Here are ten great ways to make the best of gathering delicious sweets from the hands of strangers.

Instant Death vs Instant Delicious

Location, Location, Location: There is a trick to picking your haunts, avoid houses that look like the home of an actual serial killer and skip houses that are so huge they have more than one front door. You’re looking for the middle class residents, the ones in nice homely houses with some festive decorations up. There is a story floating around that the giant mansions in gated communities are giving out king size candy bars and handfuls of money, but that’s just an urban legend spread by the unlucky fools trickin’ and treatin’ in the shitty parts of town on the other side of the railroad tracks.

Good luck getting past the snipers and the trip wire mines.

Plan Your Route: Like any good military strategist you need to have a solid battle plan. Are you going to hit up elderly Miss Robinson’s house before 6pm or risk coming at 7pm and her being passed out after watching Columbo? How is the weather? If it’s raining, your feet better be hitting the pavement. That’s the golden hour of candy fetching. There’s no better time to snag the loot than when the candy-givers think you might be the last trick-or-treater they ever see.

These kids are doing it right. Butterfly pumpkin? Seriously, WTF?

Pick A Cute Costume: By cute, I don’t mean going with some low cut top showing cleavage or going with some tight shorts that show off your moose knuckle [male version of camel toe]. No, no, by cute I mean going with a costume that is adorable, something not store bought, something ragtag, mismatched, homemade, and nearly pathetic. Your goal is to be something iconic, but make them almost feel sorry for you having to wear that getup in public.

Or hell, you could just be every member of Slipknot.

Simple Garbs And Multiple Masks: If you really can’t get the last hint to work in your favor, the next option is to be dubious in how you amass your sweets. The trick here is to wear really simple garbs as the bulk of your costume, like a black robe, a hooded gown, or a black dress. Now here’s the devious part; bring along multiple masks. Go to the door say the magic words ["Trick or treat". "Please" has no place on all hallows' eve.], then head back to the end of the driveway and switch your face then go back to the door. Maybe talk with an accent this time to really seal the deal.

Pictures like these make dentists smile.

Start Early, Double Hit Houses: Time is money, start early. In my area 5pm is about as early as deemed acceptable. Now if you managed to follow the pathetic-homemade-costume rule above, here’s how you can double hit houses: start early before everyone else and then come back to the same houses during rush time. Approach the door with groups of trick-or-treaters you don’t know. If the homeowner calls you out, play dumb: “But mister, it’s dark now, I didn’t realize I had already been down this street.” “I can barely see out of this mask, I thought you were a woman!” You just doubled your candy gathering rate. Congratulations, your dentist will be pleased.

It's a tough world out there. Hopefully your costume includes two pairs of underwear.

Best Behavior: Be patient, old people move slow. Sure he might only be dropping in one piece of candy that looks like it was made during World War II, but that’s one more piece of candy than you had before. Be polite, compliment their Halloween costume but hope that they really are wearing a mask and that their face isn’t really just that messed up. If they are handing you candy you like, emphasize that that is your favorite candy. Tell them that no one else is giving out that candy tonight and that you’ve been looking forward to sinking your teeth into those sweet morsels all evening. If you aren’t that outgoing then act shy, not too shy though. I mean you’ve got to at least mutter “Trick or treat!” with some gusto, but act shy enough to convince them that this is your first time trick-or-treating. If you’re a teenager, perhaps you should have a back story of how you just immigrated to this country as an excuse of why you haven’t done this before.

Amateur.

Carrying Your Treasures: Most schmucks will bring a little plastic jack-o-lantern to collect their candy in. Leave that shit to the amateurs – you’re here for business. Bring along one of those iconic orange and black plastic containers, but, and here’s the secret, also bring along a king size pillow case. What you want to do here is every time you go up to a house, put just a handful of candy in your plastic bucket and offer that to the candy-giver and then before you move on to the next house, dump some of the candy into your pillowcase that you’re concealing from the homeowners. Everyone likes to give stuff to the needy, if they see your pillow case, they’ll probably be stingy on you.

The competition.

Filter Out The Crap: Upon transitioning your candy from the plastic bucket to your pillow case, filter out the crap you don’t want. We’re not only focusing on quantity here, our goal is obscene amounts of quality sweets as well.

Be the jerk and all of this could be yours.

Be A Total Jerk: If someone isn’t home and they leave a note about only taking one piece of candy, be the jerk and take the whole damn bowl. If you don’t do it someone who comes by after you surely will.

I can feel your blood-sugar level trembling already.

Stash Your Own Stash: In the days and weeks leading up to Halloween, surely your parents will start to accumulate a few bags of candy to give out to your competitors. Tilt the odds in your favor and every day take a little bit of the candy out of the bowl and stash it away for yourself. It’s a dog eat dog world, well, it’s a dog eat your candy so you eat the dog’s candy first world.

Follow these little tips and you just might have enough candy to last you until next year. If you’re lucky, you won’t become a diabetic by Christmas Eve.