Most women can spot a classic player.

Whether or not we choose to participate in the game is completely a different story. The classic player isn't freaked out by your drunken spitting, they don't worry about how to come over to you for an introduction, and they never make friends with your ugly posse member just to hopefully get to talk to you. They buy you drinks and compliment your hair style. They talk about the future with you on the first meeting. They tell you that you're like no one else they've ever met. As the Master's beau said recently, "if he's good at what he does, he'd do exactly what you said..." Every once in a while I'll be in the right mindset to attract players. I'm usually on the rebound and looking for someone to feed me the lines I know aren't at all true. Classic players serve there purpose, and there's nothing wrong with entertaining a couple throughout your life.

As I said, it is easy to spot a classic player. Most attractive women in their mid-to-late 20s can figure out that the guy they met at Lucky Bar who looked like Prince Eric in the Little Mermaid has seen more ass than a toilet seat. But, it's this new breed of DC player that is confusing most of my friends and I.

The new player isn't overly attractive at all. He's usually short, a bit dorky, with a boring job doing something mathematical, and quoting Proust whenever possible. He's smart and unassuming. To the DC Bachelor wannabee guys out there, this new breed of player should be your idol. These are the really smart hunters who manipulate their pray and get their dinners cooked and sporting tickets purchased.

The new player comes across nice. Generally, they choose a girl completely out of their league and begin to subtly compliment her... befriending her. Soon, he's mentioned to their mutual friend that he's interested in her, and she begins to wonder why she's attracted to someone she never expected to be into in the first place. She gets drunk one night and kisses the new player. He lets her stop him from going to far, as he knows she needs more time to figure out if he's someone she's into. He promptly follows up with a call and sets a dinner date with her. At the dinner date, he talks about his family and marriage and children. She feels like she's found her Harry Goldenblatt. He stays over that night and still maintains a slow hookup pace. Then he asks her out on a date the next morning for the following week. She can't believe how into him she's become... and so the next date, she puts out.

He usually sticks around for a couple more times, though from here he stops taking her to dinner. He'll invite her to a friends party and meet her there. Slowly, he'll just meet her out after her friends party. Then, he'll just come over after he's been out. She'll call him one night drunk to see where he is, and he'll call her back a couple days later and set up a time to go out. If she follows up, he'll cancel the date. If she doesn't follow up, he won't call at all. And then it will be over. She'll see him out a couple of weeks later with a new girl. A month or two later, she'll see that girl out, and they'll have a heart-to-heart in the bathroom line about how he did the same exact thing to both of them.

Her girlfriends will tell her how she was entirely too good for him. They will be so shocked to hear someone as dorky as that guy would be such a jerk to girls totally out their league. But the new player will keep shooting for the stars and succeeding... one girl after another.

Classic players have nothing on these guys. New players get handcuffs and trips to Pleasure Place.

Ladies, remember, it is easy to spot a classic player. It isn't so easy to spot an a-hole!