I was at The 21 Convention last weekend, in Warsaw, as a speaker. No doubt many of you are curious as to what I thought of it, not least because of the recent drama between T21C and Rollo Tomassi. Okay then, let’s do it.

Firstly, I didn’t take sides in that drama. I read what both parties had written and was able to reconstruct the events, from the so-called doxxing of the cigar club meet-up, to the Red Man Group LLC tussle, and the varied social media reaction from supporters of both sides. My conclusion was easy to reach: nothing to do with me. I like Rollo and he’s been good to me in the past. I didn’t yet know Anthony Johnson and his team but seeing as I had been invited to his show and given my promise to speak, I was going to speak.

I’m pleased to report the event weekend was a positive experience.

It was four days at the Marriot Hotel by the central station. The lectures were delivered in a big auditorium and two (or three?) smaller conference rooms were booked out for daily workshops. In addition there was a pre-show meet’n’greet in the hotel bar (I went), a paid VIP dinner (I didn’t go), a gratis Heroes dinner (I did attend), and a final farewell meal (skipped). The scheduling was intense with a couple of lectures each AM and PM, with workshops sandwiched in the middle. There wasn’t a lot of downtime.

So, how were the speakers?

Richard Grannon did several talks, the two most structured of which I very much enjoyed. One was on toxic passivity, his new concept for the West’s cultural malaise, and he drew lots of cross-disciplinary connections that I liked. His second was on evading, escaping, and recovering from toxic relationships. In both cases he was a well-prepared, knowledgeable and charismatic speaker. For me, these talks were the highlight. I also attended his workshop on the last day, which was also good. I’m amazed he didn’t drop dead from the amount of time he spent presenting.

I caught the second half of Ed Latimore‘s talk and it made me wish I’d gotten out of bed earlier to catch all of it. He was a humble, charming guy with good delivery and some interesting insights. I’d always thought his Twitter was overly-dependent upon generic bromides and platitudes so it was a nice surprise to find out there’s more depth to him.

Socrates’s lecture opened the event, which I missed because he’s a big lad and I’d talked shit about him in the past [1]. Now I think of it, I only caught half of the total talks. Probably a missed opportunity. After meeting Socrates later, I decided I’ll definitely catch the lecture when it comes onto YouTube.

My talk was a technical overview of the London Daygame Model, which all my readers will be well familiar with. It was pretty dry and there was so much to cover in an hour that I rather rushed it. It seemed to go over well, but I won’t really know what I think of it until it’s posted on T21C’s YouTube. Afterwards, George Bruno interviewed me in a breakout room and he handled it comfortably like a pro.

On the last morning, while I still lay in bed, I got Anthony’s invitation to do a Red Man Group panel broadcast live. So I jumped in the shower, pulled on my strides, and rushed out for one last unexpected contribution. It was an hour. I was sitting next to Socrates, so if you look carefully you’ll see me trembling.

So, have I deftly avoided addressing the criticisms I’d previously raised against The 21 Convention in earlier blog posts? Yes, I have. Let’s do so now. I entered the meet’n’greet on the first evening with a few preconceptions, based on the Rollo drama, watching speakers on YouTube and on social media, and word-on-the-street. I suppose you could list my criticisms as follows:

1. It’s overpriced
2. The speakers are full of shit  (e.g. The Natural Lifestyles, Blackdragon, Andrew Tate)
3. It’s a soulless cash-in on Red Pill popularity

What do I think now?

Regarding price, that’s for you to decide. Tickets seem to average out at $1,499 so it’s for the customer to decide if that’s a good deal. I spent lots of time talking to audience members and none of them were grumbling about being short-changed. Quite the opposite, they seemed hyped-up and eager for more. Each day was packed with content and I felt the team were trying to provide as much value as they could. So do I recommend you go to the next one? Not necessarily, it depends who is on. Look at the speaker list and decide what you think it’s worth. In Warsaw, T21C delivered on what was advertised (subject to Rollo-related cancellations) and the audience liked it.

The speakers were of varying quality, imo. Grannon was excellent. Latimore was pretty good, and I’d like to think I was too. I missed too many talks to comment much further. There were a few duds. Ivan Throne probably shouldn’t spend so much time talking about ninja spy networks and giving generic advice. Ryan Black should stop lying about his results with women [2]. John Cooper needs to resolve his fear of rejection [3]

Though I missed talks, I did get to chat to some speakers. Socrates and Alexander Cortes both impressed me favourably in person, having more gravitas and charisma than I’d expected from the videos I’d seen. We had a good long chat. They also contributed well to the Red Man Group panel I was on. Steve Williams hosted it and he has a very engaging lively manner that is really well-suited to the role. It was fun being on there.

So, that brings me to my updated thoughts on criticism number three: is it just a cash-in? Having spoken to Anthony and watched how he and his team conducted themselves backstage, I was left with the impression that they are sincerely putting on the best shows they can and are fully-invested in the manosphere / red pill message. Sure, it’s a business and people want to get paid, but they really want their message out there.

I’ll link my three videos as and when they appear on the respective YouTube channels. So, thanks to the T21C team for having me, and no hard feelings on Rollo. I’m still not taking sides.

[1] Joking. I was badly hung over and couldn’t get out of bed.
[2] His second slide made the claim, and I quote, that after shagging just three women in his life, he went to a Sasha Daygame bootcamp and within six months had “a harem of six model-quality women who all knew about each other”. Well, Ryan, you kept them well-fucking-hidden in 2010 didn’t you? I know if I’d been rattling half a dozen models I’d have been flaunting it across the London Seduction Society like a right fucking twat. But no, you kept it so secret that not a single person in the dozens I knew in the 2010 London community can recall you ever being seen with a hot girl. You had us fooled into thinking you were just a talentless goon wandering the streets of Covent Garden doing crappy daygame. Did the models’ agency make you sign an NDA and force you to destroy the evidence?
[3] He’s got a Social Heartistry YouTube channel. You’ll soon see what I mean.

The juggernaut that is the Nick Krauser memoir series speeds relentlessly forwards on to its fifth volume. Join me on my seventh year in game – 2015 – as I travel the world with only my humble daygame skills to aid me in my quest to shag lots of younger-hotter-tighter women. Those of you up to date on the previous four volumes know what to expect: funny stories, ups-and-downs, detailed inner and outer game advice, and an insider’s look at how it is to live as a player.

You can get both paperback and hardcover on Amazon in full-colour premium editions. Check this video for a look at what you’ll be getting

This is a major work, and not some shit-out-quickly eBook. Five hundred and twenty seven pages, this one. That’s no trifle, lads.

I plan to release my entire seven-volume memoir this year and so far I’ve done two volumes in six months. More coming soon!

I noticed one of my readers was leaving detailed and thoughtful reviews on Goodreads, so reached out and asked if he’d review Balls Deep for the blog. I sent him a complimentary copy and insisted he give his authentic opinion, for good or ill. Here’s the unedited review. Thanks for taking the time to write it!

Every time I visit this dating blog, I get to ask myself: Why? Why keep following the sayings of a man who is admittedly one of the most unattractive instructors (1) and who has publicly admitted “Look at me, my head is like a potato” (2)?

And then, there, it keeps hitting back every time: I am going through the pages of his books and get struck by his deep perspective and pure realism. As usual, he doesn’t hold anything back. He will report the good days, as well as the bad ones in equal quantity, with a colorful touch of his own sarcasm, self-narcissism and thoughts in retrospect.

The book is so rich and endless, it felt like i was reading 2 books the whole time.(3)

The first 70k words start with his Pre-game life. They extend all the way up to his marriage and how it all went to hell from there. There are some parts that explain a lot of the Nick’s future choices and attitude towards life. Family, early years, school, university, his time in Japan, marriage and divorce, it’s all very graphically presented throughout the pages.

Though there is a lurking issue here. I have personally been very conflicted about that 1st part. It’s not that I didn’t like it. But it could use a little more polishing. It surely didn’t have the charisma the second part did. Some more episodes/details could have been added and consequently far far more perspective in deep retrospect. So that it would be equal in quality to that second part. There were 2 time jumps where a lot more stuff could have been added.

In order to describe it better, the phrase “Identity Crisis” comes to mind, where it’s as if 2 different writers have written the 2 parts of the book. I could understand the need to get it on fast with the First Years and move to the “good stuff”, but a proper memoir may always use extensive references to those earlier episodes of the writer’s life. It is what constitutes a proper memoir in the very end.

Part B is respectively where the real fun begins. It was eye-opening to watch the daygamer’s evolution while, like a toddler, making his first steps and slowly conquering his inner fears to slowly master the “birdsong” of seduction.

Some of the girl stories generated in me that: “What if i did it differently” feeling when on similar situations in the past. Others act as a luminous guide when something alike could happen. I very much enjoyed any analysis on those “near wins”, since it was stuff not mentioned in his regular textbooks.

Although could have been said a lot more on those first thousand approaches, the sentiments and the struggle to “get the girl”, at least the interactions of the girls chosen to elaborate on go into much much detail.

And this brings us to the insights.

The perceptiveness extracted by some of the situations presented in honestly worth the price of the book alone. How socialism affects the SMP, the Genie metaphor with Bodi, and the psychological evaluation of some girls that otherwise seemed sexually unattainable to most men are only a few of the bits of wisdom put on paper. I actually had to close the book on more than one occasions, in order to do a little bit of reality check, since it was stuff you won’t easily find elsewhere. (4)

An honorary mention on the chain of events and how time distortion has been fixed, especially in contrast to vol 2 and 4, while any flashback is well put and justified, so that it doesn’t mess chronologically with the narrative.

The illustrated art is spot on and most of the chapters are covered with loose drawings of the girls analyzed in any of their dedicated chapters.

Photographs all around the text contribute in keeping you entertained throughout reading and serve well in comprehending better what happened and which person was involved.

Touches of subtle sarcasm (the author’s main characteristic) are mostly everywhere and even got myself bursting out laughing on a number of incidents.

The Verdict
The book tries hard to balance among being memoir, self-help, seduction and purely manifested narcissism. It mostly manages to convey it’s messages, with the insights sparsely acting as the glue holding it all together.

Having now read all his now published books, i gotta say i feel a lot wiser, all things considered. This isn’t just a combination of seduction stories. Female psychology, the psychology of the streets, the ups and downs of seduction, the wins, the near misses, socioeconomics in contrast to seduction, they all constitute a web of self-development. Which is practically the core of the book as a whole.

It surely doesn’t stand in comparison to the other 3 books, owed to that bumpy ride of the first part, execution being its main issue. Nevertheless, it complements perfectly the memoir collection and penlights far better some of the behaviours in later books.

Hopefully e-books release some day, so that carrying them everywhere becomes possible.

Highly advised book if you want to start your daygame journey and still having internal conflicts about it. (5)

8,5/10*

You can buy Balls Deep 2nd Edition on full-colour paperback or hardcover on Amazon. North American readers can get it faster here, and it also supports my work better as Aerio take a lower distribution fee than Amazon.

*Evaluation of a free copy received by the author.

(1) If not for a couple from the Indian side.

(2) At the start of Daygame Overkill product.

(3) At the very least it justifies it’s price in ink.

(4) What makes Krauser a prominent PUA instructor pretty much.

(5) For detailed specifics on seduction techniques, the textbooks will be needed.