Unless you have the kind of good looks that are absolutely irrefutable, relying on them to pick up women is not a robust strategy and you will have to learn game. Why? Because the results that a man can achieve solely through his appearance are hugely inconsistent and not to be relied upon.
This is why the concept of ‘leagues’ in the sexual marketplace is a flawed one. If you see a girl and fail to approach her because you think she’s ‘out of your league’ then you are doing yourself a disservice because you can never know for sure what physical type she prefers in a man before you walk up to her.
Looks Are An Inconsistent Indicator Of Success
To explain what I mean, let me tell you a little about my own experience. Of course, it is difficult for anyone to be completely objective about their appearance, but if forced to describe myself I’d probably go for something like “quite good looking, not particularly tall.”
While I have definitely attracted women on the basis of my looks without having to run a great deal of game, I am certainly not in the male model category I mention above.
For full disclosure a girl I slept with a couple of years ago rated me, unprompted, as an 8.5 . My feeling is that she was being somewhat generous, and that you should definitely shave a point or two off of that. In fact, I am somewhere in the vast, grey middle of male SMV, where I suspect many other guys—probably most guys—sit also.
What does this mean for my results with women? That they are inconsistent (when based solely on looks) and at times wildly unpredictable. I have pulled 9s and I have been brutally rejected by 6s.
When I look back at photographs of myself at college or university I can see now that I was decent looking. Was I getting girls though? Hell no.
Game Denialists
This is where those game-denialists who write in comments sections on articles like this one that “it’s all about looks” are way off beam. Because if I took that girl I slept with at face value then I could claim to be a good-looking guy—an 8.5!—put down all of this game stuff and just wait for all the sexual offers to come flooding in.
But it doesn’t work like that.
For a start your looks (and your sexual market value generally) are always judged contextually, and there is always someone better looking than you (or richer, more powerful, stronger or whatever).
A couple of weeks ago I picked up on IOIs (indicators of interest) from this very sexy Belarusian girl I met in Berlin. Blonde, slim and aged 24 with pert breasts, I’d confidently expect most men to put her at an 8.5 or 9. As soon as I met her this girl flashed me so-called ‘doggy dinner bowl eyes’. Later we exchanged contact details and off the bat she began sending me sexually-charged, flirtatious messages. Then we met at a club where things got very hot between us indeed.
It’s still work-in-progress but her attraction to me can’t be doubted, and I didn’t need to ‘game’ her at approach in the normal way.
If only it were always like that.
Then on Saturday I went to a club in Berlin filled with hot girls—and tall, good-looking men—where it was a huge slog for me to get any traction at all. I probably opened around 20 girls, got shut down by the majority and only achieved any real traction with a couple of them.
My point is that in theory I’m someone who could just about be accused of running ‘good-looking guy game’, particularly by a man a few points below me on the SMV scale. But the unfortunate truth of the matter is that I can no more ‘rely’ on my looks than he can.
Style
I’ve been thinking a lot about IOIs recently and it would be a lie to say that I don’t consider them to be a very important element of my game. The more that you are able to pick up on those small signals girls put out that show that they like you, the better. It means that your approaches are warm rather than cold, and that you are more likely to see a positive result from your approach.
But bear in mind that IOIs are not solely indexed to your looks. A girl may display interest based on your confidence, on the way you walk, on the way you speak, on your body language, your clothes, your style—everything about you, in fact. The good news here is that a majority of those things are completely within your control.
I have pretty good style, a distinct look and way of carrying myself. I dress well, I speak powerfully and I’m pretty confident. This is all a result of self-improvement work that I’ve undertaken over many years and I believe it’s why I’m now a lot more successful with women than I was in my late teens and twenties (when I was as good-looking, if not more so).
But on App like Tinder which is based solely on looks I don’t do anything like as well as my male model friend. And in venues like clubs where looks are paramount, the success that I do achieve comes largely through the confident, cocky and dominant manner in which I approach.
Put it this way, if I just stand around ‘relying on my looks’ and waiting for girls to come up to me then I’m likely to go home empty-handed.
The truth is that looks (and in particular male looks) are very much in the eye of the beholder and subject to that beholder’s own individual tastes and preferences. Yes, if you have really top-tier male model looks then those alone will probably get you laid enough for you not to have to worry too much about using game to get sex (although you will always need some game). But if your own aesthetic falls anywhere short of top tier then the principles of game are absolutely essential if you want to introduce any level of consistency at all into your sex life.
Before learning game my access to women was extremely patchy. Although I slept with some very attractive girls, ‘dry spell’ of several months in between were not unusual, and the girls tended to leave me anyway when they realised that I was beta with no idea of how to handle them.
It was only when I internalised the principle of game that I was able to achieve the sort of abundant, regular sex life that I’d always desired My looks, meanwhile, remained unchanged, demonstrating to me unequivocally that it is the manner in which I interact with girls rather than the way that I look that really makes the difference.
For a compilation of all Troy’s best game writing, advice and techniques from the last four years buy his new book How To Get Hot Girls Into Bed.
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