USA Memory Championship

The USA Memory Championship is an annual competition that takes place every spring in New York City, and was founded by Tony Dottino, President of Dottino Consulting Group, Inc., and Marshall Tarley in the year 1997. Designed to test the limits of the human brain, the USA Memory Championship is an organized competition in which Memory Athletes (MAs) attempt at memorizing as much information as possible from Names and faces, to Cards, to Random numbers. Anyone is allowed to join so long as they're US citizens and are at least 12 years or older. The competition consists of 7 total events, 4 of which are qualifying events and the last three determine the champion. The first winner was Tatiana Cooley-Marquardt. The current national champion is Alex Mullen.

There are four qualifying events in the first part of the competition:

After the first four events, eight mental athletes then advance to the final round of Championship events. A round-robin tournament style is used for elimination. Three Competitors are eliminated after the first event, two after the second, and two during the third to determine the Memory Champion.

Years of preparation is required in order to compete. By learning how to create a loci (memory palace) and other methods such as the PAO (Person Action Object) system, and Major system, MAs are able to memorize randomized digits, cards, and poetry and much more. A competitor, Joshua Foer was able to win the 2006 competition with only 1 year of preparation by using these techniques and practicing every day. He wrote about his journey under the wing of a British Mental Athlete Ed Cooke who set him on his path of memory in his book, "Moonwalking with Einstein". Foer is the perfect example of an average guy with an average memory that was able to train his brain to become an expert in memorization. He showed that anybody, especially those who are forgetful, can memorize anything with enough dedication and practice.

This is a list of USA memory champions since 1998:

Records for the fastest times and most points in individual events.

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