Winning the Tug-of-War for a Girl in a Venue

In this video, two guys go head-to-head for a cute, horny club girl. One of them wins, and presumably gets the lay, while the other of them (painfully) loses:

This video's titled as "guy gets his girl friend stolen in under 3 minutes" but the girl's clearly not his girlfriend. I'll tell you what the apparent dynamic actually is below. Also, while the video only takes three minutes, the process itself clearly took longer than that. Again, I'll tell you roughly how long it likely took below.

However, to introduce this piece, let me say I've been in very similar situations myself a number of times over the years. Both several times on the losing end as a beginner, and then more times on the winning end once I earned my chops.

In this article, we'll examine the tactics used by both seducers in the above video.

We'll also talk about when they can work and when they won't (plus why the blond white guy beat the Asian guy).

 

Breakdown of the Tug-of-War Video

I've spent a lot of time in nightlife and am adept at reading the situations you'll come across in them.

I've also been in all these different nightlife scenarios myself countless different times.

At this point I can generally look at a situation unfolding in nightlife and very quickly size up what is actually going on. So let me tell you what's happening in this video.

To begin with, we have two girls who are probably nightlife regulars out at a club. These girls seem to clearly be 'out on the prowl' and have attracted men who've come to try and pick them up.

The prettier girl has two (2) guys competing for her:

• An Asian guy, who's trying (albeit drowning) in the beginning, and looks worse and worse as the video progresses until he ultimately gets shooed off

• A white guy, who's there with a guy who seems to be his wingman, and who's playing it cool early on but starts cavemanning the girl he wants later and ultimately wins the tug of war

It's unclear who approached the girls first. It could be:

• The Asian guy was talking to one of the girls first, the white guys noticed the other girl unoccupied, or maybe also noticed the Asian guy was doing okay but not hooking his girl, and decided to swoop in

• The white guys were talking to both the girls first, and the Asian guy decided to grab the unoccupied seat next to the hotter girl and try to swoop

Regardless, when the video opens, the Asian guy has his arm around the girl. She's leaning away from him, talking to her friend and the white guys, with one of her hands in the white guy's lap. The white guy is giving her attention, smiling, then doing some mini takeaways, dropping her hand in his lap (rather than holding it continuously) and turning away from her to engage with his wingman's cell phone video.

The Asian guy gets her attention back with animated, flirtatious conversation. He's smiling, gesticulating, and looks attractive here. He's probably a guy with decent social skills and maybe some okay game (okay enough to know how to cold approach, open, and chitchat, at least). However, while the girl is talking back and being friendly, pay attention to a few things:

• She never turns her body toward him the way she had it turned toward the white guy earlier

• She steals glances at the white guy at 00:42, 00:46 (she is both monitoring, hoping he doesn't ditch, and eye-coding him to get back in the competition and pull her away from this other guy)

• She makes minimal eye contact with the Asian guy, only glancing at him at times before glancing away

• She talks and laughs the way she would with a platonic friend (head tilted up, head nods, quick head darts away from him after looking at him, wide awareness radius constantly scanning around instead of engrossed in this guy)

• At the 00:46 mark, when the Asian guy has been talking to her but hits a lull, and the white guy is still ignoring her (while presumably still holding her hand in his lap), she glances toward the white guy, then takes out her phone in an "I'm bored" move (again, this is a signal to him she is open and he should step in and take her from the Asian guy)

The Asian guy has decent social awareness. He knows the girl is not that into him. He's being careful not to chase; as she's not looking much at him, he also doesn't look much at her. He mostly stares forward as well. He uses smiles and laughter and gesticulation and strategic lean-in, lean-back (body rocking) to try to inject some energy in and get her attention.

He's also an attractive guy; he's got cool hair, he's dressed well, and he's slim and in-shape with a little muscle on him.

However, he just got out-gamed here by the white guy.

While the Asian guy is gaming the girl and she is glancing at the white guy, the white guy is alternating between keeping an eye on the girl while calmly staring off into space, versus having a conversation with his wingman and the girl's friend. He's doing all the right things while he waits:

• He's showing the girl he's still interested, but also not jealous and not chase-y

• He's showing the girl he's a social guy who's having fun even when she's not talking to him

• He's showing the girl that (unlike the Asian guy) he is a part of 'her group', including her female friend

The white guy's friend is being no slouch either. He's having a good time, making sure his girl has a good time, and keeping his buddy's state up, so that the girl's friend plus these two guys are the "fun place to be" with all the good vibes. Meanwhile he's asking his girl whom she "wants to win the fight", which obviously since she likes him and likes his friend (friend is closer to her and probably has been talking to her) is going to come down in the white guy's favor -- this gets the friend to verbalize her support for the white guy, cementing her emotions and making it a team effort to help him win.

We then fast forward to a clip outside the club, where things have taken a real turn for the really bad for Asian dude and a turn toward the really good for white dude. I mean this picture just says it all, doesn't it?

Look at the dynamic here:

• The white guy is locked in, seated on this railing while the girl stands in front of him
• The white guy has her straddling him, with her body pushed right up to his
• The white guy is repeatedly stealing kisses from her while she's on the phone
• The white guy is moving her back-and-forth, in a mini dance-like move, and she is complying with it
• All the Asian dude can do is stand far away looking salty and hold her hand as the white dude puts the moves on her

At a certain point the girl being competed for tells her friend, "All right, we're going to go," and her friend takes the signal (that she needs an assist), comes in, peels the Asian guys hand off, and takes her friends hand in her own hand. She announces to the Asian guy that they're leaving, and, taking her friends hand in her own (so the Asian guy can't snatch it back).

The friend then tells the wingman that she and her friend are leaving and the two white guys "can stay" but the wingman comes up with a plausibly deniable excuse for the two guys to leave with the girls ("both of our phones are really fucking dead, so we might go" --> it doesn't make any sense at all but you don't need a reason that makes sense. You just need to say whatever and get out of there together).

The lead white guy then makes an EXCELLENT move:

While his wingman is caught up in the pull negotiation with the friend (who is a lot less sexually primed than the girl who was being competed over), and to get past the Asian dude without the Asian dude pulling off some last-ditch desperate move, the white dude picks up his girl, walks past the Asian guy, steps out of the club, and puts her down.

This:

• Gives him the initiative, so it isn't the girls leaving on their own and the guys following, but the guys actually taking lead and leading the girls out of there

• Gets him past the Asian guy in a way the Asian guy did not expect and hadn't planned any way to intervene with (you can tell the Asian guy's trying to concoct a last minute scheme to salvage this while he's standing there looking exasperated)

• Breaks up the negotiation between his wingman and the friend and gets them following the hornier two into the pull

Many times when you pull with a wingman, one girl may be more into one of you than the other. This is still going to be okay, because assuming you pull them both, a lot of the time once the one girl knows the other is horny and likely having sex, it will cause her to opt to just roll with it and have sex with the guy she's with too (see my article on copycat hookups).

The guys are clearly in the lead at the end here, as the friend objects "Where are we going?" and the wingman tells her, "Shhh, it's okay."

It's not clear how the night ends, but if I had to make a bet on whether these guys closed these girls or not, I'd bet on the close.

 

Why the White Guy Won

From the beginning it's obvious this girl is more into the white guy than the Asian guy.

Both guys have some game, but the white guy's game is obviously far better. The Asian guy repeatedly ends up in situations where all he can do is watch with a bewildered look on his face.

The Asian guy is trying to game this girl by being talkative and funny plus having some protective touch over her. But she is horny. She is not looking for a good time socially and a guy who will treat her like his girlfriend.

The white guy is playing with her, acting sexual, touching her in sexy ways, push-pulling her with takeaways and ignoring her, building social proof, staying relaxed even when the other guy's engaged with her, and later gets himself locked in with the girl straddling him and kissing him while the other guy hangs out there lost in space.

We don't know what happened before the video began or who approached first.

We don't know if maybe this girl has certain preferences (some Asian girls really dig white guys).

We don't know what kind of conversations/flirtations she had with the two guys. From the looks of it, the Asian guy's conversation was just playful social conversation like you'd have with anyone, not anything intimate. We don't see the white guy talking to the girl so can't say for sure what they discussed. Though if I had to wager it'd be something raunchy, inappropriate, and sexy, based on his overall style of game.

Remember in One Date how we talk about figuring out whether a girl is looking for connection, arousal, or a hookup, then giving her that?

This girl's looking for a hookup.

The Asian guy is busy trying to connect with her.

The white guy is busy ramping up compliance from her throughout:

• He takes her hand, then drops it in his lap

• He does engaging things (talking/laughing with his friend and hers) while ignoring her with the Asian guy to make her pay attention to him, signal him, and chase

• He locks himself in and pulls her toward him, which makes it feel like she is the one chasing him

• He steals little kisses and hugs with her, then turns away from her, then back to her, fractionating his touch with her and getting her to focus on him more

• After her friend lets go of her hand, within a short time he has both his girl's arms/hands resting on or wrapped around him

• He lifts his girl up, which she does not fight (just complies with it) and carries her out

• He gets her to stop texting and concentrate solely on him

• He leads and she willingly follows as they head toward somewhere neither of the girls is familiar with (if I had to guess: it's the guys' apartment/hotel room)

It's just one long compliance ladder as the white guy moves his girl toward the hookup she came out for.

 

Could the Asian Guy Have Won?

Not with the game I saw from him here.

He was simply outmatched.

He's a cool dude with decent fundamentals who knows how to approach and is probably social.

But he went up against a pair of wingmen working together on a pair of girls, which is always going to be a very difficult prospect (she's not likely to leave her friend, and if her friend likes the guy's wingman, you'll have a real hard time separating the girl from the other guy in the tug-of-war for her).

He failed to read what the girl was after and tried using the wrong type of game to get her (trying to connect with her and act protective of her, when what she was after was a guy who'd rapidly escalate things and lead).

Even if the white guys weren't there, it seems unlikely the Asian guy would've picked this girl up.

She was simply looking for something (a strong, confident, strongly-led hookup) this guy was not prepared to provide.

 

A Few Other Observations

The wingman is using his phone as a prop throughout this pickup.

It helps give him fun things to talk about with his girl, and it's useful for having video content to publish on YouTube, but it probably hurt his seduction. It's hard for things to feel intimate between a girl and you when the two of you are constantly talking to the camera instead of to each other.

At one point he shows her a video of a Chinese friend of his he and the other white guy apparently travel with, and talks about how their Chinese friend gets mistaken for a local in whatever East Asian country they find themselves in. This is not a terrible thing, to build some relatability here ("Hey, we're not just white guys who bang Asian girls, we also have Asian guy friends too!") but it's not really needed and again it detracts from the intimacy.

That said, he was also using this to distract the Asian guy who was lurking around trying to get the girl his friend was going for, so this was still probably a good play. It gave his friend more time to cement things with his girl with this guy distracted, holding her hand but leaning in to stare at the video just to look occupied.

Obviously you should never let yourself get distracted like this.

That distraction was there for the Asian guy in part to pull him away, but also to let him save face. He can act like his attention is being drawn away by something else, so he doesn't have to watch as the white guy seduces the girl he's after. He took the bait, but it gave his competitor all the ground he needed to finish winning the race.

When you roll solo and guys team up on you in a wingman duo, you must not fall for diversionary tactics from the wingman who isn't after the girl you are. I've been in situations where a pair of guys tried stealing the girl I was with, and the wingman has tried to occupy me -- I always either give the guy a quick halfway glance and smile and one-word answer then return to my girl, or I ignore the wingman altogether -- he's irrelevant; his only motivation there is to distract you so his buddy can steal your girl.

Don't break circle. Don't let the buddies of guys who are going for the girl you want peel you away.

 

Wrap Up

What can you do if you don't want to be the Asian guy in this video?

A few things:

1. Keep going out and improving. Odds are the white guy had a time in the past when he was a lot more awkward and tentative (like the Asian guy is here), and he too lost girls to guys who were faster, more confident, and more on-point in their game. Only with enough experience do you reach that white guy's level.

2. Try to read what girls are after. Assuming the Asian guy approached first, and had a few minutes with this girl, there's no reason he couldn't have had her pretty well wrapped up IF he recognized she was out for a hookup and started escalating compliance accordingly. His whole game though seemed to revolve around 'good boyfriend game': he was being protective, being charming, and so on -- but not being sexual and not rapidly escalating the way the white guy was. You need to know what kind of girl you're dealing with and what she's likely after before you go throwing game after her.

3. If you're losing, sitting around waiting won't win it for you. I've never seen a guy just sit around and beat out a guy who was out-gaming him. The only times I've seen anything close were when I was a beginner and would have guys with better game than me from big groups of people trying to game some girl I'd just met. The guy'd have better game but I'd have rapport established with the girl already, and I knew how to hang around not looking needy. I'd stay chill, the guy wouldn't be able to get enough investment from the girl, and eventually the guy's group would want to leave for another venue and he'd have to go, leaving the girl with me. That's not going to work with a couple of dedicated gamers with their sights laser-set on your girl though -- especially not if they're escalating compliance with her and she's going along with it. As soon as another guy starts escalating compliance with a girl you're after, you need to figure out a way to get back in front of her and escalate things with her yourself -- or else you're toast.

4. Once it's clear you've lost, move on. I don't know how they ended up downstairs but I have to guess the white guys pulled the girls down and the Asian guy followed like a puppy dog. Then he ended up standing around, lost and confused, until he finally had to watch the girl get literally carried out of there by the other guy. Sometimes you may lose a competition for a girl. That's fine. Once it's clear you've lost, get out of that set, and go meet other girls. It's much easier to handle if you end up meeting a girl you hit it off with -- or pull.

I hope you found this breakdown worthwhile.

Hopefully I highlighted some things for you going on here you may not have picked up on in your initial playthrough.

This was a tug-of-war between a guy with good fundamentals and seemingly decent social skills versus a guy with very solid game.

The guy with the better game won, simple as that.

Chase Amante