february 8

I have been practicing pickup for an admittedly short time and I was having trouble figuring out how I could improve. So I thought on it a bit, and found an analogous activity that parallels pickup quite well, in my eyes. Interested to know if there are any others that have found this train of thought and agree or disagree.

I feel as if the way men pick up women can be directly related to a common poker strategy. Each player has their own tendencies, methods of how they prefer to operate, comfort zone, and so on. Perhaps this phenomenon could not only be likened to poker strategy, but directly intertwined. Many personality types that stand out in poker seem to stand out in the pickup world; vivid, colorful, loud players garner a lot of attention in poker. They have the largest following because they are dynamic and unpredictable, and their strategy reflects such.

This is certainly part of the dominant methodology in pickup, since those who garner the most attention have the highest rate of attraction. The same persona (this seems like a bad word to use here but I cannot think of a better one) that might make more money flow at a table with a wild player should naturally have more energy and emotion flow around them during a sarge. It's easy to parallel the personality traits of such a poker player and a successful pickup artist: a driven spirit, the ability to speak his mind, a reckless abandon that defeats inhibitions, and a need to "control the action".

If I were to apply this to my own game, I can begin to understand how my pickup game works and what obstacles might lie in my way in terms of inner game during a sarge. In poker, I'm what's known as a "grinder", someone who plays a lot of hands and puts in a great deal of work to grind out, so to speak, to see results. Taking time after sessions to analyze my play is the best way to spot weaknesses and bad tendencies. I feel most comfortable employing a "bet-and-raise" philosophy, meaning that I play my hands pretty straightforwardly or "ABC", believing that the majority of other players will not be adept enough to notice the lack of deception in my game.

I've learned over a few years of playing a grinderish style of poker that results take a long time to diverge. What I mean by that is that there might be so much variance in a few sessions (the conditions might vary wildly) that it would be difficult to discern how accurate the results from the handful of tries were. Over time, much less is left to luck and skill is the deciding factor. You've got to play hundreds and hundreds of sessions, tens of thousands of hands, to properly see if the strategies you have learned are working. Even without having many sarges to work off of in pickup, I understand how the same philosophy applies. I'm willing to bet that the first several approaches for many pickup artists were rocky, filled with uncomfortable silences and moments where you weren't quite sure what to do. Then, when you analyzed the sarge later, you saw your sticking points and how to improve upon them.

So I believe this kind of thought analysis has already helped me get the jump-start on my competition (the rest of the male twenty-something world). I know many of these so-called gurus can attest to this; they're gurus because they were the ones that got out there and tried their routines and strategies the most, so they know how it works. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, so get out there and do your thing

february 6

first post of this blog

After the one set I had today that unexpectedly failed, I have gained confidence in my ability to open. The reason for this is because I believe that I was able to form attraction, though I felt it was a bit forced towards the end simply because it had taken so long.

I know that the more I become invested in this mission, the better I will perform and more I will learn. How do I know this? Because when I was first learning to play poker, I felt the exact same way. I felt an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and success on the poker table, the same way that I feel about these pick-up skills. Poker changed many facets of my life besides in a monetary sense. It had an effect on my critical thinking skills and my ability to read people's body language. So I hope that through practice of these pickup skills, my abilities to be a social being and an alpha male will be enhanced.

It didn't seem like the guys that I met and had drinks with were too terribly ambitious in this sense. They spoke little of the groups of females that were around them, and I don't think they would have even considered approaching a loner, let alone a set. This revelation that my social anxiety is replicated in most every other male my age strengthens my resolve to get better and better, something to be enviable of