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The trick: Derren picks on pensioner Anne and teaches her to play tournament poker. She subsequently finishes playing second against five other professional players. This is apparently due to the body language reading skills Derren has taught her.
It might seem extraordinary that any one could beat four other poker pros with cursory training. In fact, poker tournaments are mostly luck - professionals will win slightly more than they lose over time and this will be very profitable in the long run, but in an individual tournament it is mostly just down to chance. A top player might win one time in five as opposed to a break-even player winning one time in six, but a win rate beyond that is unsustainable. The trick here is really the simple psychological one that people radically overstate the element of skill in a game of skill and chance.
So, it isn't really that unlikely that Anne would come second, or for that matter, first. Even if she had come third Brown can probably spin this as being down to "bad luck" as he does with the final hand which eliminates Anne.
To be fair Anne appears to have memorized sound play and does deal with an intimidating situation very competently. Brown must have been delighted to have such an effective student.
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