Hi I'm on this subreddit because I want my plate count to be > 1. I told myself I'm gonna suck it up and try to meet as many girls as possible. Today I went out to a local bar to try to do that. Initially when I got there I didn't have anything to drink but by the end of the night I had 3 draft beers and a shot. To be honest that amount is reasonably safe, but I did reassure myself through out the night that I should calm my energy and be more in the frame. That really helped and I've always wanted to do that while being drunk but now that I am more conscious thanks to this subreddit I actually maintain my frame much better in real life scenarios. So while drinking these beers since I was conscious of my goals I was also conscious of all the approachable females in the bar. I noticed something important and maybe its kinda obvious but the window/door opportunity is often open but it is also often filled very quickly. And another thing I noticed is that the guys that fill those opportunities often don't do a good job. I kinda realized that these guys don't really have a strategy going in because there is no way they can think of a solid approach in the time of the window/door opportunities time frame. So I started thinking of approach strategies on the fly just in case another door/window opened up. Keep in mind that coming into this bar I was sober and thoughtful, and when I became drunk I became confident enough to approach some girls. And because I thought about it ahead of time while I was sober, I was able to implement my thoughts right way.

Hey I hope I'm not bothering you or anything, but I'm just trying to practice my conversational skills with a random beautiful stranger

I honestly used that, but after I initiated a boring statement, and was acting boring and even said that phrase boring, not gonna lie, she freaking loved it and started telling me her problems through the night cause my intiated phrase was hows your night going and her response was not good. So i stood there trying to pay attention to her problems and I guess keeping a conversation up to date is another skill I need to work on. So far at least I am glad I got to practice the initialization.

tl;dr: successfully approached a girl but couldn't keep up conversation

EDIT: thanks for all the awesome responses guys