Powergaming 101

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As you guys know, I have been in the PUA game for a pretty long time… since spring 2007. Most of my peak growth occurred between 2007-2013, when I got into my 7-year relationship. In those 6 years, I did a lot of personal writings, which are great for me to read but not so great for others. However, I was also on a lot of community/lair boards, and for those I had writings that were more polished.

I’ve been long-planning on doing a powergaming article, since its such a critical trap that occurs in game growth. However, I recalled having written one back in 2013 (!) so I went and brushed it off and sure enough it stands the test of time. This was written back when I was on fire. I had just overcome my powergaming stage and was reaping the rewards of it (in fact the week prior I had (at least) full-montied 4 girls on 4 consecutive nights, including one who I shagged in her car at 4am, then we went to pee and we got locked out of her car half-dressed in the freezing cold till 7am…lots of fun). However, I have continued to gain much wisdom since then, so there were parts that I wanted to update and expound better upon.

Below is the original article, with words in italics signifying words that I have added in now (2025).

Without further ado:

This post WILL transform you from good to great in pick-up, I promise. It may be the most important post you read this month. It’s long, yes, I know. But it’s long for a reason. In intermediate PUAs, this is the biggest issue I see in them – and it needs to be fixed because an HB6 or HB7 might easily and lovingly put up with powergaming, but not an HB8+. If you want HB8′s and hotter, you need to read this.

What is PowerGaming?

- The powergamer is always trying to give less than he gets, because he is afraid he will ‘lose power’ if he gives more than he gets. It’s a game of who cares less, who can act more aloof, etc..

- The powergamer attempts to ‘force’ their power, rather than providing the good emotions that allow people to eagerly and willingly submit

Powergaming is the great trap of the PUA community — Guys become so focused on making her give you more than you give in return, showing they care less than she cares, in ‘being the prize’, that they don’t realize they are stalling out their sets because they aren’t giving them good emotions. They start ‘ignoring’ girls into compliance, start doing too many backturns and being extra careful about how many ‘compliments’ they give. “She’s gotta chase me man, she’s gotta prove herself and earn me” Of course, this works some, with insecure girls and girls that are enough below your league to value your looks, and thus PUA’s think it works. But with hotter girls, this is bad game, plain and simple.

Powergaming is often a natural extension of a PUA who has already graduated the beginner phase as they seek to correct a lot of their submissive, supplicating, and weak frame tendencies, and end up over-correcting. This stage is often defined by an over-use of cold tactics, a reluctance to use warm tactics for fear of ‘losing frame’ or appearing weak, and a hyper-focus on frame control, power, dominance, and respect. It is a classic ditch-to-ditch maneuver.

Some classic signs of PowerGaming:

1) Expecting others to submit/give to you BEFORE you give to them (huge)

2) Worrying that being too nice/friendly to people will undermine their ‘respect’ for you. Its not the niceness, its the intention behind it. If you are being nice to get something in return (giving-to-get), its fake, supplicating and detestable. But you can be friendly and warm to people w/o expecting anything in return, charismatic people do this all the time.

3) Expecting others to put in effort and sacrifice to ‘earn your approval’.

4) Assuming that being submissive is associated with negative emotions

5) Trying too hard to make their opinion the ‘top’ one — forcing their Judgment Authority. (always has to ‘hold court’/be the boss in the conversation even when it is not natural and energy is flowing the other way / towards better emotions)

6) Directly engaging things — viewing things as win/lose — the winner wins and feels good, the loser loses and feels bad. Often responds to perceived slights with power tactics to check them (fear that it will get worse = subcommunicating his default belief that people don’t respect him unless he makes them/fights for respect… ie he is not used to simply being respected and loved from the get-go).

7) Trying too hard to screen people, as if you have to be ‘good enough’ to receive good emotions from them

8 ) Attacking her playful, vibing attempts to play with the frame as a serious power attempt that must be crushed – For example, if she said ‘we’ll see, maybe I will let you do that for me’, a powergamer won’t just flow with it, he will attempt to forcibly re-assert his power because he sees it as a threat and doesn’t believe he will be strong enough to recover from it

9) Sets often end in frame battle stand-offs where he is waiting for her to submit, she refuses, and it stalls out. He attempts to use cold to force her to submit to his ‘higher value’, she simply doesn’t, now he doesn’t want to look weak by being nice after, so he just does nothing or does more cold. Out of options, he rationalizes she wasn’t ‘good enough’ for him.

10) Having a sets fall apart because of her lack of compliance and thinking ‘I showed her who’s boss’, ‘I left with the power’. The infamous PUA Pyrrhic Victory, claiming victory when he didn’t win.

11) Using cold tactics to try and teach her a lesson. Fails because she would be framed as groveling and kissing his feet if she accepted (creates an ego-protection rejection)

12) Ending up isolated because no one was ‘good enough’ for them aka nobody kissed their ass like they expected

13) Ultra paranoid to give, fear that it is simpy and that it costs him power. Betrays a lifetime of having given in hopes of receiving, instead of giving expecting nothing in return.

14) A belief that the power dynamics in the relationship are THE most important thing and that a woman will passionately love him simply because he is dominant. His blind spot is that because he lost girls because he was once weak, powerless, and submissive, being dominant & in power alone will be enough. Doesn’t understand he has to provide her a variety of good emotions in order for her to be happy, and in return for her effort. The diamond club may be tough to get into, but it better be awesome once they are inside or they’ll leave.

15) Very obvious dog-training type tactics. When she doesn’t something he likes, he rewards. When she doesn’t, he punishes.

16) Super eager to break the vibe and shatter the overall good emotions/trust in a set or in a general social setting in order to assert a power move that he feels is necessary. Cant just roll with it.

17) Paranoid over anything that could be a threat to his respect/control. When he has the choice to assume positive intent and roll with something, or to call it out as potential disrespect or trying to steal his control, he will often do so (killing the vibe and mutual trust in the process). Lives in a very threatened world were he is always about to be attacked or overrun

18) Uses threats of rejection/break-up/obvious jealousy plotlines as a means of forcing the other person’s hand to comply to what he desires.

19) Expecting her to accept bad emotions and still comply because ‘Im the boss’. This is how things work in the guy world (military, sports coaches, etc…) but it is not how it works in the game world.

20) A deep down belief that he is not entitled to dominance or respect, but that it must it must be fought for and earned

21) Exclusive vs Inclusive mindset. Would rather be part of an exclusive crowd that is ‘above’ other people who aren’t ‘good enough’ than to create a movement that brings more and more people into it. Becomes blocked in his ability to create widespread influence / support because he would have to give first / make the first move and that is not congruent with what ‘exclusive’ people do. Women are socially advanced and thus go thru their powergaming stage in middle school (mean girls clubs).

22) A Machiavellian mindset of needing to pull levers, manipulate, etc… that doesn’t place the other person’s emotions in a place they are being supported and taken care of. Severely undermines trust. A smart person knows the powergamer will betray the other person and leave them stranded the first time they feel slighted. A house but not a home.

Watch this 1 minute YouTube video of a Powergamer — how many other PUAs have you seen that ran game like this??

You see, a person WILL NOT submit to you until they know that they will have good emotions from it. Powergamers DO reward, but the cost/benefit ratio is too high for the submissee. Powergamers aim to take more than they give — to keep a positive ‘trade balance’.

The correct way is OVER-GIVING good emotions, while also just assuming their submission. If they don’t submit, you continue to provide and give good emotions, always, just like you do everyone. When they finally start submitting, deferring to your opinion, to what you want to do, you just increase the good emotions they are getting from you EVEN MORE. So instead of calling her ‘cutie’ and ‘sweetheart’ like you do to every girl, once she submits to you (maybe by saying that she wants to do what you want to do), you say ‘god, you are too adorable… ok, let’s go!’. If its a guy, you go from liking him and appreciating him, to really boosting his confidence when he defers to you. This allows the submissee to feel good about it.

(note: when I say ‘give good emotions’ I am not talking about trying to make other people feel good. You dont want to be selling good emotions. It creates BAD emotions in others when someone is TRYING to make them feel happy. This is more of a casual natural way of being ‘just how we are’ where we happen to be generous with everyone but aren’t pushing it at all or at anyone in particular. We are just a rad dude.)

Now, you don’t try and give MORE good emotions when they don’t submit — that is chasing them. But you don’t give less any less either… you must keep your baseline good emotions that everyone gets, even when they are a complete bitch to you. It’s like being a celebrity — why would you ever get mad? You must be a source of overflowing good emotions in your environment.

Done correctly, submission is a beautiful thing for the submissee — they get a leader that is bringing them good emotions, and they are also freed from responsibilities and forethought. They can just follow and feel great about themselves — its a huge win/win for them. They get to exist in the moment and find happiness there, knowing everything is taken care of.

If you don’t believe me, think about how tempting it is for a GUY to want to submit to his wife/girlfriends. ‘I just do what she says, she tells me when we are going to have our 2 times of sex per week, and the rest of the time I just get to do what I want, I get to play video games and focus on my work’ She rewards you with sex, and compliments about how good of a guy you are, and you work harder to make her happy. It’s easy — you never have to worry, it’s completely in her hands. It’s the exact same for girls.

Unfortunately, the powergamer pestilence is here to stay. (side note: what a prediction I made back in 2013!) For us, powergamers are annoying because it is REALLY hard to keep giving them positive emotions in the beginning, like you must do for everyone, because they read your niceness as you submitting to them, to you wanting to get their approval. ‘Haha, he’s being nice to me, and I’m doing nothing in return, I am SO in power” Or so they think, until they realize that you are in high demand because you bring good emotions to people. Eventually, even the powergamer must submit to you or be isolated. In your world, even the bottom rung of people still get good emotions — it’s just that the top rung REALLY get good feelings.

This is completely different than the Powergamer structure where people at the bottom get completely shit on, and that is supposedly their incentive to try and ‘work’ for the value of the top guy. The guys at the top get almost a par-for-par exchange in good emotions with the top dog but not quite. ‘My acceptance is worth the pain you have to endure to obtain it’ lmao. Powergaming is a very male logical mind phenomenon, a world of delayed gratification and carefully anticipating consequences that is simply not how the female brain is wired.

In the correct way, people submit because doing so gives them good emotions… appreciation, praise, love. Yes, that does mean that some of their control is lost, but they also know that them giving up that control is not going to cost them good feelings in the net aggregate because they trust that you have their best interests at heart. They may give up their ability to have the top opinion on things, or to dictate where the group will go, or whatever, but they won’t care, in the aggregate, because they don’t lose good emotions. So they are happy with it; in fact they are glad to not to have to worry about the responsibility anymore. Thus, they can exist in the moment, and they will also trust and seek to protect your leadership.

This is all together is really the foundation of the concept I have created called “Two-Dimensional Push-Pull” – It’s because submission is a BILATERAL trade. Most PUAs (and people) view it one-dimensionally — good emotions in, good emotions out, keep a positive trade balance. In Two-Dimensional Push-Pull, it is actually an exchange of Good Emotions (appreciation, praise, etc…) out, deferrence to judgment, decisions, and opinions in. Vibe and heat out… Judgment Authority in. This is the trade that makes healthy submission possible. She defers to your leadership, and you praise her and make her feel seen and appreciated. As soon as she attempts to take charge, it gets dialed back and you go back to being just simply pleasant, like you are to everyone. Side note: The leader of the vibe is often the Judgment Authority, and since the vibe is a very inclusive phenomenon, it will runs counter to exclusive mindset powergamers. As vibe-leading JA’s, we are often liberators of those powergamers have trapped. Their attempt to dangle the promise of good emotions/acceptance over other people’s heads cannot compete with people who create actual good emotions in their followers.

Like I said, this is a BIG trap for the PUA community — guys get so focused on this hard submission, in keeping this ‘positive trade balance’ that they just make you not want to hang around them. Then they get lonely and they are like ‘I guess nobody is just ‘good enough’ for me, because nobody is willing to work for me’. NO, you are just an idiot because you are not giving anybody good emotions that they would be willing to trade to defer to you. They aren’t going to just defer to you for nothing — that just feels shitty. “She fucked up, so I had to punish her by ignoring her” What?? Dude, she’s already forgot about you and found new good emotions with another dude to fill the void you wouldn’t fill (pun intended).

For example: I friended this PUA the other day – I’m like ‘hey man, really good to see you on here, let’s hang out sometime, it’d be really great to meet up with you and have a couple beers!‘ What does his power-gaming self reply with? ‘cool’. That’s it. Do you really think I am going to continue to re-engage this guy after he has done this? No, that would be chasing, I am not going to shove good emotions down his throat. If he hits me back up, I’ll be just as nice to him. But right now, in his world, he thinks he’s the shit — look how much that guy was giving me, and how little I’ve given back in return — I am SO the shit right now. What he doesn’t realize is that he has starved out his interaction with me, just like he would with another girl. And I’m much less likely to defer to his opinion on anything or give him power, because I know he doesn’t care about my feelings and is trying to have power.

Anyways, this PowerGaming shit has to stop in the community. It’s why newbs and advanced guys are so much cooler and easier to hang out with than the intermediate guys, because they don’t pull all this ‘how much did he give vs. how much did I give’ and the race to see who-cares-less.

By the way, if you find stuff like this valuable, please consider buying me a coffee! I do this all for free to help guys, but all love and support is greatly appreciated! https://buymeacoffee.com/anangelofvm