My Personal Pickup Openers

A while ago, I brainstormed a list of indirect openers and conversation starters to use for cold approaches. Some of these are originals, some are reworkings of popular openers already in circulation in the pickup community. For a time, I actually kept this as a cheat sheet in my back pocket to assist during those rare moments my mind was a complete blank and I could think of nothing to say. I would guess I use “canned” openers on 10% of my approaches. I prefer situational openers, where I jive about whatever happens to be going on around us. But sometimes canned material is very helpful to ease the way for you to get out of a slump or as a temporary substitute for weak natural game.

Note: These are NOT “pickup lines”. They won’t make a girl automatically attracted to you, and they aren’t examples of direct game. They’re simply interesting or amusing things to talk about that get girls intrigued and invested in a conversation with you. They also raise your value by making you sound more interesting to girls than 99% of guys out there.

Most of the ones below fall under the category of opinion opener, which I’ve found are more effective as something you say right after you’ve broken the ice with a casual greeting.

The best way to use these lines is to anchor them to a back story, otherwise you risk sounding creepy if you crash a set blurting them out machine gun style. For instance, I might say “My buddy over there just broke up with his girlfriend and I’ve been spending the night consoling him. She was just way too jealous of him. Do you think guys or girls get jealous more easily?”

***

1. How would you react if your boyfriend gave you an ultimatum?

2. Why do girls check out other girls more than they check out guys?

3. There are people who analyze walks and can tell what mood you’re in, what you’re thinking, and even what you do for a living.

– great for steering a conversation in many different directions.

4. You look like the type who would date a starving artist, but marry a doctor.

– this one has been very good to me because it is part opener, part neg.

5. Let’s say you were dating this guy for a while, fell in love with him, and found out months later that he was broke. Would you break up with him?

– also one of my favorites. anything that hints at the core nature of women elicits strong reactions.

6. Were you nervous the first time you tried on a bikini? My buddy said he was nervous when he first tried on a suit. -OR- My ex said she was nervous the first time she wore 5 inch stiletto heels.

– a conversation builder like this is highly context dependent. use with caution.

7. There was a study done recently that said that beautiful couples have more daughters and nerdy couples have more sons. Would you say your parents were beautiful or nerdy?

8. Who can keep a secret longer — guys or girls?

– simple. direct. easy to remember. make sure to anchor it if this is your opener.

9. Are the best lovers made or born?

– not recommended as an opener. better as banter material.

10. You guys are in the power position. Yeah, tight circle, backs to everyone, like a football huddle. No guy is gonna get through your defenses. But how would you stand if one of you… let’s say her (motion toward your target)… really wanted to be approached by a cool guy?

– if you like to approach sets boldly, this one is for you.

11. If a guy needs to buy some stylish clothes is it better for him to take along a girlfriend or a girl buddy for fashion tips? What about a gay friend?

12. Who has better fashion sense — girls or gay guys?

– any mention of the word “gay” is like the all-purpose social lubricant.

13. You look like the type of girl who would leave a club if another girl was wearing the same shirt.

– this one is a risky opener gambit. use on stuck up chicks who need to be brought down off their pedestals they have constructed on the backs of fawning betas.

14. I’ve read that men get more jealous from sexual infidelity and women get more jealous from love infidelity. Which one bothers you more?

– better in low key environments with smarter prospects. drunk club sluts won’t get what you’re saying.

15. Do you guys believe in reincarnation? If it were true, what kind of person do you think you’d be in your next life? You (point at potential cockblock)… you look like you’d be a CEO in your next life… and you (point at target), a ballet geek!

– now THIS is good for the clubs. it’s an opener that lets you yell above the noise, and it contains one of those key words – reincarnation – that instantly pricks a girl’s attention.

BONUS

This one is not an original by me but I have used it with great results. It’s an example of direct game.

You: [striding confidently into the set] Do you know why you girls suck?
Girls: [looking at each other incredulously, but expectantly]
You: Because I’ve been standing over there for ten minutes and you haven’t come over to say Hi. I mean, I can tell you’d like to, you keep giving me the eye.

***

Try these at your leisure. Anyone scoring a lay off them will be written about in a later post on my blog, and your deeds will be sung by the bards for generations.

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Inner Game

I have a friend who is very self-critical. When we go out to meet girls he will handicap his game by being too hard on himself. When he isn’t weaseling out of approaching girls with every excuse in the book he is projecting an overly attentive vibe when he does manage to enter a set. In the field, I’d often hear him say:

“I wonder if she got my jokes?”

“I hope I didn’t come off as too needy.”

“She’s probably looking for a different type of guy.”

Poor inner game — what is known by other jargon as your state of mind or your self confidence — is inwardly directed. Good inner game is outwardly directed. It’s the difference between berating yourself for not winning over others and berating others for not winning over you. The men who are naturally good with women live outside their minds — they are externally focused. The downside is that they are usually not very introspective, but who cares about that shit when you’re getting pussy? Introspection is for dainty young women in sundresses picking buttercups in meadows.

If my friend had good inner game what he would have said is:

“She loses points for not having a good sense of humor.”

“She’s the kind of girl who hides her insecurity behind aloofness.”

“I’ll chat with her to see if she’s the type of girl I want in my life.”

I hear a lot of talk about how Game routines are going stale, and chicks see right through them. In fact, the problem isn’t typically with the routines, it’s with the confidence and congruence in which they are delivered. If your inner game isn’t solid then what you present to the outside world won’t match what you are feeling inside. Your inner game is reflected through your body language and voice tone, so however clever your routines they will strike a false note if you don’t internalize the confidence you are trying to portray. You will betray yourself with negative thinking.

Fake it till you make it means faking that internal confidence as well as the external behavior. This is not as hard as it sounds. Every time you feel self-doubt and talk yourself into inaction, yell “Stop!” out loud, and your brain will reboot. You then consciously reframe your thought processes to put the burden of approval seeking on those around you. With good inner game you can say just about any ridiculous routine and the girl will be intrigued.

The most important change in thinking you can make:

You are not there to win over women, they are there to win over you.

Keep saying this over and over until you begin to believe it. You are re-wiring yourself. Don’t worry about the truth or falsity of it. That’s irrelevant.

The beauty of this system is that it turns the seduction template on its head. Co-opting a woman’s natural choosiness and making yourself the chooser instead of the chosen is extremely attractive to women. Because it hardly ever happens this way, women will happily strive to win the approval of a man who is clear in his words and his actions that he is judging them for worthiness of his attention, and not the other way around.

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Funny ‘Cause It’s (Kinda) True

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Going Sexual

It’s a good idea to bring sex talk into the conversation with a girl sooner rather than later. Prying her brain wave patterns with thoughts of sexual scenarios while her attention is directed to you will anchor those pleasurable feelings to your presence. She will perceive you as a sexual man with a masculine crotch-centered aura.

Timing is important. If you’re too quick to go raunchy she’ll peg you as a creepy perv or overly eager to get in her pants.

Her: What do you think of the music in this place?

You: It’s not bad music to make sweet sweet love to.

Her: Um… ew?

That’s why you should never take a girl’s bait when she brings up sexual topics first. In actuality, she’s trying to smoke you out as a needy beta. Always tease a girl for talking about sex before the moment is right for it (i.e., before you and her have entered the lower-energy rapport stage when it is acceptable to engage in more intimate talk).

Her: I love it when a guy zorbits my boobs during sex!

You: Hey, thanks for the medical report!

At the opposite extreme, waiting too long to inject innuendo and playful sexual overtones into the conversation can cause a girl to wonder if you have eunuch issues. Men who aren’t comfortable bantering in a sexual way are often seen as asexual and timid lovers. When you finally do broach a sexual topic way too late in the interaction it will come across as desperately cloying and incongruent, similar to waiting until the end of a date to kiss a girl. As with physical touching, you’re better off slowly getting her accustomed to seeing you as a man who does not shrink from his manly desires.

Sexual talk usually arises organically from good vibing. A man and woman attracted to each other and left to their own devices will eventually drift into double entendre. There shouldn’t be a struggle to find a convenient excuse to share sexual thoughts. But in case there is, you could always take her to a venue that has props to help move the conversation in a sexual direction.

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Gaming “Type A” Girls

The Type A and Type B personality theory (or Type A and Type B behavior pattern) divides the population of humans into two groups, based on their personality characteristics.

People who fall under Type A exhibit characteristics such as being impatient, excessively time-conscious, insecure about one’s status, highly competitive, hostile and aggressive, and incapable of relaxation. Type A individuals are often high-achieving workaholics who multi-task, drive themselves with deadlines, and are unhappy about the smallest of delays.

Cute girl approaches me. She looks vaguely like Hilary Swank, but with better teeth. Her posture is ramrod straight. The smile on her face doesn’t falter. She never breaks eye contact. Her energy is intense. I feel like I should salute her.

Her: I saw you standing over here trying to look cool so I figured I’d come over and say Hi.

Me: “Trying”?

Her: What’s your name?

Me: That was fast. Let’s get creative. Ask another question.

Her: What do you do?

Me: Look cool.

Her: So you work for free? Because I’ve seen better.

Me: No… you haven’t. Hey, I just saw you gaming some guy right over there. Are you going around the bar practicing your flirting skills?

Her: I’m winging for my friend. [she points to a dude across the room] I was occupying the guy talking to me so my friend could hit on the girl in his group. I gave him a number I never answer.

Me: You’re like the female version of a player. For some reason I think you’re proud of that.

Her: [beaming] Yes, I am! [stares daggers into me] So, really, what do you do?

Me: Back to this again. OK, I make it hard for girls like you to get a straight answer. I get the feeling you want guys to be intimidated by you.

Her: You aren’t intimidated by me? Because most guys are.

Me: I’m shaking in my boots.

***

This edgy, in-your-face banter lasted for 15 minutes, escalating every step of the way. The longer it lasted, the more she became intrigued, her facial expressions getting animated with each new pseudo-insult. It was fun for me… for the first 30 seconds… then I became annoyed. High octane antagonistic flirting can quickly devolve into a farce and when that happens the momentum is lost. Sassy works in measured doses; more than that and it turns into bitchy. And despite the latest cultural meme to the contrary, guys don’t really like bitches. We prefer sweet.

Unfortunately, DC is filled to the brim with Type A girls. A brimful of assholes on the 45. So you have to learn to love confrontational flirting, because that’s what these girls use to separate you from the rest of the pack. It’s all they know. The better you parry her, the higher she bumps you up her male scale.

The trick is to give her what she wants at first, then pull it away and force her into your courtship tempo. Type A girls are actually *easier* to attract than Type B girls because they are simple creatures who respond reflexively to men who don’t wilt under their onslaught. Type Bs tend to be more inscrutable and sensitive; one bold move can close them off to you for good if they take it the wrong way. You’ve got more leeway with Type As to flirt outrageously, but the downside is that they are skilled at preventing you from moving the seduction forward. If you’re not careful, you’ll have a crazy fun time with her for 20 minutes… then walk home empty-handed.

Spend a few minutes attracting her, then firmly change the tone of the conversation. Say something like “Well, this is fun, but it would be better if we sat down over there and had a real conversation.” Or do a cold read: “I have an intuition about you. You come across so forward and intense, with a big wall built up around you, but inside there’s a sensitive vulnerable girl who just wants any chance to show the right guy the side of her that she hides from the world.”

Find an excuse to get her to move to a quieter spot where you can sit her down. Type As lose a lot of their incessant cockiness when they are sitting down. The physical act of sitting seems to humble them a bit. Whatever you do, don’t bother number closing a Type A if you haven’t moved past the flirting and gotten her to open up to you about something personal. You’ll know you have done this when the smile plastered on her face all night finally takes a break. Type As are very social and flirt with lots of men. She will forget you as soon as she’s left the bar to go home if your interaction with her was entirely superficial.

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Big Rapport Mistake

Emotionally connecting with a girl is 90% of getting her into your bed. The first ten minutes of meeting her — swooping in, introducing yourself, steering the conversation, and building her attraction to you through body language and high value stories — while considered the hardest part of courtship by most guys, is really just a small piece of the pick up puzzle. The fact is, most guys fuck it up with girls during those long interludes on the second date when they are face to face getting to know each other.

The reason for this is that men and women have fundamentally different thought processes. In short: men focus, women sample. A topic of conversation comes up and the guy wants to analyze it fully, drilling down to the tiniest detail and debating the pros and cons, while the girl wants to use the topic as a springboard to explore related topics. Biologically, this makes perfect sense, as men raise their status in big part by solving problems, and women judge a man’s strength of character by gauging his responses to a variety of scenarios. Men should be aware that women won’t show their hand so blatantly by asking probing questions directly; instead, they use the chaotic give and take of conversation to expose any insecurities he may be hiding.

The underlying dynamic — women normally need hours of subtle interrogation to deem a man worthy of sex, while men need only a second of eyeballing her head to toe to deem her worthy of pursuing — accounts for much of the misunderstanding between the sexes.

One of the biggest mistakes a man will make is superficial listening. This is where he gets wrapped up inside his head thinking hard about a clever response he can impress her with while she’s still talking to him. Usually he will latch onto a “keyword” to launch his diatribe before she has finished her thoughts. The result is an uncomfortable, forced rapport where the guy is interrupting her every other word trying to find common ground and leaving her feeling like she is not being heard.

Example

Him: What’s your ideal vacation spot?

Her: Well, I would really love to go scuba diving along a coral reef in warm Caribbean waters. The colors of the fish are amazing, and you can feel so peaceful under the water, away from all the stress of your normal life…

Him: Oh yeah! Scuba diving is fun! My favorite part was falling backwards off the boat into the water.

***

This guy made the typical man mistake of grasping at the solid object — the noun– in her answer instead of discerning what was really important, which was the feeling scuba diving gave her and her hint at what she values in life.

If you do this, train yourself to step out of your head. The simplest way to improve this part of your game is to shut up, nod, and say uh huh… uh huh… a lot while she’s speaking. Don’t worry about what you’re going to say next while she’s talking. Give her room to talk. Never argue or get obsessed with the details in her stories. Don’t correct her like some nerd study partner when she flubs an inconsequential fact. If she’s giving her opinion, don’t judge her for it. This is the rapport stage, not the attraction stage. You want to build a connection and the easiest way to do that is to let her feel comfortable around you revealing her hopes and desires. You’ll get into a smooth conversational rhythm faster if you stop being anxious about responding to every one of her points.

Be mentally flexible.

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Video Of Solid Game

This series of videos from the show Keys to the VIP demonstrates what really quality game looks like. The guy to watch is Cajun, a protege of Mystery Method, because his game does not rely solely on canned routines or elaborate storytelling to raise his status. He throws out a few pre-rehearsed lines here and there (something I do as well, like the “adorable little sister” line), but for the most part his game succeeds on his confident body language and ability to stay cool under pressure. Also notice that he hits on 8s and above, which gives his game credibility.

Check out part 1, part 2, and part3.

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