Does Daygame Work in the Winter or Bad Weather?

Yes. Daygame works in the winter and in bad weather, but it changes shape. Women walk faster outside and stop in different places. You spend more of your approaches in cafés, bookstores, markets, food halls and shops, and the ones you do on the street get shorter. A man who adjusts his places keeps getting reps all year, and a man who waits for spring loses months.

Weather does not change whether women like talking to a confident stranger. It changes where people are and how willing they are to stand still.

In the cold, people keep moving. Hands are in pockets, collars are up, and nobody wants to stand on a corner for a conversation. In heavy rain, the sidewalk empties and everyone is looking at the ground. In heat, people hurry between shade and air conditioning.

So the question is not whether it works. It is where women are stopped, because stopped women are the ones you can talk to. A woman waiting for a coffee in the cold has time. A woman crossing a wet street does not.

When the weather turns, put your sessions in places that are warm and where people linger:

• Cafés and the space around them, where women sit with a laptop or a book
• Bookstores and the aisles of shops that invite browsing
• Food halls, markets and the queues at counters
• Hotel lobbies and lounges, which are warm and public
• Malls and large shopping buildings with seating

The sets are the same as in the summer. The place did the hard part of getting her to stop. Our list of best coffee shops in New York for meeting women is a good starting map for a cold city.

You can still approach outside. Women stop at crosswalks, outside shop entrances, at the edge of a food cart queue and under an awning. Those are moments, not conversations.

Say hello clearly, give a reason you stopped her, and be quick about it. A short, warm opener in the cold is better than a long one, because she wants to get inside. If she is interested she will slow down. If she is not, you have lost ten seconds and she is on her way.

Weather gives you something you both share, and it is easier to open on than nothing.

• "This rain is ridiculous. Do you know a good place around here to wait it out?"
• "It is bitter out here. Is this café as good as it looks?"
• "You came prepared. Where did you get that umbrella?"

None of those is clever, and none needs to be. A situational comment, said with a smile, gives her an easy answer.

A coat that fits matters more in winter than in any other season, because it is most of what she sees. A shapeless puffer over a man who looks like a laundry bag is not the same as a coat that follows your shoulders and ends where it should.

Clean boots, a scarf or hat that looks chosen, and a coat in a color that suits you. Take it off inside if you are going to sit down, so she sees you and not just the outerwear.

Bad weather is not only a winter problem. In a hot city, noon is a poor time to walk the street. Move to shaded places, covered markets and air-conditioned cafés, and take the street in the early evening. A downpour is a gift to a man who is already inside, because everyone around him is stuck in one place with time.

The worst response to bad weather is to stay home for three months. Approach anxiety does not get better by waiting, and it does not stay still while you wait. A man who stops practicing in November often starts again in April with the nerves back at full size.

If you can only do a few approaches a week in winter, do those, indoors, with the same plan. Keeping the habit is worth more than the volume.

A Cold Approach Bootcamp runs in Miami and New York. Each training day is two four-hour blocks in the field, covering approaching and conversation, attraction and delivery, numbers and dates, and rejection and follow-through. Daygame and nightgame are mixed to suit the student, so the days are not a fixed script tied to the street.

You get live coaching on every approach and feedback after every set, whatever the setting.