Reflection through the projection plane reverses the orientation of and exchanges the overpassing and underpassing strands at every crossing. Thus switching all crossings gives the mirror of a link, with the component orientations transported by the reflection.
Define . Reflection exchanges with and preserves the oriented smoothing. Apply the printed skein relation to the reflected triple at parameter :
Multiplication by gives the original skein relation for . Also . The stated uniqueness of the Jones polynomial now gives , hence
Let be the positively oriented Hopf link obtained by closing a two-strand braid with two positive crossings. Switching one crossing gives the two-component unlink; the oriented smoothing gives the unknot. The printed skein relation gives
Represent the right-handed trefoil knot by the closure of the two-strand braid with three positive crossings. Switching one crossing gives the unknot, while its oriented smoothing gives . Consequently
so the two Jones polynomials are
The second expression follows from the mirror of a link identity. They are unequal Laurent polynomials, so invariance under link isotopy proves that the right-handed and left-handed trefoils are not isotopic.