Tom Torero’s memoir-textbook “Daygame”

I’m smacking my head after reading this:

I asked her to bring me a present costing no more than £1, and I’d do the same. It’s an “investment routine” that I’v used many times since, which gets the girls to commit to the date and not flake – they spend the week thinking of what to get you.

The quote is from Tom Torero’s DayGame (and epub download suitable for e-readers) and the suggestion is brilliant and easy. I wish I’d thought of this ten years ago. Being good at anything is the accumulation of thousands of small details. This suggestion is one and it must improve pipeline retention. People can also usually only hold a single thing in their mind at a time, so if she’s thinking about the present she’s not thinking about whether she ought to flake.

If you are doing any amount of game and earn more than $5 per hour you need to read this book, as it may save you many many hours through suggestions like the one above. The ones you find most useful will be different from the ones I find most useful. Guys will get more from reading one comprehensive book than 100 random, fragmented blog posts. Daygame puts many seduction pieces together. The simplest parts of game are the very beginning (when there isn’t much to do apart from opener, vibe, and stack) and the very end (the actual sex). It’s the middle where the action happens and for that reason most of Daygame is about the middle, just like most of the Internet posts are about the beginning or end, where guys need the least instruction.

There are too many lessons in Daygame to list them all, but I like: “Either interactions go well, or they’re just funny stories.” Exactly right and you have permission to take the pressure off. Be fizzy and exciting. There are an infinite number of possibilities out there and while I’ve done many things right, I’ve also spent too much of my life taking things with women too seriously. That has almost always been a mistake. Learn to let go and be light, rather than heavy.

Some of the lessons regularly readers of this blog-memoir will recognize: “This whole story, and other ones in the book, show that deleting details is a bad move, as you never know when circumstances change and a number sparks to life again.” Remember “Snapchat in Game?” That’s what I’m saying there. Girls are mercurial and pretty random, and you never know when one is going to turn back around into you. It is unwise to rely exclusively on rebounds but you will get some when you get good.

The psychology behind seduction and seducers is also of interest, at least to me. In the beginning Torero writes that “By the age of 23 I had slept with 2 women.” No wonder he later became a PUA. I had a relatively normal adolescent and college experience, as I started having sex on the early side of normal and never stopped. I waas at or close to what PUA guys call “abundance mentality.”I had crushes and oneitis problems, like most guys, but my past is nothing like Torero’s. Unlike many guys I’ve never had a long drought (except in my 20s when my now-ex had our second daughter, but that’s another story). That may be why I’m tiring of the game and grind while some older guys still love it. I feel like I’ve done it too long.

I don’t want to claim that I was a master seducer. I wasn’t. I’m not now. My younger self mostly had what I would now call eco system game: school and sports. Because I was obsessed with my sport I built up a solid body and solid group of people I knew. That continued into a job involving it, and into college. Also, as players know, the better your body the better your dating life will go (within limits and subject to diminishing returns like every other activity… I have known gym rats who’d be better served cutting their two hours a day in the gym and meeting actual girls) and that is particularly true among younger girls. Of course looks alone are not enough and especially for women a guy’s looks are linked to his status. But I do think I’ve coasted on looks and things like quitting sugar have been to a boon to both my physical self and confidence. Looks are also more important for online dating than off, in my experience, and quitting sugar while lifting assists here too.

At the end of the book Torero is a sage:

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy that the better your vibe, the better your approaches and dates go, and the better they go, the better your vibe. I felt like I was indestructible.

It’s fun reading these hybrid memoir-textbooks, as they teach me about the writer but also about the reader. My game has never been as tight as many of these guys, and there is a concept or slider in pop psychology that may explain why: some people are “satisficers” and others are “maximizers.” As the terms imply, satisficers keep trying until the satisfaction point for their drive or desire, while maximizers want to reach the highest possible level or state. For someone doing game a maximizer seeks some combination of the absolute hottest, younger, most loyal girls, or maybe the most extreme experiences (like three ways).

Satisficers however seek “good enough” and stop there and that has mostly described me. Which explains why I have never had the energy to really press for achievements like Torero’s. To be sure I’ve had success and some crazy stories, a few of which I’ve shared here, but nothing like the quantity of women described in Daygame. Generally I find one I like and get into a mini relationship that generally lasts three to twenty-four months. Then I begin cranking again.

At first I wasn’t consciously doing this, but over time I realized it. I think I am just too lazy to bother getting really good, but this doesn’t bother me much and I’m glad there are guys who go all the way. Reading about the Elon Musks of seduction is fascinating. I’ve had some high eights and nines and while they were wonderful, the truth is that when I’m in a woman I don’t care that much about whether she’s a decent seven or a high eight. The latter is better but in my life, especially now, there aren’t a lot of high eights out there. A while ago I dated a girl who was 19 and IMO a solid 8, with things only breaking down about 20 months in when she demanded to move in and I said no. But even with a solid 8, by the 50th or 100th sex session a guy acclimates to her body. She normalizes.

Back to Torero. Interspersed among the stories are big-picture ideas, like this:

When it comes to seduction, girls don’t want logic, they want emotions. The problem is that guys approach dating and daygame from a logical perspective, when really what they should be getting better at is seeing it from the female perspective.

Absolutely. Definitely an error I made when I was younger. The book is filled with mentions of mistakes I have made. If the next generation of guys internalize these ideas maybe they will avoid the mistakes. Most guys of course are too lazy to read books, so they will make the same errors, but the knowledge is there.

If I have a criticism of the book it is that it doesn’t look enough at the dark side. Intense gaming can be isolating and very few guys share the need to do intense game. In addition I read one of Krauser’s books in which he describes Torero going deep into the void in the 2012 – 13 period. That has been excised from this book, so one would never know it. Almost all positive things also have their shadow, and the lack of shadow here makes me doubt it more than I otherwise would.

Torero also mentions going to Oxford and studying with Richard Dawkins, but he eventually becomes a primary school teacher. Perhaps the UK is different from the U.S., but in the U.S. it’s very rare for graduates of elite universities to go into low status, low pay professions like primary school teaching. So why’d he do it? What led him there? We don’t know. Maybe it isn’t important. But it seems strange from an American reader’s eyes.