Depending on what sort of venue you’re at and what time of day it is, your environment will have a different vibe to it, a different energy level, and the people around you will have different things on their mind. Because of that, the pickup community generally refers to concepts such as Night Game, Day Game, Bar/Club Game, and Street Game, though for the most part Day Game will be Street Game, though not all Street Game is Day Game, and Bar Game tends to be Night Game, but Night Game can also be Street Game.

These categories are close to the mark, but if we ask what makes them different we discover there is a much easier way to distinguish different game environments. There are social spaces and anti-social spaces. By understanding what type of space you are in you can better anticipate your target’s expectations and pre-calibrate your game.

Social Spaces

These are the kinds of places people go to for the purpose of socializing, typically with friends but often also to socialize with strangers. The most obvious examples are bars and clubs, though there’s a number of other examples, such as communal spaces in apartment buildings and residential neighborhoods, quads and student lounges on college campuses, dog parks, and cafes that have large communal tables or a section of couches.

The key to approaches in social spaces is basically just the three second rule. The longer you wait to make an approach the more anxious you get and the more awkward it becomes. Just pretend you're already friends -- friends who happen to not know each others' names. Introduce yourself as if that's what is expected of you.

Anti-Social Spaces

These are just the opposite, places where people would very much prefer that you leave them alone. The big examples are the gym and the library. Yes, you can find a lot of cute girls in the library or at the gym, but that doesn’t mean they’re interested in talking to you at this time. The other big anti-social space to be aware of is the girl’s place of business while she’s working. There’s some variation in this, the girl on summer vacation working the froyo place in a beach town might be hoping to meet a cute guy through her job, but your waitress at the place she’s been at for years has other tables to get to.

Neutral Spaces

Not every place is social or anti-social. There’s plenty of other places like bookstores, grocery stores, farmers markets, most parks, and of course the street. In neutral spaces people don’t have socializing as their aim, but being left alone isn’t one of their top priorities. It’s better to use social spaces than neutral spaces, but that doesn’t mean neutral spaces should be discounted. Sometimes you want to go out and sarge but it’s the middle of the afternoon so bars aren’t a good option. And a lot of the time you’re just naturally in a neutral space while going about your day. Keep your eyes open for opportunities.

The difference between approaching in a Neutral Space and a Social Space is that you need to transition the target into the interaction a bit. Some guys find it useful to acknowledge they're acting outside of the norm, the ol' "You're just so stunning I couldn't let you walk by without getting to meet you." In a club, that'd be total supplication and you'd bounce right off the girl's bitch shield (probably after she got you to buy her a drink), but on the street it helps to frame the interaction. A false time constraint can also do wonders here, as odds are she has somewhere she's trying to go or something she wants to do.

Rhythm 10-2

This is a concept Tim from RSD introduced in Flawless Natural – I’m sure many other people figured this out, but he put a name to it and explained it very nicely, so credit where credit’s due. Night clubs and bars take on a certain rhythm on Friday and Saturday nights (can sometimes be Thursday nights depending on where you are). From about 10pm to midnight, most girls are interested in having a good time, getting some drinks, dancing, and making woo woo sounds with their friends. At 11pm, it’s tough to pull a girl from a club, she just got there and wants to fully enjoy her evening. This is the time to be meeting people and making friends in the venue, not to be escalating.

From midnight to 2am people have had a few drinks, inhibitions have been dropped, and things are going to get a bit sexier. This is the time to isolate and escalate or to pull. The hours aren’t exact, and a lot depends on night of the week, what city you’re in, the exact type of venue, and even what season it is (sun sets later in the summer, so people go out later, and the rhythm gets pushed back), but the general idea still holds. You’ll find you get much better success when you act congruently to the vibe of the venue.

We can also apply Tim’s Rhythm 10-2 concept to the street, and you’ll see an even greater shift in the social dynamic. At 2pm if you stop someone on the street, she was probably on her way shopping, or on a coffee break from work, and is going to be startled to have some strange guy hit on her – she might still be in to it, but it’s going to throw her off a bit and it takes some time for her to switch into courtship mode. But at 12 midnight things are completely different. What was once a neutral space has now become a social space; as people go to bars, from bars, and travel from one bar to another bar, the street becomes an extension of the bar with almost the exact same social vibe, but with much less noise (good news for people with strong conversational game).

This is of course specific to areas with a lot of bars and a big nightlife crowd. A deserted residential street late at night is definitively anti-social space – approach and prepare to be maced.

But I Saw This Girl At The Gym!

I see this one a lot. “I know the gym isn’t the ideal place to pick up girls, but why would I throw away that opportunity?! Just tell me how to do it, bro!!”

Scarcity mentality. That’s all this is. If you were going out a lot, approaching girls at bars and such, you wouldn’t feel so desperate to make use of the opportunity at the gym. And guess what? If you’re not approaching all the time in social spaces, in places where approaches are the easiest and you essentially have a seduction home-field advantage, then you’re never going to be able to pull off an approach in an anti-social space. So if you still want to know how to approach a girl in the gym, or in the library, or at her job, the best advice I can give you is to set a hard and fast rule for yourself: you won’t approach her unless you’ve made 20 other approaches in the last week.

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