Sonny Arvado Game – “This is the image building business”

Required reading for this blog post: 29 Truths About Game from Sonny Arvado’s blog, Strength by Sonny. At this point, I’ve probably read it five times through, and I can definitively say it is the best article I have ever seen about Game. No bullshit, just pure truth.

I’m an extremely independent learner, and I had never, ever paid money to any coach, but late last year, I started to read through Sonny Arvado’s blog, Strength by Sonny. I had previously only read a few posts of his, but the more I started to read, the more I started to think: “Goddamn, this guy gets it.”

Reading his posts, it became clear that he is an expert on something I had been struggling with all of last year: image. I knew he was able to give me some perspective, so I bit my ego bullet and reached out to Sonny about getting consulting.  What follows is my review of that process, of Sonny’s game in general, and what guys can take away from his outlook.

Why should you listen to Sonny?

In my opinion, Sonny Arvado, out of all the “coach/instructor/guru” (or whatever you want to call them) types, has the best combination of the major factors of Game:

• Looks (“Image”)
• Social Acuity
• Game
• Mindset

Many guys do this for ten years and manage one or two out of four. Sonny is extremely strong in all of the above areas:

• Looks (“Image”) – he has spent his entire adult life improving on his naturally good looks to make the game as easy for himself as possible. Most importantly, he has improved his physique to be top-tier, meaning that he is instantly polarizing anywhere he goes.
• Social Acuity – Sonny is essentially a “true natural”. He self-describes as always having been part of the “in crowd”. This is not something that most coaches can say about themselves (because if they were, why would they need to study social skills and be good enough at it to start teaching guys?)
• Game – he is the rare natural who is actually trained in “technical game”, through being involved in the Las Vegas “pickup community” doing cold approach and being associated with other coaches and instructors. This means he can break things down using terms familiar to guys with a community background.
• Mindset – Sonny gets it. This is evident when you talk to him for an extended period of time. He’s red- and looks- pilled in all the right places, but with zero hint of bitterness. One line from his 29 Truths about Game article stuck out to me: “Most guys are searching for purpose. They want to find their place in the world. Relevancy and belonging is what they are really going after. They want to find their place and they want that place to be a relevant one”. Deep down, he understands that every man’s true goal in life is to be happy and fulfilled.

Sonny Arvado Game

That aside, what can we learn from Sonny, game-wise? The following is a basic summary of his game, without giving away too many secrets. The full details can be cleaned from his blog post: Sonny Arvado Game.

His game relies on being “sexually dimorphic”. As big, brawny, masculine, and muscular as possible. The idea is that the bigger you are, the more polarizing you are, and the less roadblocks will be put in your way (LMR, anti-slut defense, cockblocks, AMOGs, etc.)

He screens girls aggressively in social situations by asking a simple question: “What’s this chick’s deal?” He uses any possible information he can to suss this out, including the girl’s Instagram account, and even her phone background (for example: does it have a photo of her boyfriend? Probably not a great target.)

When he goes out at night, he classifies interactions into one of four categories:

• Probable Flakes – he takes the number, but expects it to flake anyway.
• Interest to the Point of Agreeing to a Date – the girl seems interested, but something is logistically preventing the pull that night. In that case, he asks what her schedule is like and seeds the date right away.
• Hail Marys – she’s down to clown, but can’t leave with you due to some logistical standpoint (her friends won’t let her leave, etc.). He takes the number and then calls her (not texting, very important) later in the night after the clubs close and has her Uber over to his place.
• Good to Go – she’s down to clown and you need to work logistics to pull her.

Objections when going for the pull can be overcome with two frames:
– time/distance: “My place is close”
– secrecy: “No one has to know, it will be our little secret” (this includes changing vocal tonality and whispering dirty talk to a girl in the club)

At some point in every nightgame interaction, he will attempt to isolate the girl, either by moving her a couple feet away, or by buying her a drink at the bar.

He’s a big fan of hired gun game, which he uses on bartenders, hooters girls, or bottle service girls. This is the only part of his game where he uses a canned line: “I’m sure you get this all the time, but I think you’re very beautiful and I’d love to take you out some time.”

Philosophy

“This is the image-building business”

By far the biggest aspect of Sonny’s philosophy that appealed to me is a set phrase which he uses often:  “This is the image-building business”. Guys worry constantly about their “game”, when really, their struggles in their dating/social lives are actually due to their image, which he defines as:

• Face (or head) – hair, bones, skin, jawline, etc.
• Body – including tattoos and piercings
• Tangible extensions of identity and wealth – clothes and accessories, car, neighborhood and housing
• Social media profiles
• Associations – who are your friends? Are you part of a certain “scene”? What is your archetype?
• Communication skills – voice, eye contact, body language, communication style
• Societal feedback – How does society treat you?

One of my favorite quotes from Sonny about image: “People are very distracted and low conscious. Not only do they not have the time to sift through your golden intangibles but they oftentimes do not even have the capacity to do so.”

Pretty much every guy wants the same type of girl: desirable, sexually dimorphic girls in their prime, but these type of girls respond much more strongly to a man’s image than to his game. In 2019, with the rise of Instagram and online dating, superficial image is more important than ever. Thus, guys should be focusing on their image first and their game second. The problem with the community, according to Sonny, is that men don’t want to do the hard work, and fall back on game as a coping mechanism for their image inadequacies.

The archetype guys should be going after should be “cool, attractive insider”. Every guy may define this differently, but a quick glance through a girl’s Instagram feed should give some pretty strong clues as to what type of guys are currently deemed “cool, attractive insiders” by society.

“You attract who you are”

One of Sonny’s other philosophies that was a gamechanger for me was the idea of “you attract who you are”. Good people attract other good people. Bad people attract other bad people. People tend to form relationships, platonic or romantic, with their looks- and image match. Men and women on a similar level in the eyes of society tend to date each other.

Since I’ve internalized this belief, I can’t stop seeing it over and over:

• Sociopaths attract girls with other personality disorders.
• Nerdy white tech guys attract fobby Asian girls.
• Intelligent, college-educated guys attract intelligent, college-educated girls.
• “Hood” black guys attract hood black girls, latinas, and Instagram “thots”.
• Raver/EDM type guys attract raver/EDM type girls.

All of the above are not just attracting girls of their archetype, but also their looksmatch and personality match.

There are no hacks to this shit. Barring crazy anomalies, every guy is going to attract the type of girl that his personality and image dictate.

Consulting

Before my Skype call with Sonny, I did a bunch of research and prepared notes. I was reticent at first because his rates aren’t cheap, but I was pleasantly surprised at his passion and dedication to coaching. Not only did he call me to figure out what my goals are before setting up our session, where we had a great 45-minute conversation about philosophies, the community, and more, during our Skype call he also set aside the entire evening to talk to me to make sure I was on the right track. It helped that we have similar mindsets, are around the same age, and share a lot of the same tastes in humor (he, too, recognizes early Adam Sandler as a comedy genius).

Our conversation covered a bunch of topics, like his nightgame method, tangible steps I can take to improve my image, approaching girls at the gym, the best cities in America for me to move to if I wanted to take the show on the road, and what I should be doing to improve my physique.

Overall, the biggest takeaway I walked away with from the call was that of image. Talking to Sonny was a valuable insight into a “true natural” that has mastered the art of image-building and is attracting the types of girls I want to attract.

This year, I will be putting a primary focus on changing and improving my image. I will have details about this in my next blog post, including what my image is now, and what I will be doing to improve it.

Should you work with Sonny?

It depends. Sonny’s advice will work for almost everyone, but the problem is that many guys simply won’t be ready to see it. They’re zoomed in too far — stuck gutter gaming 6s outside of their favorite nightgame venue at 3:30 AM.

For anyone truly willing to swallow the image pill, Sonny is a great place to turn.

There’s nothing truly groundbreaking about Sonny’s advice, and there doesn’t need to be. It’s simple, logical, and straightforward. And that’s what makes it so valuable.

Sonny isn’t going to give his students that ONE WEIRD TRICK to hack the system. Rather, he’s going to pull back the curtain and show them that most community advice misses the bigger picture, and the answers (be attractive and go for it) were in front of their noses the entire time.

If, after reading this, you feel like this might be up your alley, check out his blog post about his live training and coaching.

My 2018 Statistics and Analysis

For comparison: My 2017 Statistics and Analysis

Notches

20 (2017: 28, 2016: 20)

11 in San Francisco
3 in Pittsburgh
2 in Vegas
2 in Bangalore, India
1 in Hawaii
1 in Indianapolis

Notch Sources

16 Tinder
1 Bumble
1 Instagram
1 Fetlife
1 Nightgame Pull

I did nightgame maybe 30 nights this year. I pulled three times and closed once (one girl gave LMR, and the other girl I couldn’t get hard because I had just fucked a girl a couple hours before). I mostly experimented with number farming, but of the 45 nightgame numbers I got (there were actually many more I didn’t keep track of), zero of them panned out for a date.

I did 324 daygame approaches, got 108 numbers, had 9 dates, but for the second year in a row, I had zero notches from daygame.

Overall, outside of online, I had almost zero results for all the effort I put in. There are many external reasons for my lack of closes, but at the end of the day, the responsibility lies with myself.

Notch Quality

Disclaimer: I have one of the “harshest” and most accurate rating systems that I know of in the community (nearly ever guy overrates).

One 5, Three 5.5s, Four 6s, Eight 6.5s, Four 7s, One 7.5

Average notch rating: 6.33 (2017: 6.03, 2016: 5.725)

Looks like my quality is moving up a steady third of a point a year. I expect to top out around a 7 average, as I don’t believe I can possibly improve my looks beyond that of a male 6.5/7 without plastic surgery (as we know, it is impossible for a man to outkick his looksmatch average via cold approach).

Conversion Rate (Notches/First Dates)

An important metric that tracks how good my “date game”, as well as my screening, is. Note that this means new notches per each girl I saw, not multiple dates with the same girl.

67% or 6/9 while traveling (2017: 53%).

44% or 11/25 in San Francisco (2017: 39%)

It’s good to see an improvement from last year, but these numbers are still not where I want them to be. I’ve gotten better at screening, but I don’t think my date game is that much better than it was last year.

Fun Stories

I fucked a pregnant 18-year-old in Indianapolis. She remarked “That was so fun. Is this what it’s supposed to be like?” She had never had good sex in her life. I gave her a lesson on avoiding STDs and sent her on her way. Really enjoyed that interaction.

I diagnosed a girl’s anorexia while cuddling with her in her dorm room. She was 4’11”, 95 pounds, but when I got her clothes off, I noticed a bunch of stretch marks. Turns out she had rapidly lost like 50 pounds in a semester. Afterwards, she texted me that our conversation gave her the strength to tell her roommate and get treatment.

Recurring revenue: I hooked up with two girls that I ended up seeing again in different cities. It pays to keep in contact with girls via social media.

Over the summer, I pulled from nightgame for the first time ever. An off-duty stripper on her last night in town. She had incredible frame and gave ridiculous amounts of LMR. The sex was awful. I think I got the wrong stripper.

I took Amtrak to a small town to bang a single mother. New adventures are one of the ways I keep Tinder fun.

Went to Vegas for the first time. One of the nights, I fucked a girl from Tinder, then went to a club two hours later, pulled a girl, and while waiting outside the club for an Uber, ran into the Tinder girl I had fucked. Naturally, I introduced the two girls and we had a laugh. Vegas is not real life.

I had two girls that wanted to meet up the one night I was in Vancouver. I chose wrong and had a failed date with a Kiwi girl in Vancouver. As soon as it was clear she wasn’t going to hook up with me, I called my backup, had her get out of bed, put clothes on, pick me up from the date location and take me straight back to my AirBnB. Always have a backup plan!

Analysis of My Game in 2018

Satisfying the Notch Hyena

2018 was about expanding from online game. I remember a specific date in late January from Tinder, where I matched this liberal arts, social justice-y 6, and having nothing to do, basically DTF pitched her that night and met her at a local bar. She wasn’t very talkative and there wasn’t really a spark, but as the sex was “pre-ordained”, I invited her back anyway. When I went to put the condom on to fuck her, I lost my erection. I realized that I wasn’t even attracted to this girl — why was I trying to bang her? After she left, I took the night to reflect on what it was I really wanted.

That was the beginning of the end for the Tinder notch hyena. As of now, I can say it’s pretty much satisfied. I let Tinder plus lapse at the beginning of the summer and haven’t bought it again. With pay-to-play becoming more of a trend on Tinder, as well as massively increased male competition, the playing field is again leveled and I have a tough time even matching girls I’m actually attracted to.

With all this in mind, I began to invest in daygame and nightgame cold approach as possible markets I could play to niches in and shoot above my level.

Unfortunately, the learning curve for these is much steeper than online game. I got two nightgame lays and zero daygame lays in 2018, despite my efforts.

Overall, I think I have calmed the notch hyena. I am no longer going after notches, but instead after consistency (ongoing casual relationships) and quality.

Mastery

I feel like I am close to becoming an expert on texting. I used to have questions about how to respond to every little text a girl sent, now I’m only stumped a half dozen times a year.

I have truly mastered online game. There is no aspect of online game I cannot speak confidently about. I know exactly what is required to achieve complete success with online game — the only question mark is execution.

New Techniques

I learned the following new technical game techniques in 2018. I am not an expert at any of them yet, but I use them at least some of the time now:

• Open loops
• Compliance ladders (hoops)
• Recognizing social and sexual hook points
• Qualification (“I have standards”)
• Laser eye contact

Image

The biggest breakthrough I made in 2018 was that of image. I realized that my game had improved to the point where my image was actually my limiting factor. Interestingly, I predicted this back in January of last year in the post: How My Game Will — or Won’t — Evolve in 2018.

The most impactful quote from that article: “I will reach a point in 2018 where I cannot get to where I want to be without changing my lifestyle.”

It is now January 2019, and I have reached that point, but I have not made any significant changes to my lifestyle and image. As such, I have not truly begun to attract the types of girls I want to attract.

2019 will be about grappling with that fact.

I’ve had some very productive conversations with Sonny Arvado about how I can overhaul my image to attract the girls I want to attract, of which I will be going into more detail in my next blog post.

Tinder Self-Evaluation: how do you stack up against the competition?

I’m always surprised at the number of guys who create a Tinder profile without surveying the competition first. Just like any other market, Tinder is a competitive endeavor. Your goal should be to make your profile stick out and get the type of girl you’re going for to use one of her rare right swipes on you — how can you do that without knowing what other guys are offering?

One thing I recommend doing after you create your account is creating a fake female profile and swiping the first 50 guys in your location. Swipe right if you think the guy is more likely to get a right swipe than you, and swipe left if you think the guy is less likely to get a right swipe than you. At the end of your swipe session, count up the number of times you swiped left and divide by 50. This is your percentile rating in your area.

When you do this, put yourself in the shoes of the type of girl you’re going for. What would she swipe right on? Remember that you’re rating both the man’s attractiveness and the quality of his profile. Take into account, in order:

• Head (facial attractiveness + hair) – by far the most important
• Body (physique + height)
• Ethnicity
• Quality of photos (resolution and actual quality)
• Bio (including profession and school)

I have done this multiple times throughout my years using Tinder in various cities. I just repeated the experiment again this morning and, putting myself in the shoes of a girl of above-average attractiveness in San Francisco, I got the 42nd percentile (I felt that 21/50 guys were more likely to get a right swipe than me). This leads to two conclusions:

• Competition on Tinder is increasing. In past experiments in San Francisco, I have been in the high 30s. I believe my worst percentile the last time I tried was the 40th percentile. Guys are getting better photos, and more attractive guys are signing up and remaining active on Tinder.
• San Francisco continues to have an extremely high level of male competition. In other cities, I was in the 30-35 percentile range. Not only are there a lot of high-value men here, the level of technical knowledge is high, meaning men do more research into creating a great Tinder profile.

Just for fun, here were some of the profiles that I rated as better and worse than my own:

Better

 

Worse:

 

 

My Story

I keep getting emails and comments from guys about how they enjoy my blog because it comes from a different perspective than anything else they’ve read in the community. As far as I can tell, these types of guys and share a few commonalities with me, including a high level of general intelligence, rational thinking, and interest in data/science.

From some of them, I’ve gotten requests to tell my story of how I got into Game.  I’m interested in sharing this because I’ve never heard of anyone with my prototype before. Maybe, by sharing my story, a few of you will identify with aspects as well.

As far as I’ve seen, most guys in the community are on a spectrum:

• Incel-types with either little to no value, extreme self-confidence issues, or (usually) both
• “Average frustrated chumps” or betas, who then either go more of the game route (approach! approach!) or the red pill route (self-improvement)
• Average guys who got laid an average amount, then had a bad breakup or got out of a long term relationship
• Naturals (either socially or looks-wise, usually both) who already got laid a ton, but wanted to learn formal Game to give them an elevated understanding and success rate

My prototype was completely different: I am a naturally below-average looking, extremely self-confident natural who, until I found Game in my mid-20s, didn’t go on dates, didn’t ask girls out, didn’t fool around, and most certainly did not get laid at all; not because I couldn’t, but because I just wasn’t interested in participating in what I felt were strange, foreign “mating dances”.

I have always been an extremely self-confident, extroverted, natural leader. My father is also self-confident and my mother was very introverted as a child, so she took steps to socialize me early on to make sure I wouldn’t have the same problems she did. I was intelligent, sharp, related well with other kids, and loved entertaining others. My mom, when I probed her about my childhood, replied “You didn’t have a shy bone in your body!”

At the same time, male-female relationships were beyond the scope of my comprehension. When I was 10, I remember a shy, attractive girl joined our class mid-year. Soon after she showed up, it seemed every conversation between the chodey guys in my class became about her, if so-and-so liked her, and the typical teases about going up and talking to her. Up until that point, we had been talking about normal fourth-grade things, like sports and video games, and considered the girls in our class nothing more than friends and equals. This girl disrupted everything. While I found her attractive, I was confused and disgusted by this behavior and refused to take part in it, walking away when conversations about her came up, or trying to change the subject.

By the time high school rolled around, I extended my social circle from “smart kids and nerds” to more of the general population. I was involved in a number of sports, clubs, and school leadership. Everyone knew me and I knew and got along with everyone. Around this time, my friends started getting “crushes” on girls and getting girlfriends. I had no interest. I was too busy with sports, video games, books, and exploring the outside world. I remember distinctly being disgusted by what I now know to be beta behavior: guys complaining at the lunch table about how “nice guys finish last” and how they wished they had a girlfriend. I remember very specific conversations with guys I found annoying who wouldn’t shut up about how certain girls in our school were “hot”. (Unsurprisingly, these guys never had any success with girls, something I always innately recognized, but only became clear when I swallowed the red pill.)

This disinterest in the opposite sex didn’t mean I wasn’t sure of my sexuality, however. Being a child of my generation, I discovered masturbation at age 12, which launched a stellar career as an internet porn connoisseur. I masturbated to porn between 1-4 times daily for the next 16 years, something which I believe gives minor erectile dysfunction issues to this day (I quit cold turkey in 2016 when I went full-time with Game).

Reading up until this point, one might assume I was getting laid a ton. I had all the boxes checked: Tons of friends? Extremely confident and social? Complete outcome independence and non-neediness? Natural leader with alpha traits?

Wrong. First of all, I was an ugly kid. Shorter than average height, pale skin, no sense of personal style, forehead wrinkling, and even worse, severe androgenic alopecia (a.k.a male pattern baldness) starting at age 14, which led to me looking like I was 35 in high school — seriously, I look younger now than I did back then. This, combined with my complete and utter disinterest in paying women any mind, meant that women didn’t show interest in me.

I didn’t realize it until later, but my high school was very tame compared to the stories I heard about other high schools since. Being friends with everyone, I attended my share of private parties. As far as I could tell, very few people were hooking up outside of actual “monogamous” high school relationships. This changed senior year, but because I didn’t drink, I stopped going to parties and never had any opportunities. My closest group of friends were all guys and most of us, as far as I knew, were virgins. There was no talk of sex or Game, but rather sports, video games, music, and movies. If anything was happening, I was painfully oblivious.

And oblivious I would continue to be. In fact, during my younger days, I can only think of a few incidents where girls showed me romantic interest:

• An extremely quiet girl in my science class who I had never spoken with handed me a folded up note and instructed me not to open it until later. I waited until she was out of eyesight, and opened it to read “I like you. – Christina”. I scrunched up my face in confusion and threw it in the trash bin.
• A girl from a rival high school who I talked to quite a bit over AOL Instant Messenger (never forget) had a boyfriend, but we hung out on occasion. I remember her specifically inviting me out on what to her must have been a “date”: we went to a restaurant and ended up back at her house, sitting on her bed when her parents weren’t home. I actually remember thinking that I would escalate in some way, which to my idiotic high school self involved dancing around like a clown and jokingly unzipping my pants/taking my shirt off while she laughed and protested. Despite my total inability to read signals, she later invited me to go spend the weekend skiing with her with her parents. I didn’t know how to respond, so I said no.
• The alternative, edgy girl from my class who spent her days hanging out in music shops and cafés and obsessing about indie films. Most considered her a misfit, but I secretly admired her because we were friends on Livejournal (never forget) and she frequently posted about her hookups and bisexuality. When we were 19 and home from college for the summer, she invited me to watch a movie in theaters. It ended around midnight, and she very cleverly “seeded the pull” during our drive home by insisting I needed to come over to her house right then and there to watch another movie. We sat in her basement and she initiated the sex talk. She was floored to find out I was a virgin, given my high school popularity. I didn’t make any moves because the door was open and her little sister was wandering around the halls. Predictably, she revealed to me when we reconnected a few years ago that she badly wanted to fuck me.

Senior year of high school, I began to realize that my personality and upbringing was truly different than most of my “normal” peers. I spent more and more time on the internet, learning about personal finance, business, technology, and began to leverage my newfound knowledge to ensure future success. At 17, I got into online poker, so much so that I willingly skipped my senior prom to 4-table Sit N’ Go tournaments, feeling smug and superior to my classmates that had blown money on rented tuxes and limousines.

It was around this time that I first heard of “pick up artists” on a popular internet forum I used to frequent. A member posted that he had been following pickup techniques to become more socially adept. This forum was fairly savage, and anyone who deviated from group norms was savagely roasted. I, not knowing any better, followed in the groupthink roasting, and thus immediately adopted the mentality: “PUAs are predatory losers”.

College rolled around, the sweet period of life where inhibitions are lifted and hookup culture runs wild. Except… not for your author. With good academics as my guide, I shipped off to a prestigious private liberal arts college, where spotting a girl over a 6 was like finding a needle in a haystack. For most guys, this would be hell, but for me, ignorance was bliss. I loved college, flourishing in the small campus environment. My school didn’t have a true party culture like I’ve come to know at state schools. Parties were centered on off-campus houses with a keg of beer and pipes being passed around freely. Fraternities weren’t well-respected and most people wouldn’t be caught dead at one of their parties. I continued my social prowess from high school, befriending most in my class and amplifying my social circle. Freshman year, I was exposed to the beginnings of my friends “hooking up” with other girls in our class. I, however, abstained. I looked at the girls they were sleeping with in their drunken carousings — primarily fat, ugly feminists with curly hair, glasses, and Birkenstocks — and wanted no part of it.

Outside of academics and social life, I truly came into myself as a man during these formative college years. I developed several hobbies (which I won’t mention here to keep this blog decently anonymous) into full-blown passions, becoming so proficient that I far outperformed anyone else I was aware of. And at 19, realizing I was going bald and my only option for not looking like a misfit was to get jacked, I started lifting weights. By my senior year, at age 22, I had packed on 20lbs of muscle and was squatting 320lbs x 10.

The muscle helped, apparently. A couple months before graduation, my roommates and I threw a house costume party. Leaning against a wall in my sleeveless shirt and face paint, a girl in one of my classes approached me and revealed that her friend in the next room thought I was cute and wanted to know if I thought the same. Very middle-school-esque. I was in a club with the girl in question, a sophomore lacrosse player, but we had never really formally met. I reciprocated the interest, walked over to talk to her, and we soon found ourselves sitting on a couch in a crowded living room. Rather, I was sitting on the couch and her drunk-off-jello-shots self had flopped her way onto my lap. Talking and looking her in the eyes, I played it cool (because I knew of no other way to play it) until she leaned over and started making out with me.

My first kiss. At age 21.

We carried on for about a minute, but I felt uncomfortable because a lot of people from my social circle were there, and at the time I felt shame about such public displays of affection. I made some excuse about how it was bad news to kiss drunk girls, and despite her very clear attempts to go hang out in my room, I continued on my way throughout the party.

Then, the cringe started. When the night was wrapping up and she and her friend were rolling out, we met again in a basement hallway. We made out again and I demanded we meet up the next day because “It was Valentine’s Day.”

The thought of my own neediness at that moment gives me the ol’ testicle shrivel. I was so excited at the thought that a girl was actually into me that I couldn’t sleep. So I stayed up in bed, googling “how to kiss” to make sure I was doing it right. I never ended up hooking up with the girl. She revealed the next day that she had a boyfriend deployed in the Navy, and my morals back then were purer than they are now. I stopped pursuing her and went back to life as normal.

I didn’t think of girls and Game again until I was out of college. I had graduated and taken a tech job downtown with a bunch of fun coworkers. One of them was a brilliant developer, charismatic but somewhat sloppy. He was a fan of nightlife and often organized our post-work happy hour bar crawls. On one of them, he mentioned the book The Game. I hadn’t heard of it, but he described the plot and that it followed a group of pick-up artists. Thinking back to what I had read on the internet, I was instantly judgemental.

“Pick-up artists manipulate and abuse women!” I argued.

“I don’t see it that way.” He countered. He told me that among the great connections he had made along the way, he had met a long-term girlfriend through Game.

Despite his reasoning, I left the conversation still vehemently against pickup.

Some months later, I had my first in-person interaction with “pickup artists”. A German girl I met while on a year abroad in Europe was doing an exchange of her own at a university in my home state, and I had hooked her up with housing for the September with a few friends I knew. I returned home for Halloween and went to a party at the college house she was living in. Halfway through the party, 4-5 drunk, loud, idiotic kids showed up. I was eavesdropping on their conversation, which — and I swear to God I’m not exaggerating any of this — went something like

“I’m getting IOIs. Go open and DHV that HB7 over there, but watch out for AMOGs”.

Imagine the very worst of a pick-up field report in the mid-2000s, and that’s how these kids were actually talking. Loudly. In front of everyone at the party. I immediately recognized them as pick-up artists, and could only stand there and marvel at the terribleness of it all. At first, I was amused, but then they began to hit on my friend. Cockblock mode engaged. I felt I had to protect my oh-so-innocent German friend: I her aside and tried to explain what a “pick-up artist” was, even going as far as pulling up the page on Wikipedia.

“They’re bad people! They manipulate and abuse women!” I repeated my tired old mantra. My friend was bemused and while she tacitly agreed, she revealed that she and one of her friends had just given out their phone number to the guy. I was shocked. These guys were low-value idiots, but what they were doing was effective enough to get numbers? There had to be something to this.

The next summer, one of my best friends from college came to visit. While visiting, he revealed that for the past year, he had joined a local pick-up lair and was “sarging” with a couple wingmen. This friend and I remain close to this day, and he’s one of the most intelligent, rational, and reasonable people I know. If he was into Game, there clearly had to be a decent side to it as well.

I began idly Googling and soon found the RooshV blog. While Roosh’s directness often offended my progressive liberal arts sensibilities, I found his reports about banging girls while traveling interesting, as I had done quite a bit of international travel myself. I subscribed to the RSS feed and read every article he posted, though, as a 24-year-old virgin, his “field reports” still very much functioned in the role of fantasy for me.  One day, I noticed a link on his sidebar to his 2007 book Bang. I downloaded it and began reading…

… and my mind was blown. Instead of fantasy stories about traveling to foreign lands to get women, I was reading an intricate step-by-step manual for how to go from meet to penis in vagina for any given woman. It was exactly what I needed. The chapter I will never forget was called “Late Game”. In it, Roosh describes how to go from being alone in a room with a woman to escalating to sex in excruciating detail. It may sound strange, but this was the missing link for me. I had always wondered in the back of my mind how my friends had hooked up with girls at parties, and this section revealed every single step in viscid detail:

My mind was open, and it was time to get to work. Several months later, I left the States again for a two-year sojourn in Europe. While enjoying the party hostel scene, I began to test out some of the techniques, including kino, a concept that was completely new to me at the time. One night, while partying in the common room of a hostel, I began to kino an American girl visiting from San Francisco who was sitting on the bench next to me. To my surprise, she reciprocated, and soon we were covertly holding hands under the table. Drawing on my natural instincts, I immediately knew what to do. When the moment was right, and no one was looking, I grabbed her by the hand, led her around the corner, pressed her up against the wall and started making out with her. I then led her upstairs, pushed her into a shower stall in the girls hostel bathroom, and everything flowed from there. Bang and 12 years of watching pornography were my guide, and halfway into it she was moaning “I bet you do this to all the girls!” I laughed, thinking “if only you knew…”

That hookup instilled a new level of confidence in me. I continued throughout the next few years to take an idle interest in Game, but was too busy with other endeavors to really get into it (though I could sense that somehow, it was in my future). I hooked up with a few more girls, but they were all girls that approached me.

Then, two and a half years ago, I was sidelined with an injury and unable to work out. Bored, I downloaded Bumble, which I had heard about from a few friends, and started swiping. Amazingly, even with my terrible photos and embarrassment about “online dating”, I actually matched with some pretty cute girls. Previously, I had thought I was too ugly for most girls to find me attractive, but these apps told a different story. I immediately began to delve into research: how could I optimize my processes to guarantee as much success as possible?

The rest, as you can read about on the rest of this blog, was history.

 

 

 

 

A data-driven analysis: should you “double text/respawn/reinitiate” dead leads?

Actual texts my old FWB sent me from a Tinder guy, “Jordan”.

Some guys call it double texting. Others call it re-initiating. My preferred word is “respawning” (credit to a buddy from a great Misc tinder group chat I used to be in). Essentially, it means following up on a lead that has gone cold over text (or whatever platform you happen to be using).

Many coaches, like JMULV and Alex Vilenchik from Playing With Fire, advocate following up with cold leads via text three days after they’ve stopped responding. If I remember correctly, JMULV does this twice before letting the lead die.

But what’s the chance of this actually working? Is it worth the investment of time and mental energy? To my knowledge, no one has ever gone through the data and checked.

I went back through my spreadsheet and looked though my 67 notches in the 2.5 years I’ve been in the game. Of these, I secured four with a respawn:

• One Chinese girl I had matched on Tinder, we flirted, things got sexual, but she eventually went cold after a few days. About six months later, I saw her when flipping through my Tinder and sent her a text again. She remembered me, happened to be horny, and invited me over to her place that night.
• Another girl from Boston wouldn’t stop matching me on Tinder. I had gotten her number the first time, but she cancelled the date. Two weeks later, I respawned, set up a date, and then she ghosted when I tried to confirm. She then matched me on Tinder again, I messaged her, no response. A week later, after I had reset my account, she matched me a THIRD time, and after some messaging it was finally on. It was the most IOIs I had ever gotten on a date. Saw her a couple more times and eventually dropped her. She continues to chase me to this day.
• A third Australian exchange student I got from a Tinder message respawn. She didn’t reply to my opener, so I sent her another message a week later. She responded and we met up that night. In person, I teased her about not responding and she said was legitimately busy, confirming that my double message “worked” to bring me to the top of your list.
• The fourth girl was somewhat similar for the first. We matched when I was living in another city last summer. Brought things to text and she went cold. This summer, I matched her again, things got immediately sexual and we hooked up a few days later.

You’ll note that none of these are true “double texts” a lá JMULV: getting a girl’s number, having her go cold, and after a few days/weeks sending a ping text that magically revives her and leads to the notch.

According to my phone, I’ve gotten 695 numbers in the time since I’ve been actively gaming. Of those, I’ve probably attempted the double/triple text after a few days on around 350. It has never led to a bang. (And no, I didn’t send needy, boring texts like our friend Jordan in the image above. My respawn texts are always humorous, memes, or callback references to the conversation with the girl).

Conclusions:

• The JMULV strategy of double/triple texting cold leads is not worth it. If she goes cold, she’s not interested, and the small amount of girls that might respond positively to this isn’t worth the physical and mental effort.
• Mass/bulk restart texts aren’t worth it. This was an old PUA strategy of texting hundreds of ice-cold leads in your phone the same message. May have barely worked a decade ago, but now girls have too many options, and if it’s been over a month and you’re just another number in her phone, it’s over.
• Respawning Tinder matches that haven’t responded is only worth it if you can automate it, and even the, probably a waste of time. Luckily, webapps like www.tind3r.com or Tinder for Web make it much easier to copy and paste.
• Respawning cold leads that show renewed interest in you (you match with them again online, or maybe see them out during the day/night and have another positive interaction) is probably worth it.

But then again, this is just my experience. If anyone else wants to share their data, I would be happy to update my priors.

“Value/comfort” or “r-/k-selected”?

I’ve been following Saul from Elite Social Skills and Social Prime lately. They’re a European/Australian pickup company, and they have a pretty good handle on female archetypes, one of my areas of interest.

In their Facebook group, they often throw around the terms “value girl” and “comfort girl”.

To quote Saul:

 

Girls (and human being in general for that matter) and NOT the same. They have different values, belief systems, social and cultural conditioning, goals, and desires (i.e Blueprints)

…

The girls that you meet out in the streets or the club when you cold approach will have varying ‘emotional blueprints’ – meaning that they respond to different behaviours, and that seducing and sleeping with them requires taking different routes

…

‘Comfort girls’ – are generally your typical girls who perceive themselves as ‘morally good girls’ with strong social conditioning, are not particularly comfortable with their sexuality, and need to ‘really know a guy’ before sleeping with him. This will be most girls that you meet out and are more difficult to get a ‘same night lay’ with. As the name implies, they require a lot of ‘comfort’ (as opposed to value/attraction) and this usually implies a longer time-frame of the seduction

‘Status oriented girls’ – are those who are quite comfortable with their sexuality, are not particularly sensitive to judgement, and are willing to sleep with a guy quickly not based on the emotional connection but are just screening for the highest value guy

…

Now, girls aren’t permanently stuck on one point along the scale – but rather they fluctuate depending on a myriad of variables – including but not limited to – their life situation, experiences, culture, city, point of their menstruation cycle, level of sexual experience, and a about a million other things

What really matters is not why they are where they are, but that you’re able to identify where they are and CALIBRATE.

If you start spitting hardcore negs at the super comfort girls because you saw it on a piece of infield triggering a strong reaction, you’re gonna get slapped in the face and alienate the people you’re speaking to.

And if you go all ‘Mr. connection mode’’ with a status oriented girl and aren’t able to position yourself as an authority in her reality, you’re gonna be left wondering why all these ‘bitchy girls blow you off’.

When you see hear stories of guys pulling multiple girls per night – it’s done by very aggressively screening for those status oriented girls’, piercing into their reality, communicating that you are the one and only best option, and dealing with any objectives that may come up – sounds simple. It’s not. It actually requires a lot of skills and possessing legitimate value.

Now, this is nothing new. Krauser has already covered this with his “r-selection vs. k-selection” terms, pulled directly from evolutionary biology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory

However, I find single letters hard to differentiate, and I can’t be bothered to create a mnemonic for it.

From now on, I’ll be using the terms “value girl” and “comfort girl”, as they convey the qualities needed to best connect with these types of girls.

 

My Date Flake Rate in San Francisco is at 61% year-to-date

Note: a previous version of this post had the flake rate at 80%. Turns out I had forgotten a couple of girls I did end up meeting.

Finally ran the numbers and created the spreadsheet I’ve been visualizing for a while.

Note the stood up/ghost combo on March 8, and of course this past Wednesday when I triple booked three girls at the same time, and they all flaked.

Tally that up, boys, and imagine setting a date and knowing that 3 out of 5 times it’s not going to happen. That is reality in San Francisco.

At least I have a spreadsheet now so I can begin to isolate variables.

Pancake’s Basic Guide to Instagram Game

See also: How to Instagram close — the Pancake way

Instagram’s userbase continues to grow, and having a solid Instagram presence is becoming more and more useful in terms of making your life as a man easier by giving you social proof and demonstrating your value.

I have been experimenting with Instagram Game for a year and a half. Through trial and error and comparisons with other successful guys, I have a good handle on what works and what doesn’t.

Why develop your Instagram presence?

Instagram tends to polarize people.

The mantra among a lot of guys in the community (especially the more red-pill-inclined) is to avoid Instagram entirely because it’s a haven of beta-ization and attention whoring.

Other guys claim it’s the best tool in the world, will replace Tinder, and you should be opening every girl on it and putting Tinder on the backburner.

The reality is somewhere in between both of these claims. If used correctly, Instagram can be used to your advantage as a man to show off your lifestyle to women and increase their attraction to you. But if used incorrectly, it can be a time suck and cause you to spend hours scrolling through your feed with girls you’ll never fuck that don’t look half as good as they do in their photos.

At the end of the day, Instagram is one of the fastest-growing social networks in the world, and it is one of the only networks that is majority female. By using Instagram, you’re moving to where the ratios are best.

Your profile

Your profile should have a provocative name (not just your first and last name), a solid profile photo (make it a close-up of your face with a photo that is rated highly by girls), and a descriptive bio filled with DHVs (make it similar to a Tinder bio).

Then, onto the photos. If you’re starting from scratch, you can post a photo every day to build up your presence, but after six or so you’ll want to move to once every few days, or once a week.

The key here is quality over quantity. Every photo of yours should be a DHV that portrays you as a high-status guy and hits all the attraction switches:
– Leader of men
– Protector of loved ones
– Preselected by other women
– Ability to emote
– Risk taker

Next, you’ll want to define a niche (are you a DJ? Weightlifter? College dude? World traveler?) and put up photos in that niche that represent your personality.

All photos should be taken with a phone with a nice camera or a DSLR. At least half of the photos should have you in them. Remember that this is a marketing account for you as a man. While I’m sure your landscape vacation photos are great, at the end of the day, girls respond better to photos of people, and they want to make sure you were actually in the locations you said you were, rather than stealing photos from Flickr. Typical online apps advice about avoiding selfies applies.

I recommend using the Snapseed app on your phone to edit and color-correct your photos before posting, it’s better than Instagram’s built-in photo editing tools.

Stories can include selfies and can relax the “quality photo” requirement a bit, but most stories should be a DHV as well, not just the Egg McMuffin you had for breakfast this morning.

After following this advice, you should have a profile that looks more like this:

than like this:

Your followers

Having a lot of Instagram followers is a DHV and status signal. It makes girls curious about how many people follow you and why.

To get more followers, you’ll need to use services like https://www.followliker.com/ or https://www.combin.com, or https://instantical.com, which follow/unfollow users and like their photos, artifically growing your follow count. If you decide to take the plunge and buy Followliker, I recommend this guide to grow your page: http://imristo.com/the-ultimate-followliker-instagram-tutorial.

As few as 2,000 followers should set you apart from most guys, and I’ve found the sweet spot is around 10,000.

One thing to keep in mind when using these services is to never let your “following” count get too high. In my experience, you should never be following over 1000 users at once, as any more than this indicates something suspicious.

How to use Instagram

If you followed the advice above, you should have a solid profile. Time to start putting it to work in the following situations:

For leads who don’t want to meet up right away

Instagram is better than text for leads that you may not be seeing for a couple weeks, as well as for girls in other countries that are part of a weak rotation. Because they’re constantly logging in, they’re going to be viewing your updates and will be reminded of you often.

As a close mechanism for daygame and night game

If you have a short interaction during daygame or night game and are unable to build enough attraction to give the girl a good idea of who you are, making her follow you on Instagram is a great alternative to text. She’ll often look at your profile right away and get an idea of your high value. No longer are you just a random guy on the street or in the club.

If you’re using it this way, make sure to also use my Instagram close technique.

DHV tool for online game

You should be linking your Instagram in every app and site you use, especially apps like Tinder and Bumble which limit you to a small number of photos and bio. If certain apps (like CoffeeMeetsBagel and The League) don’t allow you to link it directly, mention your profile name in your bio).

Girls do look at linked Instagrams and I’ve had more success getting girls out on dates when they are given a glimpse into the lifestyle I display on Instagram.

Cold DMs (not very effective)

A lot of guys claim you can use Instagram effectively by cold DMing or cold following girls you don’t know. I have done extensive testing on this and I don’t believe it’s worth the time in most markets.

For example, here are my stats from a test run I did following girls that had their Instagram linked to Tinder over the period of three months:

3041 girls followed (and liked three of their photos)
100 girls followed back (3.28%)
73 were hot enough to open
45 replied to opener
12 gave their number or agreed to date
1 date
0 bangs

Instagram in 2018 can be compared to MySpace in 2007. Were guys meeting girls on MySpace? Yes. As many as on Match.com or an actual dating app? No. So you are best resorting the DMing girls on Instagram out of the blue if you are running short on leads from other sites.

Now, keep in mind I live in the worst city in the US for men (San Francisco), so you may have different results in your city. I know that I’ve had as much as a 15-20% followback rate in other US cities. Go ahead and give it a try where you live and see if it’s worth your while.

That should be it for now. There are a few more complexities, tips, and tricks I’ll share in future posts, but if you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments or use the Contact form on this blog to email me personally.

Note: this post was adapted from a guide to Instagram game I originally wrote for the RooshV forum.

 

Buckets

A man has not truly mastered Game until he has begun to fill all his buckets.

I’ve mastered a number of skills in my life, and I’m of the opinion that being well-rounded does more for learning and skill crossover than focusing almost completely on one tactic or technique.

I think of the different types of Game as buckets filled with sand. As I read, share, and field test, my buckets fill up.

After two years of grinding, I consider myself an expert in online game. My bio and photos have been perfectly optimized. I know more about the Tinder algorithm than perhaps only Tinder employees, their friends, and maybe several hundred people worldwide. I know what works, what doesn’t, how to message, how to swipe, how to hack the system, hell, I’ve messaged with so many girls, I can even tell a catfish just by the way they text.

The problem with online game is that it involves minimal game. You get a system down, you use your blueprint-specific messaging sequence, the girls all respond in the same way, then you get her out on the date and run “don’t fuck it up” game. For sure, there are a myriad of different situations and girls you can run into, enough to keep it fun, but overall, it’s very formulaic.

Formulaic, rote systems destroy learning. Spontaneity and new experiences create opportunities for learning. And, as I wrote about in the second paragraph, stepping back and coming at skills from different angles often results in skill crossover – I’ve found that my daygame has gotten better from the few nightgame sessions I’ve done so far. This year, I’m going to set my online game on cruise control and focus on filling my other buckets.

In that interest, I’ve made a list of all the different game buckets I think exist:

• Online game
  • Online fucking apps/sites
    • Threesome game
      • Fake threesome game
    • Headless photo and explicit bio game
  • Social media game (Instagram/Snapchat)
  • Sugar daddy game
    • Salt daddy game
• Daygame
  • Street game
  • Venue game
  • Special event game (festivals, etc.)
    • Hired gun game
• Nightgame
  • Club game
    • Promoter/table game
    • Hired gun game
  • Bar/lounge game
  • Stripper game/Escort (shoring) game
  • Threesome game/girl wing game
• Social circle/social proof game
  • Friends group game
  • Setup game/party host game (Bilzerian, etc.)
  • Work game
  • Leader of the group game (lead singer in a band, instructor in a class, etc.)
  • Activity game (Meetup, etc.)
    • Language exchange game
  • “It just happened” game
    • AirBnB/Couchsurfing game
    • Math tutor game
    • Uber/Lyft driver game
  • Coke game

What am I missing?

The Greatest Compliment

Looking back through my old posts, I’ve noticed a trend of negativity. The main reason for this is that I have little time in my day to actively blog, and when I do, it’s usually to let off steam about the many frustrations of Game in San Francisco.

However, outside of how it may appear here, my life is actually incredible, and my feeling about Game at the moment is amazing as well. I feel like I’m finally starting to put all the pieces of the attraction puzzle together.

I had one of the best daygame experiences of my life this weekend. I got on BART and sat next to a stunning older Asian woman (her real age was probably late 30s, but like many Asian women of her prototype, she looked like she was in her late 20s). Everything about her radiated style and sex appeal, which is a rarity, because attractive women don’t tend to ride BART due to the unchecked delinquency and homeless population that have become more common over the past several years.

Without hesitation, I opened her indirectly. Everything about the interaction was on point. I teased her, we vibed about our careers (it turned out we were both entrepreneurs), touched her playfully, and made her laugh. After probing logistics and discovering we were getting out at the same station, I asked for her number. She politely declined, saying she was dating someone. I laughed and went with my standard reaction: “Well, they do say two is better than one, it is San Francisco after all…” which made her crack up.

I turned around and a 50-year-old man and his friend were staring at me, wide-eyed. They had gotten off on the same stop as us and were standing on the BART platform.

“I want to congratulate you. That, my friend, was a masterful performance.” He said. I thanked him and responded that it was just part of my everyday. He pressed: “No, that was incredible. You sat down next to an incredibly beautiful woman, you were confident, and you made it happen. That is extremely inspiring.” I laughed and told him he should do the same thing as me, but he held up his left hand, revealing he had been married for 30 years.

I will never forget the reaction on that man’s face. After two years in the Game, everything I did that night flowed naturally, but to the him, I was a hero.

I looked the woman up when I got home. She runs a 100-person company and is famous enough to have a Wikipedia article. Other men would have been scared to approach, but I treated her like my kid sister. Made me feel damn good.

Viva Game.