Tight Game Week comes to a close. Here is what you may have missed:

-Confidence
-Default Game
-Be A Rock Star
-Phone Game
-Gots Game (for women, by Sally)

Also be sure to check out the comments in each part for other good ideas.

I’m supposed to write something for the ladies for Tight Game Week, but it’s tough. For starters, I kinda already wrote it. All I know about game is, you either have it, or you don’t. The Bachelor says that game for women primarily entails looking hot, while I argue that it often merely means having a noonie.

A friend of mine once described my game as, “using lots of big words and tossing your hair.” That’s true.

There’s not a set standard of game for women. The desired goal of game, for men, is getting laid. In many instances this is true for women as well, but there are a lot of other factors. It all depends on what kind of man you’re trying to land, what you’ve got to work with, where you are, who you’re with, what’s your endgame, etc. Just like everything else, women tend to over-think their game. Thanks, corpus callosum!

I guess the best piece of advice I have for women is to not get so hung up on waiting for men to approach you. As evidenced by the rest of the posts on Tight Game Week, men are hampered by the same insecurities and “what-ifs” that women are, and even more so because they realize most women won’t approach them and make it easy. So you can’t always trust them to sack up and initiate contact. Some girls dismiss the idea that they should have to do any of the work. That’s fine if you’re planning to be single the rest of your life. Let’s face it, if you’re going to demand equal rights, you’re going to have to put in equal effort.

I’m not saying you should be buying drinks for men - I only do if I lose a bet, which is practically never (since the “Paul-Allen-cofounded-Apple” debacle of ‘03) - but at least be bold enough to start a conversation. It’s usually easiest to pick on a few guys who are standing around with no ladies in sight, because they’ll be happy to have some female company and hope that you have hot friends with you. And if you don’t, well, more for you!

Even if you’re too much of a chickenshit to approach, you can at least look open. That means standing up straight, making eye contact, smiling, and, ok, maybe tossing your hair (it definitely cannot hurt). If actions speak louder than words, make sure your availability and interest is clearly conveyed.

Oh, and only give out your phone number if you’re serious. Anyone can be a flake, but it takes real Tattersons to go on a date with a man you’re not sure about and open yourself to the possibility that you’ll have a good time.

It took me a while to master the phone because I’m the type of person that likes talking to people in person. Well that’s what I told myself at the time. I struggled with basics like whether to leave messages or not and what to do when there was an awkward silence, leading me to avoid the phone and rely on email instead. I was an email pro, but I quickly began to hate it. It was slow and even more impersonal.

When I decided that I had to figure it out, I started collecting phone numbers. For half a year my entire game was more about getting phone numbers than getting laid, all so I can get my phone game handled.

I didn’t do so well in the beginning. Girls wouldn’t call me back. I thought it was the message I was leaving, so I left different types of messages. Still nothing. Then I got paranoid about leaving messages and decided to phone stalk these girls from different numbers instead. That didn’t work either so I was sort of stumped.

One day my friend and I came up with an idea. We’d exchange numbers of girls we got nowhere with and randomly call them up. I called up this girl I never met, left a message, and she actually called back. We had a great hour-long conversation and she agreed to meet out with me the same night. It turned out to be a great blind date, but it left me even more confused. Why was it so easy with a girl that I never met, but so hard with girls I gamed? Frustration continued for several more months.

I eventually found out what was wrong: I was so focused on getting the number that I did not serve proper game. If you’ve ever gone out on a number harvesting night, you already know that a number is meaningless. Girls give them out to anyone, and it doesn’t mean they are going to bang you. It made sense that all I got was numbers because that was the exact goal I had in my mind. But then I decided to change it up a little bit, to focus not on numbers but on building something, to lay the groundwork down so us hanging out again is an inevitability. Soon after that for the first time a girl asked me to take her number. Then it started happening regularly. The shift in thinking turned out to be a wise move.

A girl decides if she is going to call you back well before you call her for the first time. Unless you say something stupid, her opinion will not change with what you say in a message.

Rule #1: Leave a simple message, with only your name, number, and a request for a callback. You can leave the time too if you want. Always leave a message.

Don’t tell a story or funny joke in your message. Definitely do not say something like, “Hey it’s Stan… from Friday night.” If she doesn’t remember you, it was over anyway. Do not try to impress her over the phone. Since girls never answer their phone, there is no need to feel nervous when you first call. You’ll be leaving a message that you can redo if you want.

So great, girls were calling me back, but now what do I talk about? I’d get that awkward silence and have to quickly end the conversation. There was an easy fix to this:

Rule #2: After you leave your message, have two things in your head that you could talk to her about when she calls back.

One thing should be relevant and recent (something you did), while the other can be an idea, thought, or interesting question. The conversation will organically continue from your initial threads. These are a little bit different from straight-up routines that you may have during approach game. These threads should be more flexible and customizable to the girl, but still well-tested. For instance one thread can be something like ‘Interesting thing I did the past week,’ which can contain a fancy structure you have worked on. While these threads will change with each girl, they should have a common open-ended structure. After a while you won’t need to mentally prepare, but it does help if your experience is limited.

Because I hold off on serious questions in the approach, the phone is a nice place to ask questions and focus a little on rapport. If she did call you back, she already likes you so you can tone down the game somewhat.

I quickly learned that phone conversations don’t have to be long to be meaningful. Girls don’t care if you can’t talk to them for half an hour. Five minutes is fine. Now it’s time to get her out.

Rule #3: Your main goal on the phone is to set a date.

At the end of your conversation, ask her what her schedule is like and then pick a day you both are free. It’s funny how free girls really are when you ask them straight-up about their schedule. It’s too easy for a girl to say “I’m busy” if you were to suggest a random day to her. By making her tell you what days she is free, you quickly are able to see if this girl is serious or not about hanging out with you.

Say you were thinking of scheduling a date three days from now. That’s a lot of dead time where something can happen. The last thing you want is to get flaked on cause the girl was unsure or nervous. You need a defense to prevent getting stood up so your time does not get wasted. When I schedule the date, I purposefully do not pick an exact time. I give her a range instead and tell her I will call on the day of the date to confirm a time.

Rule #4: Confirm by calling on the day of your date.

This is where you give an exact time. If she does not answer and call you back then feel good you have prevented getting stood up. If the date is one day after your phone conversation, this step may not be needed. Use your best judgement, but never assume a random chick you just met will come through.

Now you just have to show up. In this culture, the phone is essential to running tight game. Even though I hated talking on the phone, I put in the time to master it so it does not cost me notches. Just realize that the phone will not significantly improve your standing with a girl, but it can definitely kill it. It’s better to be generic on the phone than flamboyant.

You’re at the club on a Friday night wearing a crisp new shirt you bought to match your expensive shoes. Your hair is perfect and you are feeling it tonight. You work the crowd a little and have some success, but you know it’s going to be a long night. Then you see someone you recognize. It’s a basketball player from your college, sitting down in the corner wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt. You notice his entourage talking to the hottest girls in the club. Now the cute girl you are trying to talk to is distracted by the spectacle he’s creating. She leaves you to go see what is going on.

Girls gravitate to men who are great at something. And it doesn’t have to involve money. The computer game champion has groupies. The DJ has groupies. The photographer has groupies. The bass fishing champion has groupies. The sidewalk artist has groupies. The blogger has groupies. I don’t care what it is, but if you have a passion for something and do it well, girls will notice and want a piece.

A man fits in one of these four categories:

1. Does not get laid.
2. Average nice guy who sometimes gets laid or has a girlfriend.
3. Horny guy who chases women.
4. “Rock star” who gets chased by women.

Category one guys decide not to take care of their problem, and evolution will probably weed them out as their seed is not spread. Most guys fall in category two. They don’t want to be bothered with going out to “get laid,” and are very content being with one woman for an extended period of time. Many of your beta males fall into this category, sticking with a less-than-ideal women to avoid being single again. Category three is where I’d classify myself and most of the guys I know. We go out where the women are, game them, and go for the lay. We do it for conquest just as much as physical pleasure. We are working on making the jump to category four, rock star status. Here, we sit back and let pussy come to us. While we all have experienced glimmers of this fourth category, it will take continued work on ourselves and our own projects to achieve the state permanently.

A week ago me and two friends all wore the I Pump And Dump shirt and went to some bars in Baltimore. I was sort of curious what would happen if we did this, and made it clear to them that I didn’t have any positive expectations. One friend did voice his concern that we are cockblocking ourselves. But the opposite happened. Girls constantly approached us to ask what the shirt means. They engaged us in conversation. One of us had the idea of saying we are in a band called I Pump And Dump, so we went with that and made up stories for the night. We never got so much attention in our lives. I vividly remember the hottest girl in the bar coming up to us and asking to take our picture with her, thinking we were famous. She had huge breasts. Once you get a taste at how easy it can be, you don’t want to go back.

But what if you are not really good at anything? What if you aren’t a rock star? You grind it out. You take abuse, put yourself out there, and withstand girls long enough just to get in their pants. It’s work, and after a certain amount of experience you may come to a point where you are bored or tired. If by then you have achieved rock star status, then great; there will be quality girls knocking on your door. But if not, it’s going to be a lonely period for you until you hop back into the game.

To be a rock star you need to first have a hobby or career that you love. (Picking up girls doesn’t count.) Then, be AWESOME in it. Kick ass. Be better than most other guys doing the same thing. And make it more important than women.

There is an interesting irony of getting laid that I can’t quite explain. If your main goal is to get laid, you will achieve success but it will be modest. There will be an invisible wall that you can’t quite get past. To be that ultimate pimp, to have consistent success, you need to combine your thorough understanding of game WITH being great in something you love that has no relation to women. Master this combination and you will be unstoppable. You will have 99 problems but a bitch won’t be one.

It can be hard to think clearly when it’s time to step up to the plate. The girl is hot. Your heart is beating fast. Your mind is blank. It’s do-or-die and the window for you to make your move is small. But you are unprepared and slow. The window closes and the girl is gone.

It’s important to always have a default game ready at your disposal. Start with having two opening lines that you can use anywhere. Sometimes you see a girl and can’t think of something on-the-fly to get a conversation going. What a shame it would be if a momentarily lapse in creative thought prevents you from even talking to the girl. Then there are times that you don’t feel confident of an untested opener and unconsciously put up roadblocks to approaching. If you have one opener that you’ve used dozens of times that is most likely to open than not, it would make talking to women a lot easier. Even if you are so nervous you can barely think, and you have to spit your line very rigid and robot-like, it is still better than not saying nothing at all.

After you get the conversation started, there will still be that first silence. When you meet a girl through friends, there is no pressure to keep talking. You have prolonged access to her, and other friends around you will take off some of the pressure. But when you approach a girl cold, you need to keep talking, even if you are normally introverted or guarded. Silences are deadly in the first 15 minutes of a pick-up. This is where you need two or three conversational threads, or routines, that you can pull out and use. You’ve memorized them, you know how a girl will react, and you know they will open up the conversation even further. If you’ve ever told a story more than once, you’ve used a routine. It is something that is reliable, effective, and refined.

When you have no experience meeting girls, it is difficult to know what openers or routines to use. You will have to borrow them from other guys. This is where knowing guys who are good with women come into play. This is how I learned. Practice with their lines and quickly optimize them to something that fits your personality. With experience you gain the knowledge to figure out what works and what doesn’t work. In a very short time your game will look very different from what you started with.

The first 15 minutes of a pickup should be automatic. Like putting on your shoes. It should be something that you improve over the years until you have a final product that works for you. Its sole purpose is to get a girl intrigued in you, a random stranger. After that you can relax, for the seed has been planted. Once she sticks around and you have her attention, feel free to “be yourself,” flowing with the interaction wherever it may lead. Eventually you get so used to talking to women that you need to rely on your default game less and less each time. But until then you get to that point, having one will improve the rate at which you succeed.

The magic bullet to getting girls is supposedly having confidence. With it you can leap buildings, fuck supermodels, and demand a raise from your boss. But how important is it really? And how do you get it?

Back in high school I had a puny body and was paranoid of getting jumped because of the ghetto neighborhood I lived in. Because I believed I could not put up much of a fight if I was attacked, I avoided conflict with the kids that were bigger than me.

I started going to the gym in college and built up some muscle mass by the time I graduated. Even though I still couldn’t fight, I was no longer scared of getting into one. While bigger muscles doesn’t mean I’d fare any better in a fight, I believed that it would. Going to the gym took away fear of getting physically pummeled. That’s all that confidence really does: it eliminates fear. When you are not scared, you suddenly have more ways to respond. And a higher chance to succeed. Instead of backing down from the meathead in the club, I could stand my ground. Instead of letting the hot girl walk by, I could talk to her.

Why do guys get drunk in a club? Is it because they like poisoning their body and waking up the next morning feeling like hell? You’ve heard the term ‘liquid courage’ before. Alcohol gives men a temporary state of confidence. They drink to eliminate the fear of having to talk to a woman and get rejected. I know over a dozen guys who can only talk to a woman under the influence. They have not trained their mind to go work through touch social situations with women. Guys who can only approach under alcohol think it improves their game, but there is a common pattern that they all show: they never talk to the hottest girls. It’s always the 6’s and 7’s. It hurts them more than they think.

Every man is confident in something, but when it comes to women, confidence means the ability to take social risk. In the book Mean Genes, the authors claim that men are wired to not take social risk. In your small social tribe, failing with a girl in the hut next to you means humiliation and embarrassment. But we don’t live in tribes anymore. Not taking social risk is the quickest way to lonely nights at home.

Several years ago I could approach lone-wolfs with ease. These are girls who are standing alone in a bar or club. But most girls are not alone in bars. They are in groups, sometimes very large groups. I’m sure you’ve seen the circle of girls dancing at the club with their jackets and purses in the middle. To build myself up, I approached the biggest groups I could find. Five girls, six girls, seven girls. I usually bombed. It is just impossible for me to keep all the girls in a big group interested, and it just takes one girl to ruin it for you, to send that nonverbal signal of death to all the others. I got the eye-rolls, the back-turns, the “we’re just going to dance.” But I did it so much that I no longer fear it. Guys see me work the room and think I was born with this ability to talk to any girl. I wasn’t. Like any skill, you need to put the time and energy to get it. And once you have it, you have it for life.

Confidence is not an on-off switch that you have or don’t have. It’s a sliding dial that slowly changes with time. Getting confidence is like a long war, putting yourself through battles to harden your mind, and stretch what you think you are capable of. This means spectacular failure and rejection. This means feeling uncomfortable and getting upset. There is no other way to it. You have to do what you’ve never done to get what you’ve never gotten. Every man has to ask himself how badly he wants to improve and feel capable in all social settings. Or does he want to be the guy who needs to order a few more rounds of alcohol until he can say hi to the girl staring at him.

Next week is Tight Game Week. I will be writing about practical game-related advice for guys.

One of the reasons I’m doing this is because I’ve forgotten about my long-time male readers, who have been silently lurking in the background, waiting for me to hit them with something they can use. I must get back to my roots.