i've honestly not cared about picking up girls ever due to my inherently intricate mind. oddly enough, i always come off with so much self esteem that people think i am riding with balls the size of planetary destroyers.
when it comes making an entrance to a room, a group or otherwise, you can bet your bionic implants that i'll make it, and people will look up to me as if i was some sort of king or person they have to worship. once inside, i keep making conversation and cracking jokes, quickly spotting what's going on in the conversation and why. at a certain point, girls just get interested. usually by this point i have no interest in them whatsoever, because i know that if i wanted, i could get better. based on what i feel like doing, i either take one of them home... or just leave when the time is right for me.
if i take a girl home, i am very rarely not disappointed by the intelligence of said girl. therein lies my greatest problem: i could quite possibly get any girl from any club, pub or other place to go with me; but i'll be damned if any one of them share the same level of consciousness that i do. on occasion, i've been lucky in finding a girl in my travels that had a similar understanding to me, only to find out that we would have to part ways because we're only staying in the same place for a couple of days, and either going in opposite directions or going home to our respective countries.
it annoys me to no end and every time it happens i can just feel the face of fate laughing at me. it's not like i'm giving up though, some day it's bound to happen.
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so, moral of story? get confident in yourself, look around and keep trying (read: learn from your mistakes). if you think you're standing out because of how you think, then revel in where you stand (that's what i did). if you're introvert, shy or otherwise: challenge yourself. nobody else is going to do the job for you if you don't; walk into it as if you've got a score to settle with yourself (it's always better to be shy than to be shallow). i started out being shy as well, and i overcame it in this way entirely. if people try to puncture you, get sarcastic on their asses. nobody is better than you until they prove they are, and by flinging monkey poo they definitely don't show remarkable signs of intelligence.
once you get down to a talk mano-a-mano with a girl, just be yourself. you've already shown yourself as you can be, now you can show yourself from the side she'll like more when you're together alone, away from parties, people and so on. talk to her about her, learn about her what you think is important, and generally just see if you can keep a conversation flowing without resorting to superficiality. if things click, then great; but you shouldn't push for them if they don't.
... i think that is about what i can give for advice here. it's not an easy road for everyone. chances are my devilish handsomeness has given me an edge, but i'll bet that if you put your confidence before your looks and realize that what other people think doesn't matter, you can make it just as far. in order to have others believe in you, you need to believe in yourself first.