How to Keep Daygame Stats

When I started Daygame I immediately started recording my stats. I’d come home from my session, open my laptop and add the sets to my spreadsheet. In fact, since the spreadsheet was available in the cloud, I’d normally add them on the way home from my session. That meant that I was as accurate as possible. Adding them after each set would have just been silly and would have wasted time and vibe.

Point 1: create a spreadsheet which you can access on your phone and add your sets at the end of each session.

To begin with, I recorded everything: sets, phone numbers, social media adds, responses to my feelers, i-dates, dates, kisses and lays. I could have gone one step further and broken down the sets to record stops, social hooks and sexial hooks. In 2018 I broke down my dating statistics as well into dates, kisses, bouncebacks and lays. But in reality, you only need to record a certain number of key moments of compliance.

Point 2: record your sets, phone numbers, (first) dates and lays, and calculate the approach to number, date and lay ratio.

Now comes the hard part: actually stepping away from your stats. Keep them for your first 1000 sets to see what kind of a Daygamer you are i.e. what are your rough ratios, but then give them up.

The problem with keeping stats for a long time is that you become anchored to them. Say you get one phone number in three approaches on average, but then you do a ten set session and only get two; you’ll beat yourself up needlessly. Even though you can remind yourself that your ratios are ‘on average’ it’ll still be at the back of your mind. Also, and this has been said before, you’ll start to Daygame with an eye for good stats: subconsciously going for the easier sets to get good approach to number ratios, for example.

Even if you think that the previous paragraph wouldn’t apply to you, there’s always the chance that it could, so you’re taking on a risk. And what do you really get from detailed stats anyway? You fire up a spreadsheet and get a momentary ego boost from seeing a favourable ratio, then it dies away, or worse: you open up the spreadsheet and see your ratios are worse than before. It’s all just silliness, especially when there’s only really one number that matters on the spreadsheet (lays) and just as importantly: how you feel about Daygaming and it being a part of your life.

Further to that point, consider this thought experiment: we have two guys with different stats. One got laid 10 times in a year and did 100 sets. He was walking around like a crack sniper, only doing the absolute juiciest sets. He’d quite often do no sets in a session. One time he did four sessions in a week and did no sets at all! He finishes his Christmas dinner and looks at his stats and pats himself on the back for his mighty 10:1 approach to lay ratio. But then he remembers all of those sets that walked by which he didn’t do because it might hurt his ratios. The cost of approaching would have been miniscule and there would have been a chance that they liked him. He gets the feeling that he could have got laid a lot more and wouldn’t have minded hurting his ratos in hindsight.

Next we have a guy who was out just as often and regularly did ten sets. He knew his approach to lay was about 70 with attached approach to date and lay ratios so he just kept on doing sets; three or four sessions a week where he always did ten approaches. Eventually he’d flip the favourable stone. He might reach two hours and have only done seven, so he spammed the remaining three and went home knowing he’d done a hard day’s work. In fact, when he didn’t do ten a session, and ended up doing less than 30 sets a week, he told himself off for not working hard enough. At the end of the year his prestigious work rate has yielded him 20 lays, a mighty haul! He also did 1500 sets to get there. But that means his approach to lay ratio has dropped to 75:1, actually worse than the average. But he tells himself it’s okay because he did get a lot of lays. Then again, there were a few sixes in there which he wouldn’t have minded never meeting at all. He was also working two jobs practically: the one that got him paid and the one that got him laid (wahey!!). He remembers all the buses he threw himself under to get there too. It makes him feel exhausted and the whole process feels a lot more like work than fun.

Can you see the problem with both of these hypothetical guys? They’ve allowed numbers to rule their actions and those numbers are born out of the statistics they hold so dearly (these two “hypothetical” guys are in fact caricatures of me from 2018 and 2017 respectively).

Point 3: keep your detailed stats up to 1000 sets and then stop. From now on only record your number of approaches and lays if you’re going to keep stats at all.

What would be even better is to not record your number of sets. I think that once a Daygamer has done 1000 sets he’s in a good position to know whether he’s working hard enough or not. He can easily remember the number of sets he’s done in the past week or two without writing it down and so can make sure his work rate is high enough to achieve the goals he’s set himself. Then once free of his ratios he can focus on getting what he wants out of Daygame and feeling good about it.

Right now I’m weaning myself off of stats. This year (2019) I stopped recording how many phone numbers I got and I admit it has had a positive effect on me, if only slightly. I don’t miss knowing my approach to number ratio one bit. Next year I’m not going to record the number of dates I go on and in the year after that, I’m only going to remember the notches. I’m not even going to try and calculate the approach to lay, so don’t ask!

Point 4: perhaps the most important lesson of this post is to remember that Daygame is supposed to be fun; don’t have a hobby that feels more like work than play, and certainly don’t get married to your statistics.

Yours unfaithfully,

Thomas Crown