Game is as old as the proverbial hills. Back in the 1960s it was called “being a man”. So when I was watching an old romantic comedy with a bird I was pleasantly surprised to see a fairly tight Same Day Lay in pre-Janka / pre-Justin Wayne New York. What struck me about this fictional pick-up is:

• It mirrored my own day game model in most aspects
• It was entirely non-sleazy without any creeping or weird manipulation
• It’s how older guys should pick up young hotties
• The girl is high esteem so she plays her part pro-actively to test the man
• It’s a textbook case of a girl’s high disorder making her ripe for plucking

I’ve added a running commentary with subtitles. The guy makes a couple of mis-steps mainly through being too eager too soon and it’s not till he’s given up on the sex that he gets his frame and vibe dialled in correctly. But to give him credit, the first minutes between meet and instant date were logisitically difficult because he was forced to start indirect. Take a look

I’ve snipped bits out because half the movie is the pick-up. There’s a huge external interrupt later in the movie before he closes her.

Ayn Rand’s seminal work Atlas Shrugged is a goldmine of reframes and pithy observations. Ponderous though her prose can be she is able to draw concepts from all parts of life around a central narrative and shake your reality. Intellectual mastery, if you will….

A theme running throughout the book is that modern society is reaping a failed harvest of post-modernist cultural-relativist collectivist bullshit. Culture has degenerated to such a low that people are reduced to base instincts and an existential fear (from having no objective values to inform their moral code) makes them huddle into collectivist organisations and attack anybody who strives for individual greatness. In such a climate people glorify mediocrity and failure, inverting human virtues of hard work, skill, and wealth creation. The sexual expression of this loser’s mentality is treating sex as an angry value-taking base act that cheapens all participants.

A winner, yesterday

So let’s consider an eloquent rant from my favourite character Francisco D’Anconia on the topic of sex (page 489), then I’ll draw some conclusions for Game:

“Do you remember what I said about money and about the men who seek to reverse the law of cause and effect? The men who try to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind? Well, the man who despises himself tries to gain self-esteem from sexual adventures – which can’t be done, because sex is not the cause, but an effect and an expression of a man’s sense of his own value.”

“You’d better explain that” replies Henry Rearden. I’m sure you agree. I warn you, this gets existential.

“Did it ever occur to you that it’s the same issue? The men who think that wealth comes from material resources and has no intellectual root or meaning, are the men who think – for the same reason – that sex is a physical capacity which functions independently of one’s mind, choice or code of values…. but in fact a man’s sexual choice is the result and sum of his fundamental convictions. Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself…”

“He will always be attracted to the woman who reflects his deepest vision of himself, the woman whose surrender permits him to experience – or to fake – a sense of self-esteem. The man who is proudly certain of his own value, will want the highest type of woman he can find, the woman he admires, the strongest, the hardest to conquer – because only the possession of a heroine will give him a sense of achievement, not the possession of a brainless slut.”

“He does not seek to gain his value, he seeks to express it. There is no conflict between the standards of his mind and the desires of his body. But the man who is convinced of his own worthlessness will be drawn to a woman he despises – because she will reflect his own secret self, she will release him from that objective reality in which he is a fraud, she will give him a momentary illusion of his own value and a momentary escape from the moral code that damns him. Observe the ugly mess which most men make of their sex lives – and observe the mess of contradictions which they hold as their moral philosophy”

Vibe is everything. The girl must feel you are comfortable with who you are and she will match that vibe, feeling protected and cherished. If you seek out sluts to nail then hate on them for being sluts, you are training your self-conscious that this is your station in life. Good people will run a mile from your creepy vibe. Your game is a frantic race to bang the girl before all your skeletons fall out of their closets.

Reality is shaken, ego-trap rebooting

Intellectual mastery is integral to attracting and keeping top class women. To provide order to her you must have straightened out your own contradictions so she feels your leadership as a straight line. This is not to abandon Contrast Game, but this latter is a reflection of your multi-dimensional character rather than your mess of contradictions.

“Let a man corrupt his values and his view of existence, let him profess that love is not self-enjoyment but self-denial, that virtue consists, not of pride, but of pity and pain or weakness or sacrifice…. and he will have cut himself in two… He has damned himself and he will feel that depravity is all he is worthy of enjoying. He has equated virtue with pain and he will feel that vice is the only realm of pleasure, and then he will wonder why love brings him nothing but boredom, and sex – nothing but shame.”

This underlies much Dark Side thinking. For all the posturing of reasonably-successful PUAs about how women are snakes, sluts, love jerks etc they are really projecting their own broken moral compass onto the girls. Yes, girls have a certain predictable animal nature but they are also capable of submitting to effective leadership and having their characters remade into sweet sexy companions in life’s journey. Figuring out how to recognise such girls (Type 1s, and Type 2:1s) and then leading them to their potential is higher order Game. Creeping won’t work. When you hear a man hating on women he bangs, dripping with moralistic language, then it’s a fair bet he’s got some inner game work left to do.

It is not “realistic” to say women are whores and that a fulfilling LTR is impossible. It’s not “pragmatic” to say female affection needs make you a sucker for oneitis and you should thus treat women as disposable cum buckets. Such claims are not at a higher-level of red pill wisdom. They are a self-abdication of responsibility to your own happiness. It is giving up on the finer things in life. Sour grapes.

“Just as physical action unguided by an idea is a fool’s self-fraud, so is sex when cut off from one’s code of values. It’s the same issue, and you would know it. Your inviolate sense of self-esteem would know it. You would be incapable of desire for a woman you despised… One kind of half is the man who despises money, factories, skyscrapers and his own body. He holds undefined emotions about non-conceivable subjects as the meaning of life and as his claim to virtue. And he cries with despair, because he can feel nothing for the women he respects, but finds himself in bondage to an irresistable passion for a slut from the gutter. He is the man whom people call an idealist.”

“The other kind of half is that man whom people call practical, the man who despises principles, abstractions, art, philosophy and his own mind. He regards the acquisition of material objects as the only goal of existence – and he laughs at the need to consider their purpose of their source. He expects them to give him pleasure – and he wonders why the more he gets, the less he feels. He is the man who spends his time chasing women. Observe the triple fraud he perpetrates on himself. He will not acknowledge his need for self-esteem, since he scoffs at such a concept as moral values; yet he feels the profound self-contempt which comes from believing he is a piece of meat. He will not acknowledge, but he knows that sex is the physical expression of a tribute to personal values. So he tries, by going through the motions of the effect, to acquire that which should have been the cause. He tries to gain a sense of his own value from the women who surrender to him – and he forgets that the women he picks have neither character nor judgement nor standardof value. He tells himself that all he’s after is physical pleasure – but observe that he tires of his women in a week or a night, that he despises professional whores and that he loves to imagine he is seducing virtuous girls who make a great exception for his sake. It is the feeling of acheivement that he seeks and never finds.”

I believe that latter Practical Man is utterly skewered by Mr D’Aconia. It is the classic player trap and a fair bet to assume most men with a laycount above 100 either fit the mold now, or used to. When you here a man brag about creeping for a ho train of 6s, that’s who you are talking to.

This is precisely why Game requires working on your own personal value and confronting your demons. It’s why JJ says your game is a reflection of who you are as a man, and if you want better girls you need to become a better man. You can sex girls on two different planes of existence – it can be a mutually life-affirming experience of joy, or it can be a frenzied animal coupling to bust a nut and placate the demons for a few more days. The former draws a girl into your reality for complete soul collection, the latter gives flighty, flakey, psycho fuck buddies that disappear into the ether.

I was on a Facebook chat with an ex last night and we were talking about Game. I’d directed her to this Delusion Damage post where he contrasts “Game” with “Creeping”:

“Game is a difficult skill to master and its rewards are correspondingly spectacular, but it shall quite probably remain forever outside the reach of some 95% of men, who simply lack the required intellectual capacity and the calm tenacity to hone their skills to a fine point….

Game is not the path to easy sex. Game is the path to high-quality sex, and high-quality female interaction in general. The path to easy sex is called “creepin’”…..

“Creepin’” is the poor man’s Game (or should I say, the intellectually lazy man’s game). A fresh t-shirt, a gallon of hair gel, a couple gallons of alcohol and an inexhaustible fountain of pent-up sexual energy to grind up against enough club sluts to strike a hole-in-one is all it takes. You don’t have to read books. You don’t have to study psychological concepts like self-esteem and validation. You don’t have to understand women. What you do have to do is get’m drunk and press up against them, and keep doing that to enough of them until one bites. And that – unlike reading books – is something the 95% of men can do.”

I think it teases out a central distinction I’ve been grasping for. I got into Game to bang the world’s hottest women rather than to rack up numbers. I’d assumed that’s why everyone gets into it but now I see some people just want to get laid with anything halfway-pretty. Goals determine strategy.

I have endeavoured to raise my value so that I am above the attraction threshold of top quality women. That entails straightening out my inner game, learning female psychology at a deep level, and adopting an in-set frame that positions myself as a man of exceptional talent and poise. That’s not to say I’ve reached my goal, but my goal has determined my strategy down to micro-details.

Creeping is entirely different. You work on your superficial value (gym, diet, clothes, grooming etc) and take that value package into an environment where other Type 2:2 personalities are trading value for sex. As in, nightclubs, sex clubs, online dating. Creeping is a path to high volumes of mediocre sex because you are treating your own value as a turd to be polished. Day-creeping follows the same principle. There’s many guys who work a street numbers game according to a simple equation:

Man: Inherent Personal Value (IPV) x In-set Ability (ISA) = Projected Value (PV)

Woman: Inherent Sexual Value (ISV) – [Momentary Disorder (MD) + Residual Disorder (RD)] = Game Receptiveness (GR)

Sum: If PV > GR then Bang Girl. If PV <= GR then open more sets until PV > GR

Creeping assumes IPV is fixed within tight boundaries. Game assumes it has an almost unlimited upward ceiling. Creeping works hard to improve ISA. Game improves both. I’ll have more to say on the implications of this in the next post.

An alpha male lives in sexual abundance where girls fight over him. Girls are ruthlessly competitve against each other in their quest to secure the seed / commitment of the high value man. Thoughtful observers of feminism will have noted that the worst name-callers, shamers, and under-cutters of women are other women. Despite constant feminist lies that men are misogynists, most men actually tend to have a bemused indifference to the constant shape-shifting backstabbing of the women’s knitting circle.

It’s good to make a girl chase you. It’s even better to make her compete for you. Nothing rouses a woman’s heart like beating another woman to a man. Here’s a little snippet. To protect anonymity I’ve removed names and colour-coded thus:

Girl A is a smoking hot 20yr old leggy black chick who I haven’t banged yet but I once refused a booty call. I intend to collect on that voucher but it’s proving difficult. Girl B is a smoking hot 20yr old leggy white chick who I also almost banged but then didn’t and now intend to correct the balance.

I think further comment is unnecessary. Regular readers will be fully aware what was going on. Once the heated exchange got underway both girls started texting me to try to win the battle “off the record”, and showed extreme interest in the relative quality of her rival and my relative interest levels in them.

As you get more experience with women you’ll probably find yourself becoming more discerning in your tastes, in much the same way that a conniseur of wine (or porn) learns to distinguish between not just subtle grades in quality but also in his personal taste. For example, a £100 bottle of wine is wasted on me because I can’t appreciate it any more than a £20 bottle.

There’s a strong tendency to overrate the women you date due to the ego issues involved and through lack of experience. It’s a running joke that PUA guys on forums think every girl they had some success with is an HB9 and then you see the (rare) photos and those girls are in fact merely 7s. Why is this? Probably it’s a failure to identify quality gradients. When I was married I was convinced my wife was a 10 because at the time, understandably, it was important to me. The reality is that I didn’t have any experience of 10s (or even 9s) so it’s like the top of the female value pyramid was obscured by the mountaintop clouds. So what was actually an 8 seemed to be the top and -ergo- a 10. The real top class of girls were outside my reality and thus didn’t even factor into my scale.

You’ll see this in my earliest blogposts where I clearly overate girls in my mind relative to the evidence of the photos.

One thing I always ask my students is “What type of girl do you like?” When I get an answer like “hot” or “big tits” I’m pretty sure the guy is a long way from success. He simply hasn’t learned to discern his own taste in what really matters. Being indiscriminate is unattractive and kills vibe. It gives poor boundaries because you don’t screen properly. My book goes into alot of details about how to introspect to find the type of girl that really makes you happy and how to screen for her.

Otherwise you end up fucking a bunch of rotters who you hate on, and that puts you on a dark side downward spiral.

Being romantically / sexually involved with a woman is supposed to be an invigorating joyful experience that fills your heart with a love for life. Being good at game is supposed to take you closer to happiness. If you find yourself driven forwards by the dark energy of sexual neediness (must… close…. new…. girl…), enduring unenjoyable interactions because that’s the price of getting her home, and then wanting to be rid of the girl once you’ve got the notch….. well then sir you have deep inner game issues and you’re banging the wrong women. Speaking from my personal experience….

It’s better to date a seven who you like, whose vibe brings you warmth and happiness, than to bang a ten who is unpleasant.

And this brings me to these two videos I came across while lying on my bed hungover and tired on Saturday morning. Just feel the difference between Agne’s vibe (blonde one in Abba) and that modern trash Aguilera. Agne doesn’t need the dance moves, prosser costume, or oh-so-serious facial expressions to be cute. Just looking at the two videos it’s easy to see which girl would be a delight to have in your life and which would just chip away at your soul day after day.

A man’s most fundamental value he has to give to a woman is to provide her with order and direction. Doing so is the basis of attraction. It’s all well and good talking about it at a meta-level but what does it mean for each step of the courtship ritual?

First understand that the amount of disorder in a woman’s life will underpin how effectively she can be picked up. This is not to negate other variables, such as “are you her type?” and “is she horny?” or “is she in a socially acceptable environment?” and all the other concerns. But beneath all this lies her current standing on the order-disorder continuum. For example, at one extreme is a woman married to a husband she loves, children to care for, a stable home with family and social support, and hobbies / career to pursue. Such a well-connected embedded woman leads a very orderly predictable life. And enjoys it. At the other extreme consider a homeless junkie with a history of child abuse, no job, isolated on the backstreets of the bad part of town. This girl lives in a permanently disorienting flux with no sources of order or a direction to move in. Somewhere between these states are the girls we wish to meet.

A single female, yesterday

Because women are herd animals, when they are disconnected from their two main sources of order (the herd, or a man) they become uneasy and, like drowning men clutch at a lifeline, prone to grasp order that is offered to them. They are thus more likely to value the order you offer. This presents an interesting light / dark dilemma:

Dark

• Seek out vulnerable girls in maximum disorder, such as lone tourists walking the streets in early evening. Or sweep up drunk girls in clubs whose friends are already hooking up.
• Smash the existing order of an orderly girl with verbal bamboozlement, boyfriend-destroyers, and disorienting instant dates that spin her around many locations and emotions.

Light

• Provide the best quality order you can and rely on this being better than her alternative sources.

So let’s consider way in which you are offering order in your subcommunication through every level of the interaction from beginning to close:

1. By street-stopping the girl you are interupting whatever order she has and signalling you are about to impose your own intention onto her. You are showing your intent to peel her away from the herd. In contrast, a low-investment indirect opener leaves her fully in her frame (until you start to suck her in later)
2. Using your assumption stack to transition from killing momentum into vibing you are now taking the lead of the conversation and choosing how the interaction proceeds.
3. Your vibe of friendly fun politeness leads her vibe and directs her which social code she is to operate under for this interaction. As you move it through comfort, rapport and seduction you give her the expectation that she’ll match it.
4. Mini-bouncing her to the edge of the street, and later onto the instant date is physically leading and showing more expectation of her following into your world until she is sitting across from you in a coffee shop with her reality left behind
5. When you bundle her into a cab for extraction at the end of the drinking date you overide her logistical shit tests to reaffirm yourself as leader and she is reaching the end of the courtship ritual.

When Mystery was introducing the notion of compliance tests he couched them in terms of escalation but it’s equally valid to consider them as confirmation that she is accepting your reality and the order it brings her. This is why I believe you need to be careful in mixing order with disorientation at the same time, so you move forwards not back. Like in football where the goal of defence is to simply break the flow of the attackers by sticking a foot into the tackle or blasting the ball into the stands, and where the successful offence requires constructing an organised series of moves to move the ball to a specific place (between the posts). You break your rival’s order and then create your own.

Disorientation:

• Negs / teases
• Spinning her around
• A river cruise instant date to Greenwich
• Taxi ride anywhere
• Verbal bamboozlement
• Intellectual mastery that breaks her frame / assumptions about life and herself

It’s fine to do these early on when your goal is to pull her out of her existing comfortable order but once you are proceeding into rapport you have to dial this down. If she feels like you are increasing the disorder of her life she will have less value to attach herself to. So only use disorientation in a pinch, such as when she wobbles during a compliance test.

e.g. Pushing a girl into a taxi while telling her you’re going to Disneyland is a order-disorder push-pull. Once inside you should return to imposing order just by occupying her logical mind to let it go into a direction (any direction, so long as it’s not on what’s actually happening)

Consider order as subtext. It doesn’t replace the usual things you do but it does determine the weighting and timing of what you do.

I was having a chat with Skeletor recently about some of the tensions in game theory and lifestyle that I’m trying to resolve to my satisfaction. Of late I’ve felt like much of successful game results from squaring a circle by creating a synthesis of (initially) mutually exclusive conditions. For example:

• building attraction in high value women requires genuine disinterest yet it’s the male’s role to initiate the courtship ritual
• it’s necessary to approach thousands of girls to get good at game yet being “the guy who approaches thousands of girls” is an unattractive pussy beggar
• the best attraction and investment from girls comes from making them chase you and yet leadership and direction are needed to close
• preselection is the most powerful attraction switch but it also projects a player vibe that undercuts comfort
• enforcing boundaries against time-wasting and other bad behaviour is necessary to retain your dignity but it’s equally important to be unreactive as if you simply don’t care about the bad behaviour

I don’t think any of these tensions are irresolvable but they do require a reframing of the original false dilemma. Maybe that’s a subject for another post. For now I’ll discuss what I consider an irresolvable tension: that between the light and dark sides of game.

Light

This comes under the heading of what I call “nice guy strength”. Men are born to lead and protect women, and those men who climb to the top of the value pyramid are better able to do so. You accept women’s submissive role as being their desire to step inside your reality and give themselves up to your direction and order. By accepting their submission you are also taking responsibility for her physical and emotional welfare. You become the man of steel and velvet. While she sits inside your reality she can blossom and grow, learning about herself and life and in return she provides you with the sex and affection that lightens the burden you have assumed. It’s a co-operative value-for-value exchange.

...and velvet

Dark

This is the aloof arsehole / pussy hound. Women are sexual creatures who love to fuck but only with men who know the “game” and thus know how to pick them up, build attraction, and then rush them through the stages towards sex – ruthlessly filtering and burning the timewasters who aren’t DTF. You’re in it for the satisfaction of your desires above all else. If that means dangling the relationship carrot before a pump and dump, so be it.

Like the jedi in Star Wars, budding young apprentices are beset by the temptation to stray to the Dark Side for one simple reason – it’s easier. It’s not easy, but it is easier to see faster results. To become a man who can stand open before a quality girl – showing his full character and intentions – and still get her requires you to slay all your personal demons, develop all sides of your character and thus become the man who can fulfill her interpersonal needs as a woman. This is not easy. It’s a commitment to becoming a better man, not simply one more skilled in the crimson arts. It’s easier to fall back to Plan B. The latter’s ease comes from one basic principle:

You are bending and breaking the rules that other people in society expect as the minimum standards of behaviour

If we agree that I will sell you my laptop for £300, then I take the money and run, as I sit in my flat counting my loot cackling “haha, I really took that sucker” – have I really bested you? No, I haven’t. I’ve simply cheated you by breaking an expectation of yours that would hold for the 99% of people you deal with who are not dirty rotten scoundrels. You are not an idiot for holding onto those expectations because if you allow all bets to be off you would sink into the same pit of self-loathing and misery that the scoundrels inhabit. Better to just charge the £300 to the Game and move on.

Likewise the dark side of game is leading girls on with fools gold. [note: I’m not talking about honestly filtering for DTF girls – that’s mutually consensual with full knowledge of each other’s intent. It has it’s own problems but it’s not “dark side” as I mean the term here]

Seductive lifestyle

I wouldn’t say Plan B is wrong. The continually restocking pool of aspiring PUAs is an adversarially-selected bunch of guys who get into Game precisely because they are not having success with women. Plan B will get you laid. Getting laid is a huge improvement in your life vs not getting laid. So go for it. I did.

The problem is in thinking that’s all there is to Game or in becoming so seduced by the lifestyle that you start to think its an end to itself. Here’s the pros and cons of it, as I’ve witnessed from those I’ve personally seen spend too long in the dark side;

Pros

• High lay count
• Sophisticated calibration
• Funny stories

Cons

• Creepy vibe
• Unbalanced life
• Constant search for stimulation
• Low quality women

Yes, I said that. Low quality women. I have never yet met the man who can bang top drawer women using a dark side frame. I’ve seen them bang the occasional hot girl, but girls who were clearly internally damaged. They also don’t bang “out of their class” – i.e. tall, good-looking, well put-together Darksiders can bang 8s. But they are male 9s on the same criteria (the wrong criteria, as it happens) and they can’t keep those girls around in anything resembling a balanced relationship. But mainly, the problem is a deeper-rooted long term problem

They are unhappy people

It’s a common refrain from old hands in the Community that you should have a life outside of Game. As far back as Neil Strauss’ book he warned about how easy it is to become obsessed with pick up with it’s constant emotional rollercoaster resulting from the blowouts and successes. It’s easy to become addicted to new lays. It’s easy to lose all perspective on life as you focus single-mindedly on “getting this area handled”. Getting good at game without scorching the earth around your life is a difficult balance. Community values are weird – such as treating girls as experimental subjects and going out with wings like you’re a mercenary army. Yet if you don’t approach thousands of girls, push your boundaries, hang out with like-minded (and preferrably more experienced) men then how can you improve?

I think it’s impossible to get good at game without compromising your integrity at certain times. Lest anyone think I place myself above such base behaviours, I’ll use examples from my own development. Things I’ve done which I know are shady, but which I rationalised at the time as acceptable (and perhaps still do) include:

• Videoing girls during pick-up and dates and then sharing the videos on the internet
• Dating five girls at a time (who knew about each other) and telling each that she was my number one girl
• Passing girls on to my friends
• Telling a girl logically that I don’t want a serious relationship with her, and then shamelessly playing her emotions to make her fall for me in the full knowledge that they will override her logical mind

It’s easy to find justifications. People are all cunts. All is fair in love and war. They have their own agenda too. If we got married she’d use the misandrist laws against me. Etc etc etc.

I’m not so much interested in the moral dimension of integrity, not for this post anyway. What interests me is that integrity is essential for success in life even if you are merely using enlightened self interest rather than a genuine commitment to moral living for its own sake. I have long said:

High value women do not sleep with low value men

It’s possible to get Type 2 girls (high beauty / low self esteem) into bed with manipulative low value behviour yet it’s almost impossible to have rewarding relationships with them. I’ve met plenty of community guys who rack up lay-after-lay with grotty women, women of low character, or simply normal pretty girls where it begins ok and things turn south rapidly precisely because of the man’s conduct in his pursuit and subsequent relationship. For whatever reason these men feel compelled to stay on the treadmill day-after-day, night-after-night trying to placate whatever demons rest inside them, pouring ever more water into a leaky bucket rather than fixing the hole in the bottom. RSD’s Jeffy gave a great talk about this in Transformations.

What all these guys have in common is a manipulative, value-taking frame that requires vast amounts of lying and dishonesty. No amount of lays is ever enough. It’s like they are punishing themselves week after week. Invariably they surround themselves with like-minded people and then there’s a self-reinforcing echo chamber. Fucked up community standards become the norms that define their conduct. In the beginning their vibe is horrible, completely creepy. As they become more accomplished liars they can disguise the ugliness within until they have obtained whatever value they were seeking to take.

It is still possible to get laid like this. There’s lots of weak girls in the world who can be impressed, cajoled and manipulated into bed. You can spend years feeding in such swamps. With success comes hubris. Rather than remain within the normal world with its normal standards of behaviour you see yourself as an outsider, a man above the “sheep” and no longer constrained by societal rules (which are “all in your head” anyway). Channelled correctly this is a stunning realisation that leads to achievement and inner peace as you cast off the shackles. Channelled incorrectly you become a lame douchebag – never keeping promises, living life on a whim, treating people as pawns to be sacrificed. Like an over-leveraged hedge fund picking up pennies in front of a steamroller, you can go years before your risk-taking wipes you out. One day’s reversal will overwhelm four years of small gains but the homo-sapien is designed to pat itself on the back for every small gain while sticking it’s head in the sand about impending losses. When you jump off a 42 floor building you have an exhillirating ride the first 41 floors you pass.

A man’s word is the only thing of value he will ever own

Much of the discussion on this blog has been about how the type of man you are drives your game, and vice versa. I firmly believe that the only way to avoid the biggest player traps is to conduct yourself with girls (and other men) according to the type of man you wish to be. That means you:

• Aim high, at precisely the girls you most want in your life
• Make your intentions clear at the earliest moment of good calibration
• Decide if you intend to string a girl along you tell her and treat her hind brain the same way
• Abide by wing rules at all times, such as not making your wing look bad in front of a girl or trying to steal his girl
• Maintain a life outside of the Community
• Identify and slay your inner demons, rather than appeasing them

It is extremely difficult to do this. Most guys who get good with girls do so precisely because they are broken inside and driven to extraordinary lengths to make up for it. Normal people with balanced lives give up long before they complete their “1,000 sets of hell”. It’s simply too hard. You can only do it when the wolves are at the door. In my case, it was the various issues emanating from my divorce. For other people I’ve met it’s 20+ years of involuntary celibacy or social exclusion, messed up father figures, alcoholism and redemption, and so on.

If you want to lift yourself out of whatever gutter you currently reside in, you need to develop personal integrity. Without it, a conveyor belt of new lays will never fill the emptiness inside.

I’m a strong believer that direct day game (or more accurately, indirect-direct day game) is the gold standard of pick-up. I’ve discussed some of the limitations of night game but have not really pontificated on doing your work sober while the sun is shining. My book lays out a detailed model for picking up smoking hot girls and feeling good while you do it. I ignore indirect completely in the book but perhaps I should explain why. First I should define terms:

• Indirect: You hide your romantic and/or sexual interest in a girl early in the interaction
• Direct: You explicitly state the same intent
• Indirect-Direct: You implicitly state your intent through subcommunication while not explicitly stating it in words

These are listed in ascending order of difficulty and desireability. The big advantage of indirect is it requires almost zero balls – which is also it’s main failing. You are creeping your way in under the radar and hoping that the girl won’t rumble you until you’ve displayed enough passive value and relaxed her. By delaying the statement of intent you are delaying the moment of truth when she must decide if you are going to be on her romantic radar. For newbies this is great news – All the validation of cold approaching a girl into conversation and none of the rejection. I do recommend 100 sets or so of indirect game just to get your social skills sharpened and because its the easy way in. But accept that by not showing any balls you are keeping your greatest weapon holstered.

Women are attracted to confidence more than any other male attribute.

I’ll tell you right now where you will get with indirect daygame: lot’s of gentle blowouts, lot’s of wasted time, and the occasional lay with girls a point or two below you in physical attractiveness. For most men that is an improvement on their current lifestyle so more power to them.

The big advantages of direct game are (i) the show of confidence will immediately earn you an extra two points to bring those better-looking-than-you girls into your reach and (ii) you waste far less time on “no” girls. Oh yeah, it’s better for your frame too because you feel like a man. Hiding intent hurts your frame and vibe over time by reinforcing manipulative behaviour.

However the big disadvantage, assuming you have the balls to even try, is that you are bringing forwards the moment of truth where she can blow you out. In the beginning when your personal charismatic value is low, you will suffer far more blowouts. This is why I don’t recommend Mode One-style approaches (even though the subtext of the book is good for underlying the pick up). Once you have your subcommunication down pat I’d suggest a transition to indirect-direct. You get all the advantages of delaying the moment of truth until the girl is warmed up and yet also all the advantages of using your balls. My book is indirect-direct.

The attached video [now removed] should give an example of why indirect-direct street stops are the pinnacle of Game. Efficient, fun, vast pool of targets, and access to top-drawer birds. This girl took four dates to bring home and she is emminently dateable. If she hadn’t been forced to return to her country I’d still be dating her. I look like a potato. If I did indirect I’d be dating potatoes.

Game doesn’t have to be about sweeping up DTF grotty nightclub sixes. Aim high.

As JJ, Toe and I sip whiskey and smoke cigars in the Hemingway Suite at Chateau RSG, the discussion moves away from political philosophy and back to girls. It’s our favourite subject. JJ reclines on a green leather chestefield sofa, puffs out a stream of smoke and opines:

“The problem with bar game is that high value people don’t go to bars”

We nod. For a moment the light jazz sounds from the gramophone fill the silence. Toe leans over to relight his cigar. All three of us are excavating memories of our highest-value girls to determine if they liked bars and clubs. Surprise surprise, they didn’t. Maybe JJ is onto something here.

internet forum "nines"

“RCM hated clubs. She’d only go when she was paid. Usually she liked to just cook for a dinner party with friends, or read a book” I add. “Painter isn’t a bar rat either.”

“I met Playboy Model in Jewel bar, though” says Toe. “She was the hottest I’ve fucked.”

JJ meets the counter example with “Yeah, she was hot but she was a slapper. Fake tits, relentless gamesplayer, and you said yourself she wasn’t even a good lay. She was counterfeit – looked like a million pounds but not worth a penny.”

I think of the girl I’ve been dating the past two weeks. She’s a famous actress in her home country, well-educated, far richer than I am, and an all-round delightful person. When I asked her how she likes to spend weekends she tells me she goes to restaurants with friends or walks in the park. I think JJ is right – bars and clubs are barren wastelands if your goal is quality women.

“Bar game is just weird. Why try to pick up girls in an environment designed to take two points off a man’s attractiveness and give them to women?” comments Toe.

“It’s an accident of history. In modern Western society bars are the societally-approved places to meet girls. And then Mystery happened to like bars so his method was all about night game” says I. I know JJ isn’t going to accept a mischaracterisation of his beloved Mystery Method.

“No no no. Mystery just said bars are a good place to practice because of all the sets. His method isn’t specific to bar game – it’s universal”

We agree, but bootcamps got run in bars and everyone practiced in bars so very quickly people forget the universality of Game and just stay in bars. Once the blinkers are on they tend to stay on.

Hemingway Suite, upon completion

“Bars also help the men, in their own weird way” I offer. “Just as most women are low value, so are most men. Bars inhibit most avenues of displaying value. They pretty much force you to focus on good looks, grooming and basic body language. They force you to act like a hyperactive bell-end to compete against the various distractions. It’s just not conducive to showing real wide-ranging value. So low value guys can better pretend they are high value.”

The conversation moves on to men. What is a high value man, and how do they differ from the mass of society. JJ interjects again.

“We’re not trying to get good at picking up women. We’re trying to be better men.”

I think of the books I’ve read, the countries I’ve visited, the career I built, the expert systems I learned. Yes, most of my value to a girl is from the type of man I am rather than the Game I spout.

“That’s why most pick up guys don’t bang desirable girls. It’s one thing to sweep up dizzy club tarts but another thing entirely to date, and secure the love and affection, of a top class woman.”

“I’d rather have a ten minute conversation with a ten than bang a seven” says JJ. He’s racked up over 150 lays so he’s speaking from a position of strength. “It’s about the romantic radar.”

“True. I’m not much fussed about the sex. I never got into game for more sex with mediocre birds” says I. “The most satisfying part of this month wasn’t banging that Romanian seven. It was with the actress, when I realised I was on her romantic radar. She’s a ten who can pick and choose who she spends time with and she wanted to come out on dates with me. She is extremely high value and she has decided I have the value to be in her life, romantically. That’s more satisfying, and says more about how I’ve lived my life, than SDLing some lost tourist off Oxford Street.”

We agree.