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The 'speed' of the pass isn't important. It just needs to be noiseless and smooth. You can do it at fast as you like and you still won't deceive the spectator's eye. They might not know exactly what you did, but they'll know you did something sneaky. As Dai Vernon said, 'be natural'. If the rest of your routine is performed calmly and in a relaxed manner and you suddenly do a very fast movement, they'll remember that but when they are trying to work out the trick afterwards. As I've said, it's about misdirection. I think you're aiming to achieve some sort of 'invisible' classic pass, and I just don't think such a thing exists. Use misdirection, however, and it will escape unnoticed.

cc100 wrote:I wouldn't get too bogged down by the pass. The CP is never going to be completely invisible, and you definitely need to use some covering motion as well as misdirection. Dribbling the cards offers decent cover, as does spreading the cards on the table after completing the pass.

You don't have to use the pass. Daryl doesn't use it, and he's superb. Most of the manuals that claim that you have to learn the pass before starting card magic were written before alternative methods of controlling cards to the top/bottom were used. Good luck, anyway. The choice is yours.

Oh and finally, the turnover pass is very deceptive but it takes a lot of practise to get the moves to flow together, and to eradicate the sound of the transposition of the packets (I'm still working on it). You also need to have a reason for turning the cards over.

Bingo, you want to have a good pass. Learn to do it when the spectator is not looking.

I learned using a spread pass for the following reasons.

When starting out you can make it look like a flourish, yet it accomplishes the pass during the flourish and is undetected by the spectator (with practice of course)

Two, you quickly realize you can do it without pointing out the flourish and it is just a great method to accomplish the pass without getting into a classic pass.

Three, It doesn't take long before you become comfortable with it and you realize that when you talk to people they are going to be looking back at you and not at your hands, and before long for all intense and purpose what started out as a chickens way out of a pass and into a flourish has turned into an invisible pass.

Four, you eventually realize you can probably palm an elephant at that point and then you can go ahead and try the classic pass just for the heck of it and it will work for you.

five, you will eventually wonder what all the fuss was about and revert to a double undercut anyway.

Have a look at tne midnight shift- it's not dependant on speed, but on the smoothness and naturalness of your movement.

Look into the side steal too- as it is inefficient to reposition 51 cards in order to get 1 card in place. It's also a really useful slight to be able to do!