Stealing Other Peoples’ Sets

Does anyone else do this?

In poker there is a move called “stealing the pot”. This is where the player detects weakness in his opponents, usually through their body language, and makes a large bet to force them to fold inferior or drawing hands. This is an aggressive manoeuvre designed to drive out people with poor hands by bluffing. To do it properly, you need to be able to read the situation accurately and have the confidence to make a large bet without appearing to bluff.

I have been interested in doing something like this in PU. So this week I set myself the task of only opening sets that are currently being chatted up by another guy.

I like the idea of this because I am into night game and in most Dublin clubs there are a lot of guys gaming girls. It’s hard to find a lone wolf or a set that isn’t interacting with another male. The really hot chicks get hit on heavily and you practically have to queue up to open them.

Basically, I watch a set, wait for another guy to approach. I look at my watch, observe their reactions, and if he doesn’t isolate one of them within 2 minutes I try and steal his women. I like this exercise because it demonstrates an alpha mentality, puts your confidence to work, and encourages good people-reading. Obviously if you can do a cold read or lip read on the guy who approaches and guess his opening line, you can exploit this when you make your approach.

I’ve done this approach 5 or 6 times over the last week and have been working on my follow through conversations based on the responses I got from the first few women. Here is Saturday nights set where I got a makeout and number close by stealing a HB8.5 from under another guys nose.

I was sarging alone in a house/dance (is there a difference?) oriented club in South Dublin, I had blown a 9 on the dancefloor, so I relocated to the bar. There was a blonde HB8.5 (I say 8.5 because she was really hot but not overwhelming like a 9 or 10) and her brunette HB7.5 pal at the bar. 8.5 was wearing a revealing outfit and I turned away from her to face the bar. This was partly because I wanted to convey disinterest by not staring at her bare back, but also because I knew she wouldn’t be left alone for more than 1 minute. Sure enough, a tall red haired guy in a trendy scarf opened her. I didn’t clock his opener, but he was still leaning in, brandishing a pint and asking too many questions. Based on his volume of questions I put him on an opinion opener. I moved in and asked 8.5 “it seems appropriate to ask…at this moment…if a guy was to approach you in a bar…would you prefer if he was really direct…looking you in the eye and getting it across….or would you prefer if he was like trying to come in under the radar…asking you if preferred cats or dogs.”

She said something along the lines of “Direct. But if he’s going to be direct there’s got to be an attraction there, cos if there’s no attraction it’s not going to work.” That sounds like a watered down shit test to me.

“So what you’re saying is you don’t care what they say to you? Maybe you should be approaching them.”

It worked cos she just said “where are you from?” I get asked this a lot, so I’ve done up my own pattern, which I call the Belfast Pattern (Due to my accent I get asked, “where are you from?” in around half of all sets, so I say I’m from Belfast and run the pattern). Basically the pattern compares Belfast to Dublin, it’s a standard pace-and-lead job and contains the following embedded commands.

- feeling at home is like when you feel a sense of connection to a person
-you feel a sense of familiarity
-but you also get what you can’t get at home, a sense of exciting possibilities
-you don’t feel that sense of limitation that you got in the other place

I started kino about halfway through the pattern. I got the following IOIs

Verbal
“Where are you from?”
“Your accent is really nice”

Non Verbal
>3 seconds eye contact
Responding to kino
Shifting feet
Asks if I want to try her drink

By this point the other guy was out of sight, and I ran basically the same stuff on her brunette friend (to confuse them as to my intentions and create HV).

I didn’t need to isolate because she asked me if I’d like to come with her for a cigarette. The smoking area is outside. I went, said I’d never smoked (this was a mistake as it conveys my only motive for going outside is to be with her). I tried my “first” cigarette and described the experience, I used this to pace and lead to feeling of relaxation and a slight rising excitement (generally when a HB smokes, eats chocolate or drinks expensive wine with me I will start pacing the experience and trying to lead into arousal).

We went inside, by this stage I was at a good level of kino and had her alone with all the IOIs I needed so I kiss closed by saying “there’s something I wanna do” and kissing her.

She then took me back to her friend and introduced me to her AMOG brother. The last time I was made to jump through this particular hoop the brother was a total nerd, and bizarrely I found it easier to work with the AMOG brother. I think this is because all the AMOG bro wanted to talk about was himself -easy, and all the nerd bro wanted to talk about was his sister – a subject where you have to tread carefully if you want to score her. Anyways, it was 3am and I decided there was no chance of an f close given that her brother and friend were there, so I went for a standard number close.

Is there a way I could have gone further?