Even if you’re pretending. Listen to what they have to say and take it in. Don’t shake your head while they talk, cut them off mid-sentence, or look away like you don’t care about what they’re saying.

When you have good evidence, it makes it a lot easier to counter other people’s points while supporting your own.

Winning can mean: 

If they manage to throw you off with a really good point, try to stay on topic as best you can. 

Assuming something is caused by something else just because they happen to correlate. 

Recognize that there are two issues to be addressed: both of your emotions and the situation at hand.

If enough people agree to something, it sort of becomes true in a social setting. It may not be 100% factual, but with a little supporting evidence, your buddies can be a better backup than any fact out there.

Name-calling, attacking a person’s character and using someone’s beliefs or traits to call their argument into question.

Using a single personal experience as the foundation of your argument or your big piece of evidence. 

Winning an argument often comes down to who can go the longest without contradicting themselves and keeping sound logic, not direct persuasion of the other party.

The advantages are:

The right questions can help you break their argument down logically.

Ignoring certain facts because of personally held beliefs. 

Using statements that imply “all” of something or “every” thing is a certain way. 

Making up a scenario to make the opponent look bad. You’re assuming and making incorrect correlations.