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I agree with the Lady. Even though I reckon I could get my pass past most spectators who are burning my hands (with their eyes, not flames) I still always opt for misdirection of turning to another spectator (big motion covers the small motion) or I just make some eye contact with the spectator. Sooner or later they will look at you instead of the card, even for only half a second, which is plenty of time to perform the pass. Then you can just make sure your hands are separate and they will honestly believe that you did nothing because if you did they would've seen something suspicious.

thanks for the great responses

I just have three words: Practice Practice Practice!

Would have to agree with the lady, that missdirection is your biggest aid.
I have never been cought out yet. I do not think that the pass was ever intended as an absolutly invisable move. All the books I have read on the subject advise a very subtle missdirection including rrtcm.
Tips to help its cover apart from missdirection include
Keeping the upper hand as still as possible in relation to the bottom hand.
Keeping it quiet, which is the most important.
There are cover moves available, going into a fan, or riffling the deck are just two which do indeed work exceptionaly well but which I have never found nessecery.

For those who have the rrtcm 5dvd set. There is a great trick on there that is not in the book. Using the pass the spec chooses the only 3 red cards from your selection of all black cards.
After this trick you are set up for ootw
I false shuffle and then get the spec to shuffle.
Whilst looking for the 4 markers you can sort the deck(honest try it they are not as mixed up as you would think, three or four blocks usually and every time you move a block take a marker. To the spec you are just taking four cards)
I explain the first trick as a sort of test to see if they 'had the right sight' or other such rubbish to allow this next phase to continue.
They then have gone from selecting three cards, to sorting out the whole deck, that they shuffled.
If this is all I ever use the pass for it will still have been worth the hours learning it.
As an extra subtle note. On the first trick I first show the deck to be shuffled even though I openly sort, I do this because during trick reconstution all those I ask swear that this was again done before the second phase.

do not think i have exposed anything as you need to know the tricks involved, but if i have please delete

A agree that the Classic Pass is, quite honestly, a pretty damn essential sleight.

For all the nay-sayers; assume you have borrowed a deck - spec chooses a card, which is returned to the middle of the deck. Immeditely, with no cuts, shuffles or doing anything funny to the deck, you hand the entire lot to the spec.

They, themselves, turn the top card, which is - of course - theirs.

Of course, this is only a very basic application, but readily illustrates the real power behind the sleight!

(Christ, I'm sounding like one of Ellusionist's copy-writers here )

The pass is NOT an essential sleight. It used to be but not any more. However it is a very useful sleight. Very useful indeed and I can do it at lightning speed. However it is not ESSENTIAL in the real world. You can do very well without it.

As a control it is outmoded and there are far easier and more effective ways of achieving the objective of controlling a selected card.

mark lewis wrote:The pass is NOT an essential sleight. It used to be but not any more. However it is a very useful sleight. Very useful indeed and I can do it at lightning speed. However it is not ESSENTIAL in the real world. You can do very well without it.

As a control it is outmoded and there are far easier and more effective ways of achieving the objective of controlling a selected card.

No moves are ever ESSENTIAL in the real world. Whatever works for you, works for you. How can you say the pass is outmoded though. I still see a lot of people using it effectively.

For all the nay-sayers; assume you have borrowed a deck - spec chooses a card, which is returned to the middle of the deck. Immeditely, with no cuts, shuffles or doing anything funny to the deck, you hand the entire lot to the spec.

They, themselves, turn the top card, which is - of course - theirs.

There are other controls that can achieve that, controls which don't require the dedication to master that the classic pass does. I'm with Mark in thinking that as a control for a card the classic pass is rarely the best choice. (Mark didn't say that the pass was outmoded full-stop)

That's not to say it doesn't have its uses. Some things you just can't do without using some sort of pass. It's just that citing a single-card control as a good use of a classic pass doesn't seem right to me.

The pass is very very useful, it is one of those sleights that can be used in so many different situations. It's not essential and I don't really use it that often because there is usually a easier way of doing something, but there are times when it's appropriate.

I use the pass for one trick only and then as an out. I also use it on rare occasions as a control because I don't like to use the same control all the time.

I use it because I can do it. For some odd reason it only took me 10 minutes to learn it but I expect that was some abnormality of the universe. However for most people it is a very difficult sleight to learn and although useful it is not an ESSENTIAL sleight any more. In the old old days it was the only card control available but now there is a ton of far easier alternatives to acheive the same objective so I stand by the statement that it is outmoded. That is not to say that you shouldn't use it as a control if you can do it deceptively. I am merely saying it is not necessary. Not essential.

Which brings us back where we started.

To be honest I've never had much time for the pass and have never seen the need at the present time to learn it. Back in the day it seemed to be the path to the holy grail but like Mark said there are plenty more ways and means nowadays. I'd rather put my time into more useful sleight for my own routine.

Thats not to say that I won't learn it one day but for now I'm happy with what I have at the minute. Also a neat little side steal can also work wonders do ya not think. Or spread the cards face and show the card in the middle to the spec then do a crafty cull.

I've been practising the classic pass all morning, and it's ok (ish) now, but I still need tons more practice. One quick question: when performing the classic pass, is moving the top half out of the way more important than lifting up the bottom half, or vice versa? If you know what I mean. Which movement has more emphasis?

I'm trying to think of a way to explain what I mean. Do you move the top half out of the way in order to put the bottom half on top, or do you lift up the bottom half, pushing the top half out of the way as you do so?

Hopefully someone will understand what I mean.

Different people will give you different answers. Some people pull the bottom packet up through the top packet, although I'm not sure that this is technically a classic pass. I find I get least hand movement when I pull the top packet down and around. There is still some upward movement of the lower packet to aid the top packet in clearing it but I try to keep my right hand movement (I'm right-handed) to a bare minimum.

with me, I move the top packet down, much more than moving the bottom packet up. I've always thought that doing it that way was much less noticable than if you're to move the bottom packet up.

Does that make any sense?

Yeah, that makes sense. So far I've been mainly tilting the top packet and then lifting up the bottom packet through it, as I find that if I try to move the top packet too much it slips from my fingers and before you know it the trick has turned into 52-card pick-up.