For all the talk about day game that you can read online, most of the ideas and advice are the same. Go to a coffee shop. Stop a girl on the street. Go to a cultural event. While these aren’t bad ideas and have garnered some amount of success for me, I’ve found that my highest success ratio has been in the place people least talk about for day game: the subway. Here are four great reasons that the subway is the best place in Korea to meet women and improve your game.
1. A Never Ending Supply of Women
The subways in Seoul are almost all 8 cars long. Each car has about 40 seats, and room for another 50-60 people standing to have enough room to slip through and find women. That means about 700-800 people on the subway, and roughly half of those will be women. To add to those numbers, people are constantly getting on and off of the subway, so you get a self-recycling group of girls to choose from. Riding the subway during the day is a lot like a real life Tinder – if you like the way she looks, strike up a conversation. If she’s interested then great, and if she’s not, you just go to the next one. The real beauty is that you could easily just cruise up and down the cars doing one or two approaches per car, then start to backtrack. You would rarely see the same people twice if you’ve gone end to end. It would be very easy to do 60 -70 approaches in the 2 hours that it takes Line 2 in Seoul (the green line) to make a full circle. Added bonus: Line 2 hits 8 different university subway stops, and is the main transfer line for all the others. It’s usually packed full of loveliness if you’re on at the right time.
2. You Have a Captive Audience
Let’s say you approach a girl standing in the corner of a subway car. You deliver an opening line. She doesn’t seem all that interested but not entirely disgusted either. Now you can choose to eject… or you can go for the Hail Mary and try to turn it up a bit. Let’s face it, you’re between stops and she has nowhere else to go. You might as well take advantage of your captive audience and run your whole routine. You can start into a ramble routine or maybe tell some silly joke that might get a laugh out of her. Unless you’re really bombing she won’t walk away from you while you’re running your line and she will start to warm up to you. It’s pretty rare for girls to be initially interested in chatting on the subway because it’s not very common, so always give it a minute or two before you pull out. This will also help you to judge which lines work and which don’t, or try a different delivery of the same line (more about this later).
3. It’s Incredibly Efficient
Subway gaming is different than other types of day game because it’s something you can do and practice every single day without having to take a minute out of your schedule. If you ride the subway to work, run a few approaches. If you’re on your way to go party for the night, do several approaches and start gaining momentum. If you’re on your way to Hongdae or Itaewon on a weekend night, you’ll probably meet girls going the same way and start pipelining for later in the evening.
The real advantage to subway gaming is that it’s impossibly efficient. You never have to walk more than 20 meters to find another girl to talk to. If you fail, it’s only a 2 minute turnaround until you can start the next approach at peak hours. You can practice any time of the day. You can practice everywhere you go. You can do it solo or with a friend and never feel out of place. You can do it near your home. You can do it in other cities. You can even do it drunk, which has a surprisingly high success rate for me despite it seeming like a bad idea. You can try new lines. You can try different styles. You can work on improving specific parts of your game, like body language, posture, or eye contact. You can improve your Korean if you just feel like practicing.
No matter what level of game you’re at or what you want to improve, subway approaching is by far the most efficient way to do it. Which brings me to the next point…
4. It WILL Tighten Your Game
Finally, the best benefit to subway gaming is that it will raise your ability to approach drastically. Whether you’re new to the game and trying to get your confidence up or a seasoned player, there is no place that will throw you in the deep end as quickly as the subway. You have to do it in public in front of everyone on the subway car. And since you’re a foreigner, they will be watching to see what you’re doing. Especially when you first start trying it, you will get blown out. A lot. It will hurt at first, and it will be embarrassing, but you must persist. You will become tough and immune to the sting failure. You will become numb to the rejections and the victories will be even sweeter. Soon though, you’ll have more successes than failures.
After about an hour or two of practice, you’ll have a really effective 2-3 minute opening routine to grab her interest. This kind of routine can be repeated and used anywhere you go after that, and you’ll have it down much tighter. You’ll quickly learn which lines work well and which ones don’t.
One of the hardest things about getting a good working routine together is the trial and error part. If you go out on the street trying to work up or tighten a day game routine, a good hour of work will be about 10 approaches. You can get a little bit of feedback from each new approach and figure out what works well for you. If you do this three or four times, you’ll have a pretty good idea of how to open and interact with a regular Korean girl.
On the other hand, if you spend even 1 hour on a subway some Saturday grinding through approaches, you will get a TON of instant feedback. You can try putting in a new line, taking out one that doesn’t seem to work. You can try 10 different openers in 10 minutes. You could try the same opener 10 times. The best part is that you will be able to see exactly how well it works. You will get immediate reactions that can help you to nail down a day game routine that is spot-on for your particular style. By the end of a subway grinding session, you will feel tough as nails and have an opening routine that could charm the panties off a nun.
Caveat: Every Rose Has Its Thorn
The only thing that keeps the subway from being a perfect day game spot is that your interaction is already time-limited. This makes it very hard to convert to insta-dates. If you’re having a decent conversation with a girl, you need to ask where she’s heading pretty early on so that you can plan your routine around the time you have left. If she seems very receptive and you’re not busy, you might be able to work out an insta-date by getting off at the same stop, but it’s not as likely as on the street or in coffee shops because the girls on the subway are already going somewhere. They have a destination, and their plans likely do not involve you.
This means that you will have to settle for numbers 99% of the time. That’s not too bad though because an afternoon of subway gaming can net you a cool 50 numbers if you’re good at it. That’s more than enough to fill up your date calendar for the next week or two.
I’ve always been a big fan of subway gaming, especially during the weekend. I would strongly urge all you players out there to start using it to help improve your game and level of success while you’re in Korea.
someguy says
Hey was wondering if you’re approaching in Korean or English, either language doesn’t it attract a fair amount of attention? Anyway 20-50 numbers a day is skills cant help but respect, thanks
seoulplayer says
I usually approach in English, unless I’m trying to be cutsie in Korean but that’s not often. Do you live in Korea? Feel free to email me at theseoulplayer@gmail.com if you have other questions, I’d love to hear what frustrations guys are having so I can address them.
Anonymous says
Thanks for the feedback, been pinning down what im working to overcome in myself, openers and material don’t need so much if i can think of something genuine to say will go for it, stories that aren’t true for example i don’t go for don’t need to actually lie, also believe it or not not looking for sex, it’s meeting people that’s the buzz, the foreign crowd been there done that and hangin with Korean guys man i just fall asleep, drink and work and nothing to talk about.
I still give a fu*k what people think, if I open people see me just its like the whole world is looking that’s the present struggle. I often get IOIs justcwalkin around doin my own thing, always want to stop and say something and occasionally do, just other people around stops a lot of opportunities. Also don’t need many numbers, once I really connect often have a friend or least a contact longterm, just sometimes I see n interesting person, we both want to reach out, I fear peolle around us, and keep on walking to my eternal regret^^. Cheers
That Charles Life says
This is golden. What a great idea, and supporting evidence haha.
I’ve been in Korea for just over 3 months now. Its an interesting place for sure. I’m in Gwangju unfortunately, but would love to troll sometime with you next time I’m in Seoul.
Looking forward to more posts.
Colby
guy says
Subway game is pretty hard, a captive audience can be a good thing or a bad thing, most guys will probably just annoy the girl and then you are stuck there looking like a creep with tons of people packed into a small area