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I've been working on my pass for about a week now and ive gotten it down pretty good but its definately not fast enough without a good amount of misdirection. What method of misdirection works best?

To be honest, 'patter' is not really what you need. Just chatting should be enough, creating a large 'off beat' where the spectator thinks theres nothing going on then you can get away with a lot. Even sit back a bit, shuffle in your seat, anything that can cover the quick movement of your hands.
Alternatively, keep practicing the pass until its invisible!

Look at the deck once the card has been returned.
Then look up (they should too), say "Right, so if we give these a little shuffle *do pass - move hands into shuffle position* it should be fairly well lost"

I'll also add it probably isn't worth doing if it takes you longer than a second to do.

I met a magician recently whose pass "is terrible. Really really bad" so what he does is he spread his hands holding the two packets seperately as he talks, then just brings his hands back together, card on top. Simple but effective.

EckoZero wrote:Look at the deck once the card has been returned.
Then look up (they should too), say "Right, so if we give these a little shuffle *do pass - move hands into shuffle position* it should be fairly well lost"

I've gotta be honest and say I wouldn't recommend shuffling after a pass. It may be a bit suspicious. Also, there's no point doing a pass, you may as well use a shuffle control. The joy of the pass is that you can bring a card to the top, without doing anything to the deck. But it may work in the right situation I guess.

Never fails for me, although I don't normally use patter myself. I just look up, creating a seconds misdirection in which to pull it off.

But if you want patter then I'd go for that.
The pass has to be fairly seamless to just do it on the brief offbeat though.

Any joke creates a comfortable atmosphere and an off beat.

As has been said above the patter doesn't really matter. What matters is that you say something, anything, and look at the spectator. It's conditioned into most people to look at the speaker and you will have easily enough misdirection to do a pass.

How about, "Make sure you remember your card, if you forget it the trick is ruined"? Or, for a laugh, "Queen of Hearts! No? *shrug* You never know!".

If you watch the spectator you will easily be able to see when they look away from the pack and just do the pass at that exact moment.

Kati

Erm...I'm surprised no-one has mentioned it yet - but surely this depends on what kind of pass your doing. Are you doing the classic pass or the hermann pass (this means moving the top to the bottom, or moving the bottom to the top, respectively).

If you're using a hermann pass then there are loads of different things that are applied to the technique itself which cover it. Just look up Ellusionist's "Ninja 1" DVD and you'll find several variations. I have done a hermann pass several times for spectators where I didn't really do anything to cover it except move my hand towards them in a gesture (i.e. "so YOU (gesture) selected a card" or whatever).

For the classic pass I'd take HALF of EckoZero's advice. All you need to do is look up at the spectator and talk to them briefly and as soon as there eyes leave the cards do your pass. As soon as your pass is complete you should seperate your hands immediately. This will further cement in their brain that you did nothing as your hands were clearly seperate in their peripheral vision as soon as they looked away from the deck.

Once you get it up to a decent speed you should be able to do it whilst they're still looking at your hands, and just talking to them will distract them enough for you to do the pass whilst they're watching your hands.

I don't want this to sound condescending but with time and experience you will see that what I say is the truth. Just try attracting their eye contact first as misdirection and branch out from there.

That's not condecending it's correct.

"Did you see that?"

Every time they will look up and say no. You do your pass then.

For anyone who is under-confident in their pass I think John Doe has a great cover for the pass. But i think this is limited in it's use. It's great for use in ambitious card but if you wanna do some other stuff like control to the top and use a DL to switch an indifferent card for their card it can't really be used. *Sorry if that doesn't make sense - Let me know and I'll try to clarify*

I'd recommend just using a joke or something to disarm them for a second whilst you do your pass. Anything that will distract them for a second is exactly what you want, however you do it.

thanks for the advice, i think im good enough with the pass to try it now i just need to figure out a good trick to implement it with.

Any trick where you need a control to the top (or the bottom if you make the necessary adjustments) is perfect for it. It wasn't necessary but I used it anyway in my joker's wild routine. Just one of many applications i use it for when the moment suits me. If not I use the swing swivel undercut control - which I also use in my Joker's Wild video. I'm a man of such variety

But seriously, you could use it for almost anything. If you get it good enough you could even present it as a trick in itself (though I wouldn't recommend it).

ah misdirection... i love it when somebody turns around to notice something or somebody, bam classic pass'd

Using a riffle before and after the pass, and looking straight at the spectator does it for me.

Performing the classic pass is something you should do on a downbeat. Make a comment, bring focus away from the deck for an instant.

A great technique shown to me by a friend was to hold the deck in the left hand (normal dealer grip, with a break, of course) and then bring the right hand over, pass the deck and take it in the right hand and place it on the table.
This gives a reason for using the right hand, and if you incorporate a 'to the eyes of the spectator' line such as "now I don't want to touch the deck for a moment as we just re-cap what's happened"

You must always bear in mind that the audience aren't expecting anything to happen—and you should capitalise on that and not make any gestures, any big covers, or any suggestions that you've done/are doing something.