Mystery Method

Although there are several systems out there, the best published is Mystery Method ("M3"), so we start there. Mystery supposedly started as a shy magician in his twenties and taught himself club game, so on the one hand had experience of socialising with strange women but on the other hand relied on props. In the end he became so famous he decided to emigrate to where not so many women recognised him and his tricks.

As featured in The Game, the whole process is called game. There are rules, players and a score. Gaming can also be called the Venusian Arts or seduction, although strictly speaking in M3, seduction is the third and final stage after attraction and comfort. The key is attraction, as without that you are going nowhere, and with it the rest could take care of itself, but more so if you practice the method. Although it is a day’s work to get a woman to sleep with you, most Venusian artists and women prefer a relationship, so the process taking about seven hours is usually spread over a number of days. In short the method involves using conversation to approach, impress, befriend and move elsewhere to become intimate.

MM can be criticised for focussing on attraction through gimmicks, negs and stories, which will run out of steam without the inner game to back it up or the conversation skills for comfort. It is geared to groups, especially clubs, so fine for SNLs. But most guys just want a trustworthy girlfriend who will need to be found in day game, which needs situational openers and conversation skills more akin to natural game, which is also mainly aimed at clubs. Yet all other methods, whether they call it mid-game or comfort or end game or closing, have to acknowledge the basic structure, even if they build on it with preselection, NLP or natural game.

Calibration

Experience in approaching will give you the ability to judge social situations.

Internalisation

More experience will give you the ability to automatically remember the counter-response to any response.

Savvy

Hot women have been approached more times than you have approached women.

Process

You should just relax and enjoy socialising. Your mission is not to get the girl but to practice so that eventually you tend to get girls anyway without trying so hard.

Sexual relationships

Although relationships need maintaining and often ending, this book is about what comes before - courtship. Whilst pickup can be denigrated, you are only alive because your dad picked up your mum. Parents dated and grandparents courted. There might have been romance, but the one thing for sure is that a guy bedded a girl and made you. You will date too. But nobody does anything until they’ve picked someone up. Even a friend has to be picked up even though the intention is to be friends. Pickup is about making friends fast, just with women you fancy.

Courtship

The three stages roughly correspond to pickup, mid-game and end-game, and are attraction, comfort and seduction. So by pickup we mean attraction, and by seduction we mean converting comfort to sex. Pickup runs from stages called A1 to C1, mid-game is C2-3 and seduction is S1-3.

Attraction

The best thing you can do is get yourself pre-selected by showing that other women are interested in you.

A1 - Opening

You approach with an opener and gain acceptance, evidenced by indicators of interest (IOI). If she is hard work, that may be her protection shield, which is not about you, but just a defence against suspected undesirables. The location is wherever she is. You look as if you are just leaving.

Location

Replication

Women rationalise socialising by saying they are only there to dance, etc., but they would not be there if it was, say, a women’s only club or only allowed married men in, so you know they are really there to mate. So you know they want to be opened.

Groups

Beautiful women don’t tend to hang out alone, as they get pestered too much, so you need to get her group interested in talking to you.

Comfort in venue

Scope out your meeting location until you feel like you own the place or at least work or are hosting a party there.

Proximity

If a shy woman fancies you she may position herself two metres away facing away. This says please approach me (society tells her she must not open you).

3 second rule

This is often misunderstood. One justification for approaching within three seconds of seeing someone you like is it stops them noticing that you were not confident enough to just blast straight in. This is not an issue if you decide who you want to approach out of the blue, but remember that statistically men tend to only approach after two IOIs, e.g. two glances or a glance and a smile, so if you are limiting yourself to invitations she may well have noticed you, in which case the clock is ticking. The main reason for the rule is to prevent you having time to talk yourself out of approaching. Another reason for barging into sets in a venue (however many seconds you take) is you look like you either know everyone or are incredibly sociable, which gives you social proof for when you want to get picky later. You should scope out her situation to ensure she will be free to talk for three minutes to give you enough time to get her sufficiently interested to come back to you after an interruption. So sometimes you must not dive in within seconds but should wait a few minutes, like if she's at the front of a queue.

Openers

Opening is a gambit to get attention, not to chat up your target nor to introduce yourself. In other words you are not naming your brand or revealing your prospect, just selling benefits to the group that happens to include your prospect. Because you do not want to alienate her friends or provoke her lover (who you might have mistaken for a colleague), you rarely want to use a direct opener (which conveys interest - a bad thing until she's earnt it). Instead you probably want an indirect opener (general excuse to talk to a set). Thanks to TV, girls may have heard the “fight outside” opener so you will need your own ten second story.

In venue

You could be in any meeting place, but most tips apply to clubs. As only three per cent of people have had a relationship with someone from a nightclub, club game is really for one night stands or practice ready for meeting someone special elsewhere. Do not buy strange girls drinks. If she wants you she will have to buy the first one then you take turns or you may even take the hit on all subsequent drinks. Just do not make yourself look desperate by being used or playing by the same rules as an AFC (average frustrated chump). Remember you are initially there to practice, so practice getting rejected rather than practice avoiding being rejected by not approaching – you are probably already good at that. To help bust through approach anxiety and treat it as a game you could give a wingman your cash and tell him to give it back at the rate of a tenner per opened set. You don’t have to have wingmen. If you go out alone you can point at your “friends” who you “have to get back to”. After all, if you opened a mixed set, the next set may have seen you with them and assume you are part of the gang. Don’t hug a drink as it makes you look nervous. You should phase out alcohol, as you need to be a conversationalist, dancer and strategist. Smile. Eventually you can learn enough material that you can “stack” it and just blast back with the next story if the previous one flops. The first few sets are only a warm-up, so they are barely even practice, they just get you in state. Stay where you can be heard. Change venue every few hours to restock supplies of targets or take new friends to. Forget the so-called competition. Most guys do not have game, and will just stay in their group or get drunk or prop up the bar looking boring or unapproachable. If you can enthral guys in conversation you look like a leader, so you do not have to stick to women. In short you should aspire to become the show. Maybe some magic, jokes, photos and mock dance lessons.

Protection shield

Defences against undesirables, whom she does not yet know you to be or not, include rings, friends, boyfriends, bitchiness or ignoring you. Tactics to get through the shield all amount to making it look like you could not possibly be trying to game your target. They include a disposable girl to accompany you, false time constraints (FTC) and looking uninterested. She needs to see you create your own reality, so you must not react to her nonsense. Once she sees you are valuable yet do not need her, she will get jealous. Hopefully she will soon be looking at, talking to, laughing at and touching you.

Canned material

These are rehearsed, value-demonstrating routines, such as openers and stories. Not everyone is a fan, and they are mainly to get you started, as you will learn to improvise. A classic mistake is to spend hours online searching for the perfect opener or “DHV” story when you should be out there blagging your way into sets and talking naturally. What you should find with experience of improvising is that you learn to predict responses, so you end up as safe as with canned material. But remember, as well as remembering what to say, your body and speech need to be saying “alpha male”.

Expressiveness

You need to move your mouth more, inside for tonality and outside for facial expression. Go in with slightly more energy than the set, enough so you are more interesting than their current conversation but not so much that you are applying for a job as their gay best friend.

False time constraints

To stop her worrying that you are a loser who she will need to get rid of, before you have proven you are not a loser, you should put her mind at rest that you are just going anyway. You may often “need to get back to your friends”. Even when she is comfortable with you, it does no harm to imply she might lose you by reminding her that you ought to be going.

Body rocking

You can imply an FTC by occasionally turning as if to go, but coming back with just one more thing.

Moving sets

If the women are walking you should either walk slightly ahead of them and talk over your shoulder until they catch up with you, or intercept them whilst rooted to the spot. Either way you must not look like you are chasing them. Instead they have to chase you by a couple of feet to hear you properly.

Seated sets

To sit down without looking too keen you should open standing up then give a FTC, then some material while you pull out a chair. You could keep going to leave but sitting back down as you give another FTC.

Body language

Opening

Open with your head turned to the set, but not your body – they do not deserve your full attention until they accept you by listening or turning their body to you.

Leaning back

As you are higher value, the girl will have to stretch up to you to hear you. AFCs bend down to hear her.

Voice

Speak louder, deeper with pauses. Consider voice coaching and impro classes.

Incongruence

Practice canned material until it sounds like you, as she will know when it is not.

Social proof

AFCs will look low value by sharking, skulking and generally casting around for somebody more interesting. You will look high value by engaging with your wing or sets, who are already higher value than anyone else you have seen.

A2 - F2M interest

You demonstrate high value (DHV) to the set with stories, jokes, games, palm reading, etc., but feign disinterest in the target to secure her interest, evidenced by indicators of interest in response to being left out and criticised. Although you are constantly looking out for IOIs and initially lobbing in the occasional neg, it is mainly about conversation, with a lot of technique to learn. This should take three to eight minutes during which you don’t expect to touch her up, but after five minutes you should be thinking about getting into the next stage, M2F interest.

Indicators of Interest

You are mainly looking for her to pick up the conversation, laugh, touch and build rapport. Other IOIs are sideways glances, hair tossing, eye contact, smiles, hanging around, interrupting, brushing past, inventing excuses to talk to you, asking your name or age, compliments, challenges, play punches, nicknames, playing with her hair, asking/assuming about your girlfriend, silence about boyfriend, suddenly liking what you like, checking your reactions, introducing to friends, buying you drink, telling you she’s leaving (she wants you to ask for her number), asking where you’re going (she wants you to invite her). Look out for passive IOIs such as staying put while you or her friends go to the toilet, or while you get closer. Also look out for fake IOIs deployed to see how easily manipulated you are. Check she is talking, laughing and touching. If not sure, escalate and see if she flinches.

Negs

To start with you beam your DHV to the others. This convinces them that you are worth allowing in. Once you aim it at your target you risk investing in her too fast, so to rebalance power if she is a 8-10 you neg her. If she is not a 8, 9 or 10 her self-esteem around dating might not be strong enough to take it and you do not need so much to put her down a peg anyway unless she raises the bitch shield – then you might have to risk a neg even on a more average looking girl. There is also the argument that people don’t like people who criticise them and that confident people do not feel the need to put others down, so use sparingly. The more beautiful the greater the frequency and severity of the negs, but not more than one a minute. The undertone of the neg is “yes you’re cute but I’ve seen better”. It is usually a tease or criticism. You should say your thing and carry on without looking for a reaction, otherwise it becomes a DLV. A classic criticism is to question whether something is real. Nails, eyelashes, hair, boobs, depending what humour she can take. You might follow up with an accusation that her nose wiggles when she laughs, ask her friend where her off button is or tell the group they “can’t take her anywhere” or ask them “is she always like this?”. Typical negs accuse her of being rude, greedy, fake, gullible, forward, having issues or having sweaty palms. Once she is ready to fight back you compliment her on something other than looks. If you’ve already crossed the line, you explain that you just wanted to know where her boundaries are.

Demonstrating high value

For most DHVs the target only has your word for it. The ultimate DHV is the testimonial, implied from arriving with girls in tow. [This is basis of AFC Adam’s technique, which he calls entourage game.] As most guys are not yet up to pimp standard with their female friend count, it mostly comes down to saying something. To avoid looking low value by feeling the need to impress her you must accidentally impress her without boasting. The classic method is a story which implies you are sociable as only sociable guys would spin a yarn, and expresses high value traits. The key points to get across are that you do not need her, are not impressed with her and are a leader. You also want to pepper the conversation with interesting titbits. Once you are cool with opening female sets, you can open mixed sets, where you will also need to appoint yourself as pack leader by being more interesting than the most alpha of the guys in the group.

Conversation

You need enough topics to do 90% of the talking until the set sees enough value that they do more talking themselves, without stringing out one topic like most guys do and thus ending up looking you care whether the conversation lasts. This will also allow you to flick between subjects like friends do. If her friends turn up, you should neg her to them and cut to a new subject to entertain them until they accept you then carry on with one-to-one topics with her. The one question you ask every set is “how do you know each other?” That gives you clues on who can be trusted and who will get in your way. A suspected boyfriend might be a brother who knows she has a boyfriend, or he might be a co-worker who does not care.

Roleplaying

You don't need to actually roleplay (although a class in impro helps your playfulness) but you should interject serious conversation with fun conspiratorial scenarios of what you think you both should do together.

False disqualifiers

Joke that it would never work, you’re dumping her, she’s too nice or in the wrong job. You could even point out someone better suited.

Group dynamics

A lone girl looks easy as there are no friends to block you, but without them you can’t neg her so often and don’t know when they might turn up with no buy-in just as things were hotting up. If you’re near you should just approach. If far, you can wait for eye contact, but then must dive in. Without friends listening in you can be more direct. Mystery suggests “I wanted to find out if there’s more to you than meets the eye”. With a pair, the ugly one doesn’t have friends to amuse her, so you have to do it yourself for several minutes while you ignore and neg the target. The main problem comes later, as you can’t easily isolate the target on this occasion unless you have a wingman. You focus on the target in M2F stage after about five minutes. If the companion is male you befriend him before asking how they know each other. He may reveal he is a friend, brother or colleague and so you are in. If he is not adding more value than you he may well slope off. If there are several companions, you tell them something along the lines of you’ve been ignoring their friend so you just want to borrow her to make it up to her as you like each other. To help bust into high quality sets you could use a female wing, known as a pivot, or commandeer a pretty but not stunning girl to walk round with. You could beef up the number of companions to keep the friend busy by backward merging whereby you introduce the next set to the current set. If your mind goes blank, assert something, like “I bet you’re...”.

A3 - M2F interest

You get her to invest in the conversation and reward her with your interest. Now she chases you and you move her to a quieter spot. You bait her until she invests with DHVs which you reward with IOIs. You need her to invest otherwise you are not worth having if you are free. An added bonus of investment is it discourages her from running off with higher value. Essentially, you must stand up to her so she knows you would protect her from the big bad world.

Hoops

She may test you with fake IOIs or IODs. You never react or apologise. Your three options are change the subject, ignore or turn the tables, e.g. if she requests a drink you say you’ll buy the next one. If she asks a question you might say she has to guess.

Role reversal

Here you use female ploys on her, like suggesting she’s moving too fast or you should just be friends. You could drop in mention of the sort of women you like, e.g. they have to be sensual, energetic and imaginative. See if you can’t get her qualifying herself to you like mad, twiddling her hair while she regails you with proof she is all three things, as per Mystery’s famous video.

Spin manoeuvre

If a girl has her back to a support like a bar, you look and feel exposed and look to other women like you are gaming her and she can be distracted by the whole room. So ask her to put her hand out, take it and spin her around while you take her place. Now you are her universe and it looks like she is gaming you.

M2F interest

By about the fourth minute you ought to be getting lockin anyway so you can escalate without being left as an outsider.

Screening

Now you interview her subtly. Throw in some IOIs to reward her and IODs to keep her guessing, tell stories that hint at your standards, and say what sort of people you don't like and ask if she's like that or ask what her best qualities are. Now she's thinking you have so much choice you have to be picky.

Investment questions

Try getting her to invest in you by asking her polite but personal questions about health, relationships or education. Everyone has been ill, dumped or bored at college, so it's a safe bet and distinguishes you from the usual "come here often" crowd.

Escalation

Touching should be often and subtle, playful and deniable. It is not to create permission for sex but to create the vibe so she wants it. To her it should in hindsight seem like magic as she can't remember how she got from holding hands to sex, and at the time there are no jolts, only smooth gradual escalations. So there is no weird "shall I kiss" moment. Rather it starts to feel weird if you don't kiss. Far from risking putting her off by rushing, if you don't take hints such as her continued presence she will take your lack of social radar as a DLV. You can easily start by touching her hand. Ruses include magic, palm reading, thumb wrestling, twirl and "rings story". As Mystery cleverly points out, you should meet resistance with rejection so that compliance is more comfortable than being pushed away for being a spoilsport.

Push-pull

Take away her rejection power by commandeering the push role. Whenever you pull her towards you push her away, so she feels safe that you are not putting her on a one-way conveyor belt.

Compliance tests

Whatever you do, she allows or reciprocates.

Kino test

Put your hands out palms up and see if she takes them, lower them slowly and see if she holds on.

Bait-hook-reel-release

You should always be asking-receiving-thanking-rejecting, so like a cat playing with a string, whenever she gets it she loses it. The only difference between her defying and complying is if she complies you don’t react, i.e. no reward, no SoI, no kino, no IoI.

C - Comfort

C1 - Conversation

Dialogue builds rapport. In comfort, she needs to see the real you, feel safe and glimpse a social life she’d like to join. In comfort, you only freeze out by ignoring, although sniper negs are OK.

Locations

C1 is the most secluded spot in your comfort location. C2 is another quieter venue. C3 is a comfort building spot in the sex location. So pickup is at current location and C1, mid-game is at C2 and end game is at C3 and sex location. C1 exists because it is too scary for her to jump from where you met to a new venue. C3 exists because it is too scary for her to jump from the second venue to the bedroom. Moving within a location is “moving”. Moving between locations is called “jumping”. Have your quiet spot ready before you approach.

Moving to C1

Mystery gives the examples of giving her a prop so she has to chase you, or taking her hand and telling her you want to show her something interesting.

Rapport

Demonstrate vulnerability and connection. Talk about fun, interesting and emotional topics. Show humour, opinion and passion. An old trick was to happen to have an envelope of holiday snaps in your inside pocket, which happened to include images of you as a leader of men and protector of loved ones. Nowadays, you would put interesting photos on your phone, so you can tell her DHV stories or let her draw her own conclusions when she sneaks a peak while you're in the toilet. Talking occupies her rational mind to stop it wondering off into anti-slut defence.

Question game

A useful fallback. Tell her the rules which are essentially that you take turns asking each other secrets. Tell her to go first to encourage her to say "no you go first”. Your first question is “how many boyfriends have you had?”.

Commonality

Build rapport through similarity by swapping musical preferences, etc.

Conspiracy

Try to get her to join you in making nicknames for others or anything to create a them & us vibe, like Murder-Marry-Shag (take turns to point out three potential partners and ask which you would kill, marry or shag).

Vulnerability

Reveal a story of embarrassment or insecurity.

Punishment-reward

In C1 instead of IoDing severely you are subtle and rather give her a hoop to jump through and reward compliance.

Jealousy

Fear of loss is stronger than anticipation of gain, so you are better to use other girls to make her jealous than keep DHVing. This is where mentioning a girlfriend, or preferably a pivot, pawn or random girl enlisted explicitly to make someone jealous come in handy.

Grounding

If she asks what you do, before answering, lead her to it via an interesting journey of your childhood career aspirations. This stops her being overwhelmed in case you outrank her in the career stakes and stops her feeling like she couldn’t understand your world. Be ready to explain who you are – which is what you do, not only your occupation.

C2 – Connection (mid-game)

You should change location. The vibe appears and you end up kissing. This might be over a series of dates. Mid-game is her keeping you company. It includes touching, kissing, phone game, bridging, bouncing and generally hanging out – what some would call dating. It takes about a day’s work, but not rushed into one day unless you want to risk scaring her or not getting subsequent sex. It may mean several quick dates to get from talking through holding hands and kissing to sex. Don’t kiss until you’ve got at least three IoIs such as touching, laughing and picking up conversation. You should be able to kiss within 20 minutes of meeting. Know your C2 location before you go to the pickup location. The C2 will be a quieter place like a bar or lounge after the noise of a club. To jump you either bounce or time bridge. Bouncing means taking people to a new location under some pretext. Get her number first so you don’t look a failure if she won’t bounce. Don’t expect her to bounce in the first half hour. If she can’t or won’t bounce, you time bridge by making a date, with an excuse of what you’re doing and why she should come. You could explain you are meeting a friend somewhere tomorrow and she should join you.

Phone game

Keep talking for a few minutes after you get the number so it was coincidental to the date, rather than a goal. Call to chat or invite her to something you’re doing with friends. Don’t fall into the date pattern of an immediate one-on-one meet. Keep calling from fun places and mentioning fun stuff you have planned – eventually she may invite herself.

Dates

Need loads of venue changes and hours. To making coming back to your place no big deal, accidentally forget something and take her back inside for a moment while you find it, then later she’s cool with coming back there, when you also warn her she can’t stay as you’ve got to be up in the morning .

C3 - Intimacy

In a discreet location you end up petting. This will probably be a seat near the bedroom. It’s better to escalate too fast than too slow, as you can always slow down, but if you miss your chance she’ll think you didn’t like her.

S - Seduction

The location should change.

S1 - Foreplay

S1 is moving to the bedroom. Heavy petting escalates.

S2 - Last minute resistance

She may have second thoughts, known as LMR. To prevent last minute resistance, which is her avoiding getting pregnant by a player, let her know during comfort that it is annoying you that she keeps popping up in your mind. Then she knows she has won you rather than you are borrowing her. If she protests, agree until she continues.

Freezeout

If she stops, you walk away to do something else until she calls you back.

S3 – Sex

Several times within a few days to bond her.