From the original article on April 13, 2012. Author: Chateau Heartiste.
Trolls often ask “isn’t pickup just a numbers game”? I say trolls, because it’s rare you’ll hear this question from an honest person sincerely seeking answers. The question is farcical once you dig into it a bit, and anti-gamers like to use it in an attempt to discredit game/evolutionary biology/sex differences/female hypergamy.... pick any one or all. (Funnily enough, you’ll hardly ever hear women using it, probably because women don’t like to think of themselves as numbers.)
The “numbers game” fallacy is similar to the “hours game” fallacy. Think of a great musician. He has to put in a lot of hours of practice to get great at his craft. Once greatness is achieved, a person asserting an “hours game” argument would contend that the musician’s continued greatness depends on all the hours he puts into playing. But that is not the case. A great musician, once trained, can play five minutes a week and still be great compared to the non-musician or hobbyist musician.
So it is with game and pickup. Logically and unavoidably, most neophytes will make more approaches in order to put their game theory to practice in the field. That is how you get good. Simply reading about game and approaching one woman per year won’t cut it. But once a number of up-front approaches have been made — once the steepest part of the learning curve has been crested — and the aspiring seducer has improved his game acumen, then he can reduce his number of approaches while still enjoying a very good sex and love life because his odds of any one approach resulting in a fuck close have measurably increased over his previous, game-less baseline.
And from personal experience, this is exactly what happened to me. When I first tried game, I kept my approach numbers at the same level i had before game. Once I started tasting improved success using game, I increased my approach number because 1. I was excited to see how much I could accomplish using game, and 2. I had to approach more women to try out all the new things I was learning.
Naturally, my close rate increased with my increased approach rate, owing mostly to my game skills but also partly to the larger pool of women I was hitting on. (In contrast, had I increased my pool of prospects while using NO GAME, my close rate would not have increased by nearly as much.) Then, after a few years of this fucking around for fun and sexual profit, I decided that I was interested in longer term relations with women, so I gradually pared back my number of approaches to about the same level I had before learning game. And a funny thing happened. I was having more success with the fewer, and hotter!, women I was approaching than I would have had without game. I had a skillset called game and it increased my positive interactions with women across the board. In other words, my RATE of rejection was lower, and my rate of success higher.
That’s the way doubters need to view the numbers game fallacy: numbers matter, but game matters more. The two work in concert until enough competency is achieved that numbers are no longer needed.
For those who refuse to part ways with the numbers game fallacy, I direct your attention to the headstrong but socially clueless geeky beta male. I think most of us have encountered this type of guy in our lives. He’s aggressively nerdy, unafraid to approach women in his awkward fashion, and never learns from his mistakes. He has no discernible game besides fearlessness and a lack of shame. He’s a little “off”. He’s our test case for measuring game against numbers. He’s got the numbers, but he has no game, and the results aren’t pretty: one ugly rejection after another. But he soldiers on.
You can approach thousands of women, but if you have no game, if you persist in engaging women with your socially clumsy schtick and never trying to improve yourself, all that you’ll get is a huge notch count of rejections — a botch count. Sure, you might “get lucky” once in a blue moon using nothing but numbers game. But why wait for that when real game — real cultivated charisma — can increase your lay odds to a level, at the least, where you go from 1 lay in 1,000 approaches to 1 lay in 100 approaches? And with hotter babes on top of it? That’s an order of magnitude better success with women over just maxing out your number of pickup attempts.
Not to mention, a numbers game mentality will do nothing for you once you’re already in a relationship with a woman you love. Having no game at that stage is risking a lot; a lot more than a measly five minute approach in a bar. And it’s not like you can numbers game your girlfriend over and over until she falls back in love with you.
Anyhow, I hope this clears the air on this fallacy. I doubt it will convince the trolls, but then they were never really open to being convinced.
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