Tucker Max’s Guide to Beginner Game

I am a huge fan of Tucker Max’s stories. I think that they are for the most part hilarious and really entertaining. Tucker, also has some knowledge of the pickup scene. This is a post he wrote on his message board answering a fan’s question about how to develop game. If you are new to this it is definately worth a read. If you haven’t read any of Tucker’s stories I suggest you check them out. For sheer entertainment value.

Tucker Max Talks Beginner Game

I guess I have to start from the bottom and work up. Here goes the Idiots Guide to Developing Game:

A. Confidence: Before you EVER go out and talk to a woman, before you even leave your house, you have to be confident. I cannot emphasize this enough. You do not have to be Tucker Max, but you must have some minimal level of self-assuredness and self-awareness. If you are weak or unsure, the woman will see it almost immediately and will almost always be put off by it. Nothing smells worse to a woman than desperation.

How can you be confident? That’s like asking how you can be creative. There is no definitive answer. Confidence comes from within, comes from an understanding and acceptance of who you are and a belief in yourself and your abilities. If you have nothing good about yourself to believe in, then find something or do something that can give you that belief. Seriously–develop a skill or talent that you are proud of. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING flows from your inner self. It is the foundation that all game is built upon.

Some guys have good things about them, but they can’t find the courage to believe in themselves. I can understand this, it happened to me when I was playing high school basketball. I was good, but I grew up playing unorganized playground ball until high school, and never really played to the level I should have during varsity practice because I was never comfortable. I didn’t have confidence in my game.

That all changed one day. We were having a shitty shitty practice, everything was fucked up, and the coach decided to scrimmage, but instead of a normal scrimmage, each one of us would “imitate” another player on the team. We would be someone else, the point being to show people how they play, so people could look at themselves and see their weaknesses displayed in another player.

I was assigned to be Brian Meeney, our star and an eventual D1 player at Long Island University. I pretended I was him. I lost my inhibitions, I forgot what I was “supposed” to be good at and what my weaknesses were “supposed” to be, and played completely out of my fucking mind–because that’s how he played. The best game I’d ever had, EVER, to that point in my life in an organized setting. I dominated the scrimmage. Everyone was shocked, the coach included, and he told me that if that was what it took, I should pretend to be Brian all the time. I didn’t have to keep pretending, because that one practice was all it took and I eventually started playing.

The lesson:
Develop confidence in yourself. If you cannot develop confidence on your own, if you don’t know what to do, then the next time you find yourself in a situation where you would normally back down or puss out or whatever, pretend you are someone else you respect. Pretend you are me. What would Tucker do? Then go ahead and do it. Go talk to that girl, drink that drink, etc.

I am the single greatest example of how confidence conquers. Do I have talent? Yes, but it’s not that great, there are plenty more with greater talent than me. Am I good looking? I’m alright, but again, nothing special. So what is it that separates me from everyone else? What makes me me? Why am I going to be rich and famous, and so many others that have more talent and looks won’t be?

Complete, utter, unshakable confidence in myself, confidence that is so high it borders on delusional hubris. Everything starts there. All of my other attributes have their foundation in my supreme egotism. Mark Twain, probably the greatest American writer ever, said it best, “With ignorance and arrogance, success is assured.”

If you sit down and always consider all the possibilities, if you waste your time worrying what others will think, if you ponder whether or not you are good enough, then you never will be.

You know how many times in my life I have gotten something or achieved something because I tried where others begged off, because I threw my hat in the ring when others kept theirs on their head? You know how many hot girls I have gotten because I went up and talked to them, while everyone else was scared of them? Yes I have game, but my game is worthless sitting alone at a table. It takes balls to approach a hot girl or to put your life on the internet, and friends, I have two huge ones, and this is why I am a winner and will always be a winner.

It doesn’t take huge balls, but achievement does require a belief in yourself and a willingness to take risks. There is no way to cheat that part of the system.

ONE IMPORTANT THING: Confidence without ability is little more than arrogant pomposity. I am not advocating that you go out and try and do what I do, unless you have my game. It is important that you be yourself, that you do what comes natural for you, that you don’t step onto a court that you don’t have the game to play on. I used to play b-ball at these outdoor courts, where there were like four courts lined up in a row. Court 1 was the best players, Court 4 were the complete scrubs, and 2 and 3 there were somewhere in between. I started on Court 4, because I wasn’t good enough for 1, 2, or 3. Even though I was confident in myself, I knew my limits and I understood who I was, which at that point was a crappy basketball player. I eventually became a regular on Court 1, but it took time and dedication.

At it’s core, confidence comes from the internal belief that you can accomplish the task at hand, so in some ways, this is a Catch 22 for guys without game. How can you get confidence with having game? Trial and error. Follow my instructions below, and go out and talk to women and you will get better, believe in yourself more, and thereby get even better. Nothing helps you improve like a positive feedback loop.

–OK, so now you have confidence, but confidence by itself means nothing if you are sitting at home alone. Where do you go from there?

B. Make yourself presentable: You do not have to be some idiotic guido who is vain beyond Naomi Campbell levels, but at least have a minimal level of cleanliness, hygiene, and fashion. If you do not have a good sense of style, that’s fine, just wear the same nondescript things that every other guy does. I dress as non-descript as possible, and it works fine.

This is pretty easy to accomplish, but you’d be surprised how many guys fuck it up. Well, girls wouldn’t, because they see it. You don’t need to win girls with your looks or style, but your goal should be to at least not lose anyone because of how you are dressed. If you are unsure how to dress, go out, look at what the successful guys are wearing, and copy them until you develop your own style.

Alright, you are confident, dressed reasonably well, so what now?

C. Talk to women: Seems basic doesn’t it–but guess what? Most guys just go out and sip beers with their friends and don’t do shit. You can’t get big without lifting weight, you can’t get fast without running sprints, and you can’t have game without talking to women.

This of course begs the question, “How?”

I am going to assume that you know the woman. This is a thread on beginning game, and I never ask beginners to go out and pick up women on their own. How to approach and pick up women is medium level game, and we’ll cover that another time, here we are going to assume that you know the woman or have been introduced in some way or another, and are past the introductory phases.

You are a relatively confident, decently dressed guy, and you have the attention of the woman. Guess what–you are at least half way there. The problem is that from this point forward, you are kinda on your own. I cannot script a conversation for you, and I cannot tell you what to talk about. A conversation is a dynamic, organic thing. What I can do is tell you how to talk to a woman, but not necessarily what to talk about.

1. Be attentive: When you are talking to a woman, pay attention to her. Listen to what they say, don’t just wait for your turn to speak. Engage them on the topic, do not just blabber on about what you want to talk about. BUT–do not take this too far. DO NOT fawn over her, and DO NOT act like she is your universe. On the other hand, you can play it nonchalant and cool, but even if you do that, make it clear you are interested in the conversation and you enjoy talking to her (If you don’t enjoy talking to her, then don’t talk to her. If you are just talking to her to get laid, then fake it).

2. Do not focus on yourself, unless it’s natural: Most people, especially guys, do this; they continually talk about themselves and always relate the topic at hand back to themselves. This is because most people are blindly self-centered, and don’t even realize what they are doing. Avoid doing this. Women generally HATE guys who just drone on about themselves. Focus on her or on mutually interesting topics, and talk about yourself only if it is natural to the conversation. Make the conversation about a topic, not about yourself.

3. Be funny/witty/perceptive/intelligent/etc: There are few things worse than a boring person. If you are that guy, you are not getting laid without a credit card. Make funny observations, say smart things, have witty comebacks, etc. I’m not even sure how to explain anymore here, you either know what I’m talking about or you don’t. If you don’t know how to be funny or witty, then hang out with people who are and imitate them until you develop your own style. That’s basically how I learned.

One legitimate question you could have here though is not “How do I be funny,” but something like, “I am funny around my friends, but I just get nervous around women, I freeze up and I’m just not as funny.”

This goes back to the confidence question. You are nervous because you are not experienced with women, and thus you have no basis for confidence. There IS a solution to this problem. Actually, there are two ways to get over your nervousness around women:

The Tucker Solution: Remember when you had a girlfriend? Talk to girls as if you are talking to your girlfriend’s friends. When you talk to your girlfriends friends, you are funny and witty and charming because you are loose and there is no pressure. There is always that underlying sexual tension, barely felt, because you know that deep down they are evaluating you as a potential mate, but you don’t approach them in a sexual manner, which drives them nuts. When you are talking to the girl, just tell yourself that you have no desire to sleep with her and you could less what comes of the interaction, but you still want to be nice. This approach to the conversation will make you loose and natural, and very attractive. Think about it: How many times have you found yourself doing great flirting with some old woman, because it was completely harmless and you had nothing to lose? Be that way with all women by pretending they are that old woman, or that woman that you have no real desire to sleep with.

The DrunkRex Solution: “Stop CARING what the woman thinks about every word that comes out of your mouth. You care because you do not want to get rejected or look like a chump when they don’t buy your game or call BS. Whatever. Who cares? At the end of the night, the handful of girls you talked to that evening will have their lips WRAPPED around somebody’s cock and it might as well be yours. Being confident in what you are saying and not caring about the outcome of neither your conversation nor the evening as a whole will make you more attractive most women.”

In reality, the solutions are just different mental approaches to the same end–You are releasing your desire, and as a result you are not invested in the outcome and are not putting any pressure on yourself. You are reducing your stress level, and humans almost always perform better in a relaxed non-stressful environment.

Just ask yourself–how many times have you been more successful with a girl you didn’t even think you were hitting on, than one you did?

4. Display your strengths: I cannot emphasize this enough. Whatever you are, whatever it is you are good at, accentuate it. Women are naturally attracted to males who display some sort of quantifiable talent, some skill or ability that is valued in society. Have you ever wondered how dumbass professional athletes or shit bag rockstars get pussy? It has NOTHING to do with them as people; most of them suck horribly. Women are attracted to the fact that they have highly valued skills or talents, things that translate to power.

For you, being Joe Anonymous, it means that you need to give the woman something to admire or find attractive, and it usually doesn’t take much. My god, even professional Golden Tee players have groupies. I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve been spitting good game at a girl and she has given me no love, but once she finds out I have a JD, or I wrote two books, or any number of other cool things about me, she does a 180 and is completely into me. Many times it has nothing to do with your game–sometimes it’s all about what you have to offer, so display it.

One note–Be somewhat humble about talking about your achievements. Unless you are a douche bag jamook, and all you have to offer is your coco-butter soaked body, don’t just go around talking about how great you are. It always plays better if she finds out your achievements indirectly. It is a difficult dance, but that is what good wingmen are for–to tell her about you, so you don’t have too.