To be honest, my pure cold approach game is not that strong and I don't do a whole lot of cold street opens… I do some but not enough to be good good. Those two are related: to get good game you have to practice it like any other skill. There are also two blogs, Good Looking Loser and Krauser, that I link to and that say pretty much everything I could say about cold approach. They also say it better. I don't like to repeat other people's work and I have a thing about efficiency, so if you want to learn more about game nuts and bolts, those two blogs and Neil Strauss's original book The Game are all strong resources.
My game is basic and in cold approach terms mostly boring and situational. I deliver well and am good at sexualizing early. I like polarity and will often filter women who don't like sex pretty quickly. I also take rejection well and move on swiftly. Post-approach involves telling stories or sketching a scenario then asking the girl what she'd do or what she thinks of the people involved. It's not that advanced and I do all right with it, although I've probably missed out a lot of "maybes." Compared to most guys, though, I think I've also turned a lot of "maybes" into "yes" or into a "hard no." A firm and final "no" can be useful. When I see normal guys, I realize that my game is strong compared to them, but I don’t think it compares to the masters’.
Online dating used judiciously used to be okay for me. I have a simple rule: I only use any given system for at most three weeks at a time. Most systems now show new users the best matches and degrade rapidly in quality. It's best to activate one, use it for one to three weeks, and then delete your account for at least one or two months. I've done online dating on and off for a long time, and that world is constantly evolving so this advice may not be any good by the time you read it.
It's rarer for me to find women under age 26 or 27 through online dating today, but women ages 30 – 40 are on there, in all their heavy glory.... online dating has a mixed reputation and depends on strong fundamentals (see next paragraph) and strong photography. Photography really matters for online dating and I've looked through online dating profiles with women, and so many guys on them have total shit for pics.
Guys with good fundamentals (looks, style, body, lifting) eventually learn that game often becomes less about what you say and more about how you say it, who you are, and whether the girl is available. My most common type of interaction is getting absolutely zero traction or having a short conversation and collecting a number, only to have the girl not reply or flake. Online dating is not how girls like to flirt and get laid.
I can also leverage some social status in some situations, so a lot of higher-quality women come indirectly from there. But those field reports will likely be boring. I'm also pretty deep into the sex positive, consensual non-monogamy, and sex party scene, which is its own form of game and one I rarely see discussed. Conventional game applies to group sex, but that world has its own logic and rules that aren't totally amenable to field reports.
A lot of men don't have the interest or skills to swim in this world, but I find its rewards rich. It's a kind of next-level game that is more pleasurable and easier than cold approach. More women than you think are interested, if they are pitched and led properly, although not all women are and your success in doing this will be location dependent. There is also a stronger online component for this world than there is for conventional sex and dating.
Once you have solid fundamentals, a lot of the game is rolling the dice.