It might seem to be to simple, but don’t underestimate the power of boredom and curiosity. The new player won’t know what you’ve been folding the whole time and will have had nothing else to do but call a sudden change in behavior to see what you have, or fold and keep the pattern going.

One player (beginner) wants to have fun (maybe not overtly, but this is usually the case), the other wants to make money.

You’d be surprised how boring it gets at a poker table when you don’t get good cards for a hour. Folks get bored and play suboptimally.

Part of what poker teaches is patience.

No, total beginners have all their mental power focused on trying to find patterns between the cards on the table and the ones they have on their hands, while trying to remember all the combinations of poker hands. They also need to pay attention on which turn is next and how much they need to pay to keep playing and figure out if it’s worth it, they also need to learn the common poker language, a lot of things going on for a beginner. Once you have all that in memory it becomes easier, your processor power is free from those memory tasks and you can start reading people’s intentions.

I’ve used the strategy in some pretty big games. People get bored, drunk, lazy, etc. It’s pretty easy to consistently make money at poker if you aren’t playing anyone who takes it seriously.