There are a few stages most daygamers go through as the years pass and the set-count racks up. Over time your relationship to daygame changes. Let’s see if we can make some sense of it.

In the beginning it is exhilarating and scary in equal measure. The idea of walking up to any girl you choose and hitting on her is like a whole new world opening up. You’ll probably get lots of friendly non-sexual reactions from girls because they think it’s cute. You’re like a happy puppy wagging his tail and yelping at them. They don’t perceive a sexual threat so they are comfortable absorbing your happy energy and patting you on the head. Fortunately you’ll miss that subtext and think you’re actually getting somewhere, so you press on long enough until you stumble across a Yes Girl. That success feeds the delusion and the cycle continues.

It doesn’t really matter that your daygame isn’t working because the fact is you’re on the streets and once in a while the numbers game throws you a bone. You’re still getting laid, just not for the reasons you think.

Towards the intermediate level you’ve developed the skills and are doing things competently. You still likely lack calibration and the ability to make sound decision but that doesn’t matter much because the model has taken care of all that for you. Your daygame is more than just the numbers game now – what you do in set actually influences the outcome. It’s unfocused and lacking control, like trying to shoot a target 200m away with a pistol – taking good aim increases your chances but the barrel length means you’re still missing most things anyway.

Finally as you hit the mythical advanced level you see exactly what’s going on and few things surprise you. You can control about as much as you ever will, and everything else is down to chance. On your good days it feels like an opportunity to hit the crack pipe and on bad days there’s a fatalism.

What interests me right now is the energy cost at these stages.

Beginners are typically burning up energy non-stop, walking around in a daze. They have a disconnected incredulity about them like the first time Roddy Piper puts on the They Live glasses. They used to see the streets like a normal person – things with shops, cafes, traffic lights, and a path from A to B. Now they are taking their first steps into seeing the streets as a hunting ground where none of that matters, instead they scan for girls.

Most of the energy is burned up by Approach Anxiety, as if they’ve taken a huge adrenal dump. Beginners can feel physically sick and often can’t handle more than an hour or two in field before their legs feels like jelly. I know from my own experiences in 2009 that I’d do two hours then sit in a pub feeling like I’d just stormed a machine-gun nest. It was exhilarating but draining. Like watching a drag race.

Intermediates burn energy like a leaky bucket loses water. It’s more like a constant small flow sapping them. They are already at the point where daygame has ceased to be lulz that you might do now and again. It’s a way of life, a journey, a route to salvation (or whatever). The intermediate is committed and takes it very seriously indeed. Most such men I meet are very serious. They have an elaborate series of affirmations or inner-game tricks, fairly rigid preferred high-probability routes, a settled set of times and days, and frequently a game-plan to work on specific elements in a given session.

They’ve made themselves daygame professionals. It’s serious stuff [1]

Intermediates burn up energy between sets rather than in them. They are constantly switched on and the engine is burning up fuel the whole time. Even if they walk around a mall for an hour without opening it still drains them. Their head is full of self-talk, inner game mantras, an obsession with state control, and all the complexities of the model. This is where the grind hits hardest. The light-hearted puppy dog feel has gone to be replaced by a scavenger [2]

When I walk around with an intermediate guy I often feel he’s carrying an invisible rucksack loaded with bricks. The pressure of daygame wears on him. Over the hours it’ll crush him until he has to sleep it off and recharge for the next session.

Once you come out of the Intermediate seriousness into Advanced, that rucksack disappears. Daygame becomes light, joyful and whimsical. The energy profile changes so that now there’s very little energy burn between sets but once you go to a girl, the afterburners are on maximum. The real art to advanced daygame is to reduce to zero the energy burned in the empty hours when not in set so that all of your energy remains to pour into the sets themselves. That’s like folding most poker hands – without getting frustrated – then going all-in on the good hands.

When you’re at this level you feel like you can be out all day because each minute on the streets costs you nothing. Throw in warm sunny weather and a good wing then your daygame session feels like pure fun.

It’s not always like that, mind. The downside of eliminating the burn rate is that you are voluntarily surrendering some of your control. It becomes harder to open when you don’t feel like it. The maniacal self-discipline you had to just-do-the-ten-sets weakens. That throws up a whole new set of challenges – how can you direct your mood into the sweet spot so that you retain consistency in effort without putting the rucksack back on?

More on that in the next book.

[1] – I’m not mocking this. We all do it precisely because it’s effective.
[2] – I’m exaggerating. There are many times when intermediates are having great fun. I’m trying to describe the pervasive seriousness underlying those sparks of joy.

If you like the thought of wandering the streets chasing women, you might enjoy my book Adventure Sex. That’s pretty much all it’s about.