Memory techniques that actually help in card-matching games

In a card-matching game, it's tempting to blame bad luck when a round takes too many moves. Luck is part of it, because you can't know what's under a card until you flip it. But most wasted moves come from something you can control: forgetting where you saw a card. The techniques below cut those wasted moves, and each one comes with the reason it works. Further down, you'll see how many moves a perfect round really takes in Memory Match.

Why this is harder than it looks

Short-term memory is small. Psychologists have long debated its exact size, and the psychologist Nelson Cowan argued in 2001 that most people can hold only about four separate items in mind at once. A Hard board in Memory Match has 20 cards. Even an Easy board has 12.

You can't hold that many card positions as separate facts. What you can do is reduce how much you need to remember at any moment, and give each thing you do remember a stronger hook. Every technique below does one or both.

Use the right flip order

Start with the order you flip cards in. It's the most important habit, and it isn't a memory trick at all.

1. Make your first flip an unseen card. Flipping a card you've already seen tells you nothing new.
2. If it matches a card you've seen, flip that card. You've found a guaranteed pair.
3. If it doesn't, make your second flip another unseen card. You learn one more card, and sometimes you get lucky and it matches your first flip.

That's the whole strategy, and it's close to the best possible way to play. The common mistakes are all breaks from it: opening a move with a card you've already seen, or using the second flip on a known card "just to check."

There's one exception. If you already know where both cards of a pair are, collect them before flipping anything new.

Sweep the board in order

A simple way to cut down what you need to remember is to make your first flips in a fixed order: across the top row from left to right, then the next row, and so on.

This works because it removes a whole category of memory. Flip in a random order, and you have to remember which cards you've seen and which you haven't. Sweep in order, and you only have to remember your place. Everything after it is unseen. Everything before it is seen, and those are the only cards whose pictures you need to recall.

Remember a small open list

At any point in a round, most of the cards you've seen fall into one of two groups. Some are already matched and out of play. The rest have been seen once, and their partners are still hidden.

Only that second group needs your attention. It starts small, grows as you flip new cards, and shrinks every time you make a pair. It's rarely more than four or five cards, which is about what short-term memory can handle. Think of it as your "open list" and keep it fresh in your mind. Don't waste effort remembering cards that are already matched.

Put a name to each card

Pictures are easy to recognize but surprisingly hard to hold in mind. Words are easier. The psychologist Allan Paivio's dual-coding theory holds that information stored both as an image and as a word is easier to recall than information stored one way only.

In practice, that means saying the card's name to yourself when you flip it. Better still, say the name and the position together: "star, top left," "trophy, second row, third card." Keep your names short and use the same one every time. It sounds slow, but it takes a fraction of a second, and it turns "I saw a star somewhere up there" into knowing exactly where it is.

Tie pictures to places

You always know a star when you see one, so recognizing a match is never the problem in a memory game. What's hard is remembering where the other star was.

So make locations as concrete as possible. Think of the board as a grid, with rows and columns you can name. Some players find it easier to remember a whole row as a short sequence, like "star, gift, bolt, coins," rather than four separate cards. If you're an Easy player who sees the board face up at the start, that row-as-a-sentence approach is especially useful.

Use the Easy preview well

On Easy, Memory Match shows every card face up for two seconds before the round starts. Most players try to take in the whole board and end up remembering almost nothing, because twelve cards in two seconds is far beyond what short-term memory can hold.

You'll do better picking one area, such as the top row, and memorizing just those three or four cards. Name them as a sequence. When the round starts, you begin with a small open list you know well instead of a vague impression of everything.

If your device is set to reduce motion, the preview is skipped. You can turn that setting off in your device's accessibility options if you'd like the preview back.

How many moves does a perfect round take?

Knowing what's realistic lets you judge your own rounds fairly.

Mathematicians Daniel Velleman and Gregory Warrington worked out how many moves a player with perfect memory needs on average when playing the best strategy. Their 2013 paper in The American Mathematical Monthly found that it's about 1.61 moves per pair. They define a move the same way Memory Match does: flipping two cards, whether they match or not.

Applied to Memory Match's three boards, that gives:

Difficulty	Pairs	Average moves with perfect memory	3 stars in	Top efficiency bonus in
Easy	6	About 9	10 moves or fewer	8 moves or fewer
Medium	8	About 12	14 moves or fewer	10 moves or fewer
Hard	10	About 15 to 16	18 moves or fewer	12 moves or fewer

Three stars is achievable with good memory on every board, though there isn't much room for error, especially on Easy. The top efficiency bonus asks for fewer moves than even a perfect memory needs on average, so earning it usually takes some luck on top of good play. If you're taking twice as many moves as there are pairs, or more, the problem is almost certainly memory rather than luck, and the techniques above will help.

These averages don't account for the Easy preview. Memorizing a few cards at the start can bring your move count below them.

Common memory traps

• Rushing for the time bonus. A quick round with extra moves usually scores less than a steady one, and it costs stars.
• Guessing when you half-remember. If you think the partner was "somewhere around here," you'll often flip a card you've already seen. When you're unsure, flip an unseen card instead and learn something new.
• Playing tired. Short-term memory gets noticeably worse when you're tired or distracted. If your move counts are creeping up, take a break. Our article on healthy habits for daily games has practical ways to keep sessions short.

Putting it together

For your next round, try this:

1. Sweep your first flips across the board in order.
2. Name each card and its position as you flip it.
3. Keep your attention on the open list of cards seen once.
4. Collect known pairs before flipping anything new.

Play a few rounds on Medium with these habits and compare your move counts with the table above. Most players see a difference within a handful of rounds. The full scoring and star rules are in the Memory Match guide.