FR for 11/15/2008 – Nightgame

Rolled out with Pepe, MJ, J and Trackstar.

We hit up one venue near downtown, and stayed there for most of the night. Most of the sets were a huge jumble, and a lot of the night was spent bouncing between different groups, so there won’t be any great detail here.

MJ opened one set of medical residents. I eventually ended up talking with some of that group for a while, trying to get MJ isolated with the girl he was talking to. Trackstar opened a 9-set of girls seated in a booth. Pepe and J opened other groups. At some point I opened and bantered with a 4-set of girls near the dance floor for a while. They were boring-as-hell, so I left and ended back with MJ’s group for a while. Then they disappeared and we ended up in the 9-set that Trackstar had spoken to earlier and got to know most of them. The rest of the time in the venue was spent either dancing/flirting with them or opening other sets. I also went direct on a girl seated by herself which was pretty cool.

At some point we bounced neighbourhoods for a while – but it was late, and everyone was pretty tired by then. I opened 2 different sets of Marina-esque girls direct but neither hooked. Trackstar mentioned that different venues merit different approach strategies, and in more snobby venues it’s necessary to contribute a bit more to the interaction beyond opening and transitioning. We also spotted one lone Asian PUA tearing up the venue – opening multiple girls, making out with a couple, then bouncing to others… if you’re reading this, respect bro.

Ended the night having a long debrief and chat with Pepe, MJ & J.

Observations

• Don’t forget to say “I thought you/you guys were cool/cute so I wanted to come over and say hi”.
• I’ve become pretty comfortable in nightgame venues.
• Opening doesn’t seem to be that much of a problem now – but I still want to be opening more. I’ll still catch myself seeing girls, and then considering how to open them/waiting for logistics rather than just going over to open them.
• Now is a good time to pull out my old routine stack and revamp it into a module/remedy format (credit: Kid44). It will be invaluable for nightgame, and this is my new main leverage point.
• I’m getting more comfortable with the Juggler Method structure, but I still need work on: 1) open ended questions/statements, and 2) SOIs. To get these, I should write a default list of examples and run through them a couple of times then take them out into the field.
• Other guys. I had 3 different frat-boy-types try to give me shit throughout the night – ironically, most of the time I was just standing around talking to Pepe/J/MJ. Just the usual they-bump-into-you-and-then-try-to-start-something deal. Pepe suggested that it came from 1) me having solid/still body language, and 2) the way I dress (usually a little flashier than most other people). I also noticed that Trackstar does not have this problem at all – which we think is related to his zero-intent when he approaches a group.
• I’ve realised that right now, for me, going out just for the sake of going out and “doing” nightgame is pointless. I need some direction/objective in mind, which is where my routine stack and more focus on vibing via Juggler Method will come in.

- whim

FR for 11/07/2008 – Nightgame

Continuing on from daygame, my aim for nightgame was to go out and test out Juggler Method. I had the additional challenge in that I still have pretty bad AA at night, so I decided that my goal for the night would simply be to open sets and continue a regular conversation.

After waiting around for Funlife for an hour, we finally made it up to the bar area. Met up with James Bond, who was already busy chatting up a cute (in a floral dress sorta way) girl outside the bar. Funlife grabbed a chick passing by and took her inside while I let the other guys know where we were.

It was LOUD inside. Like “can’t hear myself think” loud.

I found myself with AA. Ordered a coke, chilled back a bit, met James Bond’s set, watched him tear up the dancefloor (dude, every chick in the bar was eyeraping you at the end of that) and decided to bounce to another quieter venue.

Second venue. AA again, damn. Opened a set with Funlife – he took it over… he’s one loud mofo with really good vocal projection. We get told by the girls to leave.

I wander over to where James is, we meet a bunch of guys out celebrating and then we open a 2-set, blonde and brunette. JB holds the brunette, but after the first minute the blonde wanders off to chat on her cell phone. Oh well, I head to the other side of the bar to give JB isolation. Funlife is in set. I chode around for a bit and grab a drink of water. At this point Funlife and I had been blown out by every set in the bar, so we decide to leave.

We text JB and head next door. Walk into the bar, and there’s a 3-set there. I consider this my only real set of the night, so:

HBNRB

Set: I open with ‘hi’. HBNRB (NotReallyBlonde) lights up. HBBrunette looks like she’s drunk already and HBScaryAsian is playing mother of the group for the night. I get really quick intros (gotta learn to remember girls name) and banter a bit with HBNRB. I see Funlife wandering around so I grab him and pull him into set. We talk a bit, then HBBrunette and HBScaryAsian go out for a smoke. I ask the logistical question: “how do you guys know each other”. I get told they went to high school together or something, and I assumed they were all close (this was NOT true it turns out). Funlife and I talk to HBNRB for a while. At some point JB arrives and I end up talking alone with HBNRB. It was really funny. Her friends would periodically come and say “we’re going to smoke, we’re going to the ATM” and ask to take her everytime… but she stuck around. We talked about a large range of topics. I didn’t run frames, routines or anything – just banter and I kept the Juggler Method structure in the back of my mind. JB comes over at one point and asks “Have you seen kino?”. I took me a few seconds to register and I started kinoing more, but it was kinda awkward because I hadn’t been doing it from the start. I got both deep and wide rapport with HBNRB, and in most of the conversational pauses she picked up the conversation. I tried to SOI a few times during the interaction, but it just came out wrong. Most of them were some derivate of “you’re cool” or “I like you”. I think the only “sexy” I got in was telling her that her girls guns were sexy.

Towards the end of the night more of her “friends” arrived. 2 guys and 2 girls. Turns out HBNRB didn’t really know them that well, but I figured that I should at least *look* social so I engaged them in conversation. One of the guys was a boring fuck who just stared at his shotglass. The other was a lawyer so we hi-fived over how cool lawyers are (several of my good friends are lawyers) and about teasing girls. I talked a bit with the other 2 girls too. #-closed HBNRB at some point (don’t remember when). Near the end of the night, some weird creepy dude came in and started hitting on HBNRB. I let it run on for about 30 seconds, waiting for him to address the group rather than just HBNRB… he didn’t. At that point I saw the look of “this is fucking creepy” on HBNRB’s face and took her outside. We talked a bit, then I realised I had to go (parking) so I told her that I had to head off but I wanted to make sure she was back with her friends first.

We found her friends, I told HBScaryAsian about the creepy dude and she looked appreciative. Made sure the girls were alright then headed out.

I exchanged a couple of texts with HBNRB yesterday and today, let’s see how it goes.

Good: Opened. Approached. Went natural/direct. Did not fall back into routines. Held the conversation for over an hour.

Bad: Meaningless kino. Not SOI’ing properly. Some inappropriate teasing (about girls being overly American). I tried to run some old-school roleplay at one point, and it just came out retarded. Tim’s bf-gf roleplays are much better.

Loss of set: I don’t think I’ve lost it yet, but the kino + bad SOI issue may be the lynch point.

Improvements: More kino. I heard Trackstar talk about EC’s idea of “near molestation” kino, so I would have done that. Better SOIs that include the word sexy, and that set the blame frame more. Win over her female friends more (the original 2, not the 2 that came later). Perhaps an attempt to bounce for a late-night meal (though my own logistics didn’t allow for that).

Thoughts

I think in terms of my goal of just going out and approaching and talking, I did pretty well. Obviously I’m still reading up on the Juggler Method, and probably after going through his archive today/tomorrow I’ll have the basic structure down, and then it’s just a matter of going out and practicing it. As I said in my daygame report, I want to eventually layer NLP skills and conversational frames on top of the basic Juggler system, the end result being dynamite.

Major thanks to Funlife and JB for heading out with me, and for being there to share in the fun. Oh yeah, I had FUN this time that I went out, unlike the last couple of times where it felt like I was dragging myself from bar to bar.

I’m pretty sure the AA issue will resolve itself over the next couple of weeks as I do more approaches and get more comfortable with nightgame venues.

I still have issues when it comes to talking to guys though – opening girls then finding them with guys seems OK at the moment, but opening girls already together with guys is harder for me.

- whim

FR for 10/25/2008 – Nightgame

I went out for nightgame with Trackstar, James Bond, Pandaman and Lester (?) on Saturday. I was actually not going to go, as I had been out all day for daygame and the headache component of my flu/cold/whatever was starting to kick in. I called up Trackstar and he insisted that I come out for at least an hour. And so I went (thanks dude).

My objective for the night was to 1) get comfortable with being out at night, and 2) to get comfortable with opening sets. As the title of this post suggests, you have to start somewhere.

I think I opened about 3 sets in 2 hours (I was sick and my voice gave out so I left early). Most of them were just short 2-3 minute conversations about nothing in particular, and none of them went anywhere… but I opened, despite feeling hesitant to do so.

The whole evening has me pretty excited – I’m starting to see what’s possible if I stick with nightgame, and I have a much clearer picture now of where I need to go to develop this aspect of my skillset.

I have learnt to be comfortable just being in a nightgame venue. I remember sitting down, and everything’s going on around me – people talking, cheering, drinking… whatever. I am fine with just sitting there and calming observing, which is a huge leap over how I felt last time I was out for nightgame (nervous and shaky).

When I was opening sets, there was that initial hesitation which I will label as approach anxiety. But once I was in set, I was fine with talking – no nervousness, no shakiness, no increased adrenalin or anything. What this indicates to me is that my immediate objectives for nightgame should be to:

• Commit to how many sets I will open in the 4 hour window. I think 6 sets a night is a good target for next week, and I will try to work this up to 12 over a few times out.
• Create some sort of structure or framework or stack to use in nightgame. One of the things I noticed this week was that while I didn’t run out of things to say, none of the sets hooked. I could have gone on talking about the usual stuff I discuss in daygame… but my delivery was not high energy enough to hook the set, hold their attention and start generating attraction. I will take a second look at Tim’s Flawless Natural method and the frames and structure that he utilises.
• High energy and self-amusement (having fun) seem to be essential to nightgame. I am going to construct some rituals to perform prior to going out at night that will put me in that state. It may also be prudent to have a ritual for when first entering a venue – e.g., approach the first set I see, and keep approaching for 20 minutes to set the tone for the rest of the night (credit: Tim).

- whim

FR for 10/18/2008 – Nightgame

Trackstar was gracious enough to show me some nightgame tonight.

I did a bunch of sets, all of them went something along the lines of:

• Open with “hi” or something direct
• Quick comment
• Some playful kino
• Eject

So the sets themselves weren’t all that important to me, but what was important was all the crazy realisations I had throughout the night.

Here are some of them:

• My daygame vibe and energy level just doesn’t cut it for nightgame. It’s loud, there are people bumping into you and the girls and there’s way to much stuff going on.
• I have a LOT of BAD Community beliefs left over from the old days that I need to kill – e.g., “I’ve been hovering and my social value just dropped, I can’t approach those girls” or “She gave me an AI but I walked past her, I can’t go back and talk to her”.
• My inner game needs a lot of work still.
• I was in a weird stifled state most of the night. I guess I can call this approach anxiety. Though really, it’s divided into a number of components: lack of familiarity with a new environment (in this case, nightclubs & bars) and fear of physical harm (when approaching mixed sets). There is no fear of rejection, and in the cases where I did get blown out quickly it did not sting or hurt nor did my state drop.
• State fluctuations. When I was in set, I felt great, had a strong energy and was generally “on”. But as soon as I got out and starting standing around a bit, my state dropped. This is weird, as I don’t experience this drop when I do daygame. It’s also somewhat disconcerting as the state pump is obviously from validation from being in set, so it’s probably yet another weird fucked up belief I have that says “Cool guys talk to other people at bars, so I must be talking to other people to be cool”.
• I have a stronger intent to approach at night as girls are all dolled up and looking fabulous. I think a result of me doing more nightgame would be this intent crossing over into the daytime and my “woo” from daygame crossing over into the nighttime.
• Trackstar, James Bond & Funlife all had one thing in common: they had a super fun vibe about them (“woo” for the lack of a better term) and this came through in all their subcommunications.
• Feeling the need to hold a drink in a bar is a weird social construct that needs to go.
• My outer appearance still conveyed rock-solid confidence and higher value but my inner game/feeling was shot to hell tonight.

My action items:

• Write a nightgame stack of frames that can be set using more BT-spike-style attraction material (hard to describe what I mean). Enhance this stack by adding in some structure (e.g., using LIOs and taking a look at Sinn’s attraction-comfort-seduction frames methodology and Vision’s post on framing like a Jedi).
• A good structure might be: Hi/LIO, quick question, cold read, waypoint and then either eject (short set) or move into conversational framing.
• Pick some simple state pumping activities to do before going on/when out.
• Develop my intent more.
• Do inner game work to enhance useful beliefs and kill limiting beliefs.
• Don’t drink when out at night. I had one beer tonight, next time I will aim to have none.
• Do some NLP work to transfer over the general concepts of “self-amusement” and “not caring what others think” from my state during daygame over into nightgame.
• My major sticking points for nightgame are therefore: 1) approaching, 2) having fun/self-amusement.

- whim

FR for 07/26/2008 – Nightgame

Ah nightgame… the mythical land of girls and glamour for all PUAs except for those of us in SF who seem to prefer daygame.

I went out with Dosmestos and Link and M. We hit up a club down in SOMA, but it was pretty dead. Link opened up the only 2 hot sets in there and they got pretty ADD and went to dance.

We bounced to Bubble Lounge. There is no queue out front – this is a good sign.

I ended up choding around for the better part of 30 minutes. I still have “AA” at night, but I think it is more a fear of large groups and of dealing with other guys than a fear of approach.

I bumped into Keen and he mentioned that Jeffy & RSD were doing a bootcamp there. LOL.

About 10 minutes later I spot this Asian girl standing by herself next to Jeffy and one of his students. Not opening her? Guess I’ll do it.

Set 1 – Engaged Chick

I stroll on over.

(I’m in bold)

whim: “Hi.”

HBChampagne: *silence*

whim: “How’s it going?”

HBChampagne: *silence*

whim: *But I’m in state! Where’s my core confidence!* ^^

whim: “Hey listen, I thought you were really cute and wanted to come over and say hi.”

HBChampagne: *lights up like a Christmas tree* “Oh, thanks. My name’s HBChampagne.”

whim: “My name’s whim. You’re adorable.”

HBChampagne: “Thanks. But I’m waiting for someone.”

whim: “Waiting for someone? Like for a white prince on a horse to come and meet you?”

HBChampagne: “Haha, yeah! Actually, I’m engaged.” *shows me ring*

whim: “Oh cool. Is your fiance around?”

HBChampagne: “Yeah, he’s right over there.”

whim: “Cool, when are you guys getting married?”

HBChampagne: “In 3 weeks!”

whim: “Wow, you must be so excited. Congratulations!”

HBChampagne: “Yeah! Thanks!”

whim: “Hope you have a great evening” *leaves set*

Set 2 – 4 cute girls

I chode around for another 5 minutes. I spot 4 Asian girls huddled together in a circle. No guys are approaching them. Hmmm…

I turn to Domestos: “You wanna approach or should I do it?”

He offers to do it. I go grab a drink and come back. I enter the set from the other side, so that he’s next to two girls and so am I.

(I asked him later how he opened and he said with a low-investment question)

Intros all around. The girls looked like they were fucking bored before we arrived hehe.

I pull out some group coldreads to get things rolling. They eat it up.

I notice that one girl was on her phone texting the whole time. Oh well, guess that means I get to talk to two girls.

I played a game of pumping buying temperature and attraction between the two girls I was talking to. Basically I talked to one, pumped her BT, then turned to the other to pump her BT. I was waiting to see which one was more interested in me.

I drop in my “goes for what she wants” frame on one of the girls. Yay.

I then keep on just running general talk between the two girls. I drop my Vegas frame on one – she is TOTALLY into it, giving me coy looks and kino. I start kinoing her more heavily, and put my arm around her, pulling her in. This becomes my target.

At some point during the set Link came in. In my head I’m thinking FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. Because one of the girls I was talking to had gone back to talking to her friend on the cellphone leaving me with my target and Dosmestos with his. Link opens the girl on the cellphone (dude, I need to teach you winging rules) and now I’m left standing with 2 girls to talk to again. *Sigh*

Fast forward for about an hour of just talking and they say they’re leaving. Dosmestos #-closed his girl, and I suggest we all exchange numbers… but one of the girls says that Dosmestos already has her number. I turn to the girl I was gaming up and tell her to give me her number. She complies. I give her a kiss on the cheek and a hug goodbye. I’m going to follow up with some phone game and get her out for a day 2.

Takeaways

• I need to get over my AA at night, whatever form it is manifesting itself in. This means going out more at night from now on.
• That being said, when I was in set I was just feeling calm, self-amused and having fun. I like this state.
• My hands were shaky when I went for the number close – WTF?!?!
• I should develop some low-investment openers to get into set with.
• Be more cognisant of the frames I want to stack and set them earlier on in the interaction. And keep reinforcing them throughout the interaction.
• I just realised that I can talk forever about anything… no more “running out of things to say” syndrome.
• Turn my comfort stories into frame reinforcers for use during nightgame.
• Kino escalate harder (alongside setting sexual frames) than I was doing tonight.
• I did get shit-tested while in set: “Are you crying over your recent breakup?” (they pulled this one out of left-field, previously we were talking about travelling). I didn’t react and just started talking about what I wanted to talk about.
• Conversational ratio – I need to push it more towards 50-50 rather than the 70-30 it is right now. But I did notice that the girls reinitiated conversation when I dropped it.
• Not drinking when going out for nightgame is awesome. It’s SOOOOO much better to be able to think clearly and run solid game.
• No structure rocks. Frames rock.

- whim