How Badoo Encounters Works

Encounters is the Badoo tab that shows you one person at a time, with a photo, her name, her age and a few details. Tap the heart to like her or the cross to pass. When you both like each other, you get a match notification, and you can start chatting in the Chats tab.

Encounters is built for quick decisions. You get one woman on the screen, her photo first, with her name, her age and a handful of details alongside. You decide on her, and the next one appears.

That speed is the appeal, and it is also the risk. A man moving fast decides on the first photo and nothing else. Give each woman a real look at what is on the screen before you tap anything. Two seconds of attention is worth more than racing through the next dozen.

The controls are simple.

• The heart means yes. You like her.
• The cross means no. You pass.
• A match happens when you have both tapped the heart on each other.

When that happens, Badoo sends you a match notification. The conversation then lives in the Chats tab, and either of you can write.

A match is not the finish line. It is permission to start talking, and a match you never write to is worth exactly as much as no match at all.

Encounters works in both directions. When a woman comes across you, she gets the same screen you do: one photo first, then your name, your age and a few details, and a heart or a cross to tap.

That means your first photo does nearly all of the deciding. a dating coach is blunt that photos do most of the work on any dating app. Lead with a clear, recent photo of your face in good light, not a group shot where she has to guess which one is you. And look hard at your weakest photo, because My warning is that women judge a man by his worst photo, not his best. If one of yours is only all right, take it out.

Tap the filter icon in the top right corner of Encounters to change the age range, the distance and the gender of the people you see.

Set the distance to how far you would really travel for a first drink. coach puts real weight on keeping a date close to your place or hers, because it makes the evening easier to plan and easier to extend if it goes well. A woman on the far side of the region is a harder date to set up, however good the chat is.

Set the age range to the women you would genuinely take out, not the widest net the slider allows.

It is tempting to treat Encounters as a volume game and tap the heart on nearly everyone. coach warns against exactly that, on any app.

His reasoning is about how the apps behave. An app notices how selective you are, and a man who likes almost everyone tends to be treated as less attractive. The app then has little reason to show him its most attractive women. coach has had students who liked nearly everyone. When they started liking far fewer women, their results got better, not worse.

So tap the heart on the women you would be glad to hear from, and pass on the rest without guilt.

You do not need a long evening of Encounters. My experience is that half an hour a day over ten days does more than five hours in a single sitting. He also finds that the first half hour of any day is worth the most, and that tired, late-night swiping is where careless choices creep in.

A few minutes on your commute, or during a dull call where nobody needs you to speak, is plenty.

When a match lands, send something short and specific. My method for a first message is to notice one thing about her, turn it into a line and send it within about a minute. He saves his real effort for later, when she is answering well and it is time to suggest a plan.

Then keep the chat moving. coach usually gets from the app to a woman's number within four to seven messages, and he brings up plans early and lightly rather than springing them at the end. Once you have her number, a quick phone or video call before the date makes it much more likely she turns up, and turns up glad to see you. A chat that drifts for days with no plan in it usually fades out, however well it started.