Winning with a loosing ticket at the dog track by Derren Brown

Well, this is a transcript surrounded by what theory I can put to it.

Here he's using a series of pattern interrupts, Trans Derivational Searches (TDS), and hypnotic-style suggestions to achieve this effect. The basic idea is this -

Get the teller behind a window at a dog racing track to pay out on losing tickets.

Well, here's the script. These are just the words and actions. Where the text is bold, these words are emphasised apart from the rest of the script. The bits in [square brackets] are actions (just in case you have a little trouble working it out ).

[Walk up to the window, ticket in hand, believing that it is a winning ticket, look her right in the eye, and say...]

"This is a winning ticket."

[The teller will take the ticket off you, run it, and return it saying that it isn't. As she's handing it back to you, bang hard against the side of the window and say...]

"This is the dog you're looking for. That's why we came to this "window."

[she will look confused, run it again, and will, if you've done this right and with the right demeanour, pay out. To emphasize the idea say...]

"Thankyou!" [followed by...] "It's quite easy to misread them sometimes."

Ok, that's the script. All those who are getting off at this station, before I go into the psychology behind it, do so now

OK, the psychology behind this follows this train of thought. The tellers are using the machines day in, day out. To them it's a totally autonomous process. At the point at which you're banging the window, you're interrupting her natural processes. That will confuse her (generating a pattern interrupt and TDS) giving you just long enough to give her the commands (that 'this is the dog, look. we came to win.') When emphasizing these, it's imperative not to overdo it. It's just raising the voice, without it being too obvious. All that follows this is to reassure the teller that they've done the right thing - as you would give a dog a biscuit when training it for obedience etc., and it does what it has been told to. The teller is confused, and this will remove that by making them think that they've done a good job.

[NB - for those who think that I'm sexist or misogynistic, the examples in the DB TV show were both women, hence I have referred to the tellers as 'she/her'. ]

This structure of suggestion will get you to be able to get most people to do almost anything. I can't find the clip ATM, otherwise I'd transcribe it, but there's a clip there DB just asks people to give him their personal effects (wallet, mobile etc.) and walks off. And they don't realise until he's almost long gone. This was originally a technique used by con artists, and it's quite fun. It's structure is slightly different to this, but it has the same idea around it.