As someone who has been to quite a few different cities in the US and spent more than a week there, as well as speaking to many local guys heavily involved in game, I wanted to do this post. Before I get into it though, I wanted to clarify something.
What makes a market “competitive”?
On one hand, you can say that the competitive part relies on the level of male competition in a given city and that does play a big role. However, the juice has to be worth the squeeze. In other words, the women in a given city have to be attractive enough to run game on and it has to be tough because of the men in that given city.
Competitive and difficult are two entirely different things as a small town in the south could be difficult because everyone is married by the age of 25. Similarly, I would not put San Francisco in the top 5 since the male competition might be difficult but the city is not known for having attractive women. So today, I wanted to talk about the cities in America I have found to be the most competitive in my years of traveling.
If you are a newbie to game and meeting women, I would not recommend any of these cities as they are quite difficult. You will be eaten alive by the competition and drive yourself to bitterness. You will constantly go out and see guys who are objectively better than you pull and run into women whose standards are way too high. I recommend these cities for guys who love attractive women but really want to challenge themselves in terms of game.
Things that were considered.
For one, I did an eye test where I visited these cities and looked around to see what kinds of guys were getting girls. If uglier guys or less attractive guys are often getting girls more attractive than them, then it means that the city is not competitive. A city can still be a hard place to game despite not being competitive because those guys probably met her in high school and they married. However, the eye test itself is not that reliable.
One of the factors I took into account was the average rent in 2023. While I could easily look at per capita income, a lot of that will include older married guys living in suburbs. The average rent was important because if your competition can afford rent in a lot of these cities, they are probably doing financially alright. You don’t have to worry about the old man living out in the suburbs, you have to worry about the guy who can afford rent in Manhattan or Brickell, Miami where a lot of the attractive women are bound to be. On its own, it does not tell us everything because lots of dorky and beta males make good money.
I also looked at which cities tend to produce a lot of pro athletes by comparison. The reason this is important is because it speaks to the culture of that city and the kinds of guys women are used to being around. You can find an interesting study on sports by state here too. One other study I looked at was around which states produce the most talented recruits for college football. You can get a more detailed chart that focuses on the actual cities here. I emphasize American Football because of how popular it is in the US and how much more masculine it is compared to other sports outside of the UFC.
The reason this matters is because it speaks to the kinds of men the women in the area are regularly around growing up. You will find that in places where high school football is prestigious, the local culture prioritizes lifting and looking athletic. When women are used to growing up alongside guys that are playing football for a major Division 1 school or in the NFL, then that is what you are competing with even as a grow up because that is the image she grew up with. Local men who could not make it big in sports were still trying and playing in their younger days so the culture overall is more focused on athletics. It is different from a city where women are used to dating the drama class dork.
Cities could have done well in all of these categories but still not make the top 5.
An analogy to make is that running game in these cities is like competing in the toughest conference in a sport so think English Premier League for you World Football Fans or the SEC for you American Football Fans. You will have to constantly be at the top of your game as you are surrounded by driven guys who want to kill it. At times, it will seem unfair because you will walk into bars where every other guy is a male model. Here are the toughest cities in the US for game:
5 – Dallas.
I hate Dallas and I also hate Texas as a state for the most part. While I have met some great Texans, their arrogance and self-righteousness is irritating. However, I find that Texas guys have an almost aggressive attitude towards meeting women that they share with Florida guys. Meanwhile, other Southerners are more reliant on social circles and shy. Dallas marries the wild rowdiness of the West Coast with the vanity you find in a lot of southern cities.
Dallas has a lot of tall and macho white guys who are your competition along with a lot of women who have that as their main preference. As much as I dislike the city, I found that the average guy was much taller than in other US cities and really looked out for himself. On top of this, I found that Dallas guys have quite a dominant take nothing from no one behavior to them. To some degree, “Don’t Mess With Texas” really applies to Dallas.
As much as I hate to bring this to race, anyone other than a tall white guy will really have to bring it. It’s not that minorities can’t do well in Dallas, it is just that the ones who are tend to really bring it. One of my Indian friends does well with the women in Dallas but he is six feet tall, athletic, and has a very dominant attitude to them. By comparison, he slept with six times more women in his month in NYC than he ever sleeps with in any month in Dallas.
If you like the Blonde Basic girl, Dallas and Nashville are your best bets. But, just be ready to deal with a lot of Kens who also want Barbie.
4 – Austin.
On one hand, Austin has long been labeled as the new cool in a lot of circles. I have been there many times and found the women in the city to be quite attractive as well as plenty of quality to be found. On the other, there are a lot of guys in Austin who seem to take game seriously. I have seen a ton of approaching going on whenever I visited and spent time in the city itself. A lot of guys seem to put in the work to look good and talk to girls.
The other thing that Austin has going for it is how much the Big Tech firms like Oracle have moved their offices there which means a lot of guys fresh out of college move to the city to enjoy their twenties. While Austin has a lot of good-looking women, I also felt that the men in the city more than put effort into their appearance. It is not like your typical southern city where a bunch of fat bubbas date women because of “status”, I found a ton of Austin guys to take their looks and game seriously.
Austin and Dallas can be toss-ups but I will put Austin above Dallas because your competition has variety. In Dallas, you run into a lot of the Good Ole Boy types and Polo Preppy types of guys. Austin has those guys but it also has a lot of hipsters, aspiring musicians, and various types of men that women find attractive. On top of that, it is the city where Bumble is headquartered, one of the toughest apps as it requires women to message first.
Getting into the top 3.
We now get into the top 3 and I want to say that they are all quite difficult by their own standards. You can even debate while 3 is tougher than 1 and I will accept your opinion. Any guy who does well in either of the three cities I am about to name will absolutely clean up in most major cities out there, at least in the US. At the same time, any guy who has done well in other cities will struggle a lot when it comes to running game in the three cities I am about to name. I consider these three cities the Ivy Leagues of Game in a way because of how tough the competition from your fellow man is. Not only is your fellow man bringing the best game, he is also bring his best self whether that is in terms of wealth, looks, cool factor or lifestyle.
3 – San Diego.
Even the legendary Girlschase admits that the male competition in San Diego is insane. If you think about it, it makes a ton of sense as San Diego houses the Navy Seals (America’s best Special Operations Military Unit). During my time visiting, I found that the average guy was quite attractive in terms of appearance and was not afraid to talk to good-looking women. The competition in San Diego from my weeks in the city years ago as well as recent visits has been some of the toughest in the country. You would walk down the streets and see guys who were shredded or jacked so you stuck out for not being that way.
On another note, I have found San Diego guys to clean up hard in other cities. In my years in NYC, I found San Diego guys to steal dates and sleep with a lot of random women on visits. Seeing dorky White Collar NYC guys trying to compete with a San Diego surfer-boy was like trying to see a Division 3 Football Team play against Alabama. It was quite literally young boys trying to line up against grown men and getting their teeth kicked in worse than the Giants when they play the Eagles.
One of the best wingmen I ever had in my time in NYC and my mentor during that time was born and raised in San Diego. The guy was a tall white dude with dark hair who kind of looked like Josh Hartnett. Despite his good looks, he struggled because women were all too used to handsome guys. I’d hear stories from him about how even the best guys in the game community avoided San Diego early on because of how competitive it was and opted to hold bootcamps in Vegas instead. My wing slept with over a hundred women in NYC and got laid six straight nights when we went out, twice with married women.
The women in San Diego are quite attractive but have fun going against a Ryan Gosling or Henry Cavill lookalike going for the same girl.
2 – Miami.
Miami is a story of compare and contrast for me. In my year of doing game in Miami, I’d be lucky to get a couple of lays in a month. I went back to NYC and got four lays in a week back in November, it was that easy compared to Miami. I am comparing a city in Miami with tough competition and attractive women to NYC where the competition is a joke and the women are still attractive.
What makes Miami competitive is that the average guy here looks better than the average guy in all other cities on the East Coast. Along with the vain and shallow lifestyle, the beach culture leads to guys lifting heavy and trying to get the best body possible. Then add to that a Latin culture that pushes men to be aggressive with women and you have a city where women are consistently approached by aggressive men and develop a massive ego because of it.
The demographics of Miami are Latinos, foreign white guys from Europe, and black guys. As you can see, this already makes game quite competitive in the city. Latinos in Miami are also different from Latinos elsewhere so you get a lot of the wealthier types from South America, with a heavy European mixture, running game. South Florida is also known to be a hotbed for athletic talent too, consistently churning out the top recruits in sports like American Football. The reason I mention this is because guys growing up in Miami have pressure on them early on in school to develop a macho and alpha mindset while maintaining a good body.
Now add to this the fact that every clout-chasing Instagram influencer or guy with money is flooding into Miami and so many dating programs like RSD are still holding boot camps here. Even John Anthony Lifestyle, considered the best dating coach in the industry by many, is coming back into the game and doing boot camps in Miami. If you can do well with game in Miami, you can probably own it in most other cities.
However, one city is able to beat Miami when it comes to the competition and we get to the city next.
1 – Los Angeles.
Add in awful gender ratios for men to start with, far worse than any other city on the east coast. Now factor in that LA practically invented what Americans consider “cool” with Hollywood back in the day. Even now, I have found that LA guys have perhaps the most advanced level of game in all of the US. They are great at clout chasing but also great at the status game itself which makes it so difficult to compete against them. Like their San Diego brothers, I have seen LA guys run through competition like hot knife through butter in NYC.
While LA is on the decline as a city as Atlanta stole the film industry away from it, people still move there. I have seen and known a lot of attractive women to move to LA as well. Despite its downfalls, the attractive women are still in the city and so are the men willing to aggressively game them.
What puts LA guys neck and shoulders above the competition is not just their looks but also the fact that they seem to naturally have an advanced understanding of game. Quite a few get the status aspect of game in a way that guys from other cities just don’t. Certain nuances of game that guys develop as they are more advanced are what LA guys seem to naturally have. I feel like LA guys do well wherever they go in the US because they have this understanding of the subtle nuances of game and the status plays in a way that other guys just don’t, they seem to be far more socially calibrated.
The one aspect I have found LA guys to excel in has been the popularity aspect. LA guys seem to have a good grip on what is popular and are great at changing frames to suit themselves. Their game is suited to work on the bimbos and women who are inclined to be stuck in a high school popularity mindset. I have seen LA guys do well practically everywhere, consistently sweeping up women in a lot of northeast US cities like NYC.
