I realized soon after starting game that opening lots of sets was important. Each set you open can lead to you getting better at game, therefore generally speaking, the more you open, the better (I understand that after you get better at game you can go for a quality over quantity approach).

I do let my approach anxiety get the better of me a little too often, but even if I didn't I'd still often not be able to open many sets in a night, simply because there aren't that many 'approachable' sets available. When I say approachable, I'd consider sets unapproachable if:

  • They are mixed (I will one day start opening mixed sets, but the dynamic is slightly different to girl only sets, so I want to just get fairly good with these before I move on to mixed).
  • The girls in the set are ugly
  • It's going to be a logistical nightmare (i.e seated with no free seats / seated in a fairly un-accessible area)
  • The group is larger than 4 girls. I bet this can be done, it's just hard to grab and keep the attention of 5 or more people for a few minutes, plus it's more intimidating.
  • I have good reason to suspect there is going to be an interrupt within the first few minutes after me opening. I need to be locked in to survive an interrupt.

When taking this into account, some nights I've been out for a couple of hours and gone to a couple of bars, and there's only been 3 maybe 4 viable sets around. So that's only 2 for me, 2 for my wing. Also, I live in London, not some tiny town. There are often more girls in loud clubs, but it's usually too loud to run my type of game in there, and I generally prefer bars anyway.

The thing is, you often hear of PUAs opening set after set after set. For example Mystery says to open 12 a night, one every 20 minutes. If you go out with a wing for 4 hours, are the pair of you really going to open 24 sets between the two of you? It's just when you hear about PUAs talking about nights out, it makes it sound like they go to venues where there are literally dozens of sets just waiting to be opened.

How many sets do you guys usually open on a night out?