December is a treacherous month for poker players. Here in Kansas it invariably marks the beginning of bitter cold and snow, the Salvation Army taking to the streets in force, possibly armed, with bells and unspeakable music, and “The Holidays” sucking out dollars from the poker pool like one of those vacuum cleaners with a name that sounds like a character from Hamlet. Every time I see a TV commercial for some cutesy doll or diamond necklace my eyes brim with tears at the thought of recreational players deciding to buy their children and spouses presents instead of trying their luck at the tables.

Then at the end of the month the situation really deteriorates.

Ten, nine, eight… The ball in Times Square drops; drunk Londoners fall off the first floor window ledges of the National Gallery; in Toronto there is polite applause. And modulo the offsets for the various timezones, poker players everywhere do something infuriating.

They all start playing better.

I’m not talking about professional grinders. Most full-time players can only thrive by staying within a few percent of their best games at all times. But the recreational players, in seeing the calendar roll round for a brand new year, decide that this is the year they are going to play well. No more splashing around in pots where they don’t belong; no more hood-flatting and hopeless bluffs. These annually-reformed supernits promise the Poker Gods they will always count their outs and draw accordingly.

This is a nightmare for those of us who make most of our money from the sloppy play of others, and one that can persist for literally two or three weeks. Coupled with the criminal drain on recreational bankrolls by the financial demands of children and other hangers-on, we are faced with a situation in early January which is decidedly grim.

One could simply wait it out, I suppose, but due to the aforementioned diabolical weather in Kansas I usually try to spend as much of the winter months in Vegas as possible. Consequently I have developed various techniques for loosening up mid-Winter tables on The Strip.

Before describing some of these methods, I should explain that, by nature, I am quite shy. Those who first met me when I was a university professor often doubt this because I was one of those lecturers who would leap on desks whirling things on sticks whilst describing how neutron stars worked. But it’s very easy to appear confident and in charge when you’re the professor. Similarly, despite suffering from social anxiety, I’ve always been comfortable at a poker table. It’s a controlled environment where I am not expected to do or say anything other than obey the flow and rules of the game. Such low expectations allow me to either remain quiet or to have a little fun and “improvise.”

I mention this because some of the following may seem slightly outlandish and not the sort of thing you could imagine doing yourself. But take it from a shy person—loosening up a poker table is well worth the effort and easily done, provided you put in a little thought and preparation.

One simple approach is to arrive at the poker room in drag. I realize this isn’t for everyone, but I am fortunate to have great legs and a broad-shouldered ex-wife who left behind some rather elegant skirt suits. There is no need to go the whole nine yards and put on a lot of make-up, jewelry, size twelve pumps, and so forth. In fact overdoing it will only serve to give the table the impression that you are a transvestite, and there’s nothing remarkable about that, particularly in Vegas. Simply wearing a skirt and being a non-Scottish male will likely do the trick. Saying to the dealer “I lost a bet” as you sit down can also be used to clarify that you don’t usually dress like this, so that nobody feels awkward trying to figure out whether your preferred form of address is “sir” or “ma’am.”

It’s possible that cross-dressing by women might also have the desired effect, but for obvious reasons I haven’t been able to test that directly. Frankly, most women are well aware of how they can use their appearance to loosen up a table of predominantly male opponents. If you want to add a little creativity I’d suggest dressing like Cat Woman and hissing occasionally.

“The Mentalist” is a character that grew out of one of my spectacular failures in this area. I had reasoned that appearing to be extremely superstitious might pay multiple dividends, so I turned up at The Mirage with pockets full of rabbit feet and “amulets” (one was part of a bottle opener, another the end of a broken hash pipe). I also had two “voodoo dolls” and a small bag of pins. The dolls were actually Barbie and Ken that I had customized for the Omaha-8 game. Barbie had gained sixty years, her shining golden hair replaced by a gray bouffant, whereas Ken’s pants had been hitched up considerably and he’d acquired a home-made visor. The makeovers had been modeled after two regulars who were relatively competent but extremely slow. Suffice it to say that, when the inevitable happened and I was beaten both ways out of a pot by “Edie,” nobody at the table was remotely amused when I stuck pins into the Edie doll. So not every scheme is a winner, and one reason that I write these columns is to help you avoid my mistakes.

While I saw no alternative to dumping the dolls, I was now stuck with a pile of rabbit feet and fake amulets and searched for a way to salvage something from the operation. Enter The Mentalist. The conceptual starting point was the same: I aimed to appear exceedingly superstitious. But instead of exacting retribution on miniatures of my opponents, I now pretended that I thought I was psychic. I quickly found this worked best at No-Limit Holdem cash games where closing my eyes, fiddling with my amulets, and then placing my fingers on my temples and mumbling to myself could be fit into a time period acceptable by NLHE standards. The problem was that, even with the addition of a gold turban almost identical to the one used by Tony Kornheiser on “Pardon The Interruption,” the technique quickly lost effectiveness. There was the additional danger that, with the growing number of props, my opponents might assume I was a devotee of Carrot Top. While I am prepared to sacrifice respectability and self-esteem to increase my earn, I do have limits.

By far the most successful ruse for jollying up New Year nits was also the simplest. In 1979, Sony introduced a device that allowed the wearer to listen to music recorded on magnetic tape and stored in a plastic cassette. It was the direct ancestor of portable media players such as iPods that are commonly seen at poker tables. However, when the Walkman was first made available, people didn’t understand some of the subtleties of using it. I would frequently find myself traveling on the London Underground with my blue hair and safety pins, sitting next to some yuppie wearing a Walkman and wailing along oblivious and off-pitch to The Eagles.

At some time over the intervening decades, our species appears to have developed some kind of tribal memory to not do this, at least in public. Which is why it is funny, and thus good for a poker table, on the rare occasions when it does happen.

As the plan began to come together I realized a critical component was the choice of music. No way in hell was I going to even pretend to be listening to Hotel California. And then the obvious soundtrack came to me like a rivered straight flush:

The Sound of Music. Julie Andrews version.

It’s perfect for multiple reasons, not least of which is the element of surprise. You just don’t expect a lanky Limey in a cowboy hat to suddenly break into a tuneless rendition of “The Hills Are Alive…” Further, for reasons that I’d rather not go into, I know several of the songs by heart.

I should emphasize that it is not not necessary to sing the complete soundtrack, particularly if some of the songs are not in a suitable key. (Equally, songs in a completely unsuitable key can have a profound effect as you attempt to belt them out at the table.) Moreover, the whole exercise would become annoying and thus counter-productive if overdone. It is critical that others at the table believe that you have no idea you are singing audibly.

My personal preference is to start quietly with a few bars from the Prelude, then appear to become engrossed in the game. After a while I like to “drift off” somewhere around the second verse of Maria, and with eyes closed sing semi-audibly until clearly enunciating (with a beaming grin and eyes still closed):

A flibbertijibbet! A will-o’-the wisp! A clown!

Again one must be careful to strike a balance, and getting a feel for how you are being received by the table is crucial. On one occasion, for example, I had sung a fair chunk of Do-Re-Mi and then started up again enthusiastically with The Lonely Goatherd when I realized that the dealer, with tears streaming down her face, was attempting to call the floor since she was laughing so hard she could no longer deal.

Naturally I apologized profusely, took off my headphones, and asked if anyone knew how to yodel.

Kat Martin is a poker player and coach from London, U.K. who has accidentally spent the last eighteen years living in Kansas. The death of online poker in the U.S. has compelled him to relocate to Las Vegas. If you would like to buy his house, please e-mail him at gamekatpoker@gmail.com.