action against SPCC Icefall doctors if they refuse to fix ropes and ladders on the route this season • Let the expedition members to call off this season’s climbing if they wish

If the season continues, teams will have to decide whether they want to continue despite the tragic losses. From personal experience, I can tell you that climbing doesn't feel dangerous until it does. When you see an avalanche first hand, or worse yet, a dead body, you suddenly go through some serious priority setting. What is climbing Everest really worth? For me, it caused me to turn around twice. And I don't regret it one bit. I'm sure there will be many climbers who end up doing the same in light of these recent events. It will be interesting to see what ends up happening.

Sherpas are one of the friendliest, most hard-working, happiest, strongest group of people I have ever met. It's a tough thing to swallow, recognizing the extremely dangerous work they do for us paying clients. We climb because we have the money and the desire to do something big in our lives, a rather selfish endeavor. They climb because they have a family they need to take care of and some because it is the only high-paying job in the area. I mean, check out this frightening infographic . Hopefully the above demands can be met. It's the very least that they deserve.

I Am The 2014 USA Memory Champion!

Yes I am! And it was a close one too! But I stuck with it and kept as composed as possible and made it through till the end.

The whole day I felt incredibly calm, which was a big difference from last year where I was a right old mess. I don't know why I was like that last year. Maybe it was because of the film crew that was there or maybe the pressure of trying to win a 3rd championship in a row. Either way, this year felt totally different. I didn't have anything to prove, I just wanted to go out there and enjoy myself.

Right out of the gates I set a US record for the most Names & Faces memorized in 15 minutes, a whopping 193! I'm pretty sure that record will stand for a while because most people hate names, don't bother practicing, or just don't get very good at them. 175 was the previous record. Michael Glantz got 169 and then under that was Saira Kothari with 152. Great scores, but after that, the next highest one was 118. Big discrepancy.

Then it was Speed Numbers. For the first attempt I went conservative and landed at around 306 digits, but I had a blank for one set of images so I knew my score would be 286. Not bad, but not great. The second attempt felt much more fluid and I ended up with 350 digits, with a possible mistake. It ended up being two mistakes, which took my score down to 310, which was enough for a new record! Usually I'm miles ahead of everyone on numbers, but this year there were some really beefy scores trailing me. Alex Mullen with 258 (amazing), and Livan Grijalva and Lance Tschirhart both with 220.

Poetry felt great. It was a pretty smooth and easy poem with lots of capital letters (always amps up the score). I wrote down 230 points and knew I had two rows that were incorrect, so I ended up with a score of 208, still enough to beat out the poetry master, Michael Glantz. PHEW.

Sitting pretty in first, next came Speed Cards. I had thought about going all out and not caring whether I got a perfect deck or not, banking on the fact that I had done well enough in the previous events to send me into the finals in case I flunked the cards. But I played it safe, going for 66 seconds on the first try. It was a really good deck, I really should have put it down after one look through. I mean, it had me (Ace of Diamonds) waving (9 of Diamonds) at a mountain (5 of Hearts). When will that ever happen in competition again?? My mom was there, my bro, my sis, my dad, all my friends....ARGH! And it was SO FAST the first time through. Was sub-30 seconds for sure. Oh well, woulda, coulda, shoulda. The second attempt I went fast, but not super fast....got 44 seconds, but had 2 mistakes. Couldn't remember if Jack Black was putting lipstick on his hand or on a draedel. CURSES! My risky move there cost me the national record, and Johnny Briones snagged it from me by 3 seconds (60 seconds on the nose, the old record was 63). I've been trying to beat the minute mark in competition for years now. And although I've done it in international competitions (40.65 seconds), I really wanted to do it in the US one. No matter, I'm happy either way.

Needless to say I was first all around after all that and was moving on to the afternoon finals rounds with Alex Mullen, Livan Grijalva, Brad Zupp, Lance Tschirhart, Johhny Briones, Patrick Walsh, and Mike Mirski (in that order).

Round 1: Words to Remember

I knew this round would be tough this year and it proved to be so. I went for 140 words, which is way more than ever necessary, but I wasn't 100% sure. I can do 250 in 15 minutes, so 140 is easy. But then again, you never know....one mis-spoken word and you're out. So you need to be ABSOLUTELY sure of all your words. As I predicted, we went pretty high with the words. I believe the last person to get eliminated was on the 80th or so word. Us remaining guys asked if we could keep going to show off our memory muscles and I blanked on word 127. Alex kept going to 137. Impressive. Johnny and Brad made silly mistakes early on (Johnny said "architecture" instead of "architect" and Brad said "light bulb" instead of "bulb") while Patrick just blanked at around the 80 mark. 5 competitors remained.

Round 2: Tea Party

This event is always super easy for me, even though they've increased the amount of people to 6 from 5 over the past years. I ended up getting stuck with all the names and pets for some reason. I came out of the gate missing the first kid's name (I knew his first and last but didn't want to give up information to the person after me) getting my first strike. That sucked. But I knew I wouldn't miss anything else. Everyone else slowly racked up strikes and before we knew it, Mike and Livan were out. Lance, Alex, and I were moving on to the finals.

Round 3: Double Deck O' Cards

Ah, the famous 2010 reverse mistake made by me...came back again and caused Lance to get eliminated. We got back on stage after memorizing for 5 minutes and I started with the first card: 6 of diamonds. Instantly, Lance said something like "wait, I thought we were starting with the blue deck!?" So he had to quickly jump to a different location in his mind to find the card from the other deck. Under pressure, he wasn't able to do it and was out before he had even started. Shame, but I'm sure he'll never mess that up again! So now it was down to me and Alex, who had been cold and calculated all day long, hiding in the shadows as an underdog, without any press haggling him (because he was a newcomer). I was quite nervous, but ultimately I knew I had both decks perfectly memorized. I told myself, let me just do what I know I can do and if he makes a mistake, so be it. So I kept going. I didn't once break my focus or look at the audience, I just staying in my memory palace and I wasn't leaving until I finished. Alex ended up blanking on the 66th card...and before I knew it, I was the champion again.

At first I didn't even react, but then as I gave my speech, I kinda choked up, realizing what a journey it's been since last year. I didn't say it on stage there, but I should have, but I'm pretty sure that was my last USA Memory Championship. I always wanted to win 3 times and I always wanted to leave on a high note. It doesn't get any higher than that.

So there it is. I can now put that behind me, and start moving towards the bunch of other projects I have on the horizon.

How To Train Your Brain Like The USA Memory Champion

2 days until the USA Memory Championship! For those wondering how much time I spend a day training for this competition and how I split up my time during any given day, look no further (Big thanks to UK-based information designer Tiffany Farrant-Gonzalez for helping me create this!):

Pics Are Up...Finally!

Hey guys! Finally pictures for Everest 2013 are working (I know right??) and also for my recent Kilimanjaro trek. Have a look: Everest 2013

Kilimanjaro 2014

The Memorable Project - End of Month #2

A quick update here on The Memorable Project.... It has been a rough month (with regards to the success of the project), and even though it was a short one, I found myself busy with a lot of other things. Namely, training full-on for the USA Memory Championships (in 28 days from now), working on my book, and planning my slow take-over of the world :D

As I said previously after month #1, it seems easier for me to remember the news events rather than the 3 life events. I've since moved to using flash cards, and those have helped tremendously. But I think more solid review sessions are the way to go and the true key to success in this project. That might not be truly feasible until the memory competition is over when I can focus on this project 100%. Until then, I'll keep on making my life memorable and logging in information daily, doing light reviews whenever I can.

http://www.activatingdemocracy.com/locale/lang/

In spite of all the difficulty memorizing this stuff, I'm having loads of fun planning and mapping out new and interesting things to do each and every day. 2014 has already been an awesome year so far and it's just getting started!

The Extreme Memory Tournament

Almost two years ago, I took a trip to St. Louis to participate in a memory study at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL). They were doing a battery of memory tests on mental athletes like myself and comparing the results to "regular", un-trained, folks, as well as trivia experts who had also gone through those same tests. At the time, Ben Pridmore and Boris Konrad (two of the best competitors in the world) had participated. I was the third. It became clear to me that with the Psych Department at WUSTL and their funding source (Dart NeuroScience), there was an opportunity for something new, different, and bigger. In my head, ever since I started competing in memory competitions, I had realized that, in my opinion, it wasn't being done correctly. Memory sports has been around for 20+ years and it still has yet to take off, which is weird considering we live in an age where mental fitness is such a hot topic. In the second half of 2011, I reignited my love for Tennis (a sport I had played a lot in my youth) and got to thinking one day while watching the US Open Finals...why is Tennis so captivating to watch? There isn't much variety in terms of action if you really think about it. Two guys, one ball. A serve, a forehand, a volley, a backhand, a slice, and that's pretty much it. Back and forth it goes, for hours. But that was exactly it, the reason Tennis is so interesting is because it's so simple, easy to understand, and a true battle between two people, who are giving it everything they've got to win.

From that moment forth, I realized that memory sports was missing that very same set of elements. What memory sports was, at least up until then and well, still now, was an exam - A long, all day (sometimes 3-day) exam. People staring at sheets of paper with loads of information etched onto them for long stretches of time. YAWN. At least the official USA Memory Competition had part of the day on stage in an exciting set of elimination rounds. But it wasn't completely exam-free.

I asked the researchers at WUSTL if they would relay the message to Dart NeuroScience that I was interested in creating an exciting, totally different, memory competition. The response was immediate and positive. We had a few meetings to decide on dates, logistics, budget, and within months I had a blank canvas for a memory competition sitting in front of me.

There were a few things I knew about what this competition would be. For one, it needed to be a tournament, not a competition. It needed to be head-to-head, one match at a time, similar to a tennis match. Second, it needed to have a lot of prize money (a. to lure the best competitors in and b. to increase the stakes and make everything that much more meaningful in competition). Third, I was going to do this right, and to do it right I had to make sure I had the input (and approvals) of the top mental athletes in the world.

After many many months of thinking, tweaking, testing, brainstorming, and stressing, we all (me, WUSTL, Dart, certain top memory competitors) started to see something take shape. I won't go into all the details of this tournament here, but instead, mosey on over to the freshly designed website and learn for yourself: www.extremememorytournament.com.

The competition is a couple months away and is looking to be awesome. Stay tuned for more news and updates as the event date approaches (there is a blog on the tournament website).

The Memorable Year Project Update - End Of Month #1-

First let me say, I'm home! Yay, I'm home! Made it back safely from Kilimanjaro a week ago and have been getting back into the groove of things for 2014. There are a few things on my plate now, the big one being the memory competition I'm organizing in April (more on that soon, or here if you want a sneak peek), and the next big one being my 'Memorable Year Project.' That's the one where I'm memorizing every day of this year, remember?

It's the end of January, so that means 1 out of 12 months are memorized. CHECK. So how did it go? Well, it was bloody hard. The writing it down once and never reviewing it part (other than thinking about it in my own head) has gone right out the window. It's just too much information to keep track of off of one glance. And, if this is only with one month's worth of info, imagine how I'll feel by November! GAHHH!

boutiquehotelscroatia.net/bcroatia/ws/

No matter, I'm committed to see this through till the end. I am reviewing more constantly and making these memories stick. Hopefully in a few months time, I'll have a knack for it and it will become a lot easier. What I've realized is the most difficult part about all this is remembering the personal memories I choose. I can remember the weather, location, and world news event super easily, but it's tough recalling the 3 things I did that day...not sure quite why, but maybe because they are always so random. One day I was doing something epic like summiting Kilimanjaro, the other day just eating a chicken sandwich.