No trickery, no. Here's how I used to do it:

• Go to the frame which has the pose I want.
• Make sure the figure is selected.
• Click on an empty pose dot. (and check that it "lights up")
• Go to the frame where I want the pose.
• Click on the pose dot that I just saved to.
• Et voilà...

That's what I did last night in P6 and in P7, and it worked. I used to do it all the time, mainly when I wanted to use dynamic clothing on an existing scene, and had to transfer the pose to frame 30 so I could zero the figure at frame 1.

Except that now, it doesn't always work. Mainly late at night when I just want things to work, dammit, so I can finish up and go to bed.

Yeah, I'd like to be able to rely on the dots again. I'll continue looking into this.