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Drinking game

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Part of the series on
Popular
drinking games

Pong games
Beer pong | w/ Paddles
Slam | Dartmouth

Table games
Flip cup | Boat race
Arrogance | Quarters
Land Mine

Word games
I Never | 21
Drink while you think
Card games
Kings | President/Asshole
Hi-Lo | Horserace
Binge drinking games
Keg stand | Power Hour
Funneling | Shotgunning
Strawpedo | Yard of ale
Edward Forty-Hands

Contents

Definition of drinking games

Drinking games are games which involve drinking beer or other alcoholic beverages. These games take place usually among friends and usually at fraternities, sororities or at public bars or pubs. The objective of these games is either simply to drink competitively for speed, or alternately to make your opponent drink more than you do, so that they become drunk. Participants are primarily college students or young adults.

History of drinking games

Symposium sceneFresco depicting an early drinking party from the Tomb of the Diver. 475 BCE. Paestum Museum, Italy.
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Symposium scene
Fresco depicting an early drinking party from the Tomb of the Diver. 475 BCE. Paestum Museum, Italy.

The earliest reference to drinking games in Western literature is from Plato's Symposium (‘The Drinking Party’). The game was simple: fill a bowl with wine, drink it, and pass it on to the next person

Kottabos is one of the earliest known drinking games and which involves skill in pouring a small quantity of wine into a large vessel. A modern variant is "Cottabus", also known as Arrogance, requires that players take turns to add as much beer or wine as they like to a central jug before correctly predicting the result of the flip of a coin. Failure to call the coin toss correctly (or dropping it, which a real possibility during the later stages of the game), means the unlucky player must drink the entire contents of the central jug.

Basic drinking games

The simplest drinking games are endurance games in which players compete to out-drink each other. Players take turns taking shots, and the last person standing is the winner. Some games have rules involving the "cascade" or "waterfall", which encourages each player to drink constantly from their cup so long as the player before him does not stop drinking. Such games can also favor speed over quantity, in which case players race to drink a beer the fastest.

Games to decide who buys the next round

Drinking Games involving Speed and not quantity

Many pub or bar games involve competitive drinking for speed and not necessarily quantity consumed. The object of these games many not be inebriation, but may involve simply "bragging rights" or wagers of cash which benefit the fastest drinker.

World Records for Speed Beer Drinking

Steven Petrosino, during his successful June 1977 Guinness World record attempt at the Gingerbreadman Pub in Carlysle, Pennsylvania. He established records for 1/4 liter (0.137 seconds), and for 1/2 liter (0.4 seconds), but Guinness accepted only the record for 1 liter.
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Steven Petrosino, during his successful June 1977 Guinness World record attempt at the Gingerbreadman Pub in Carlysle, Pennsylvania. He established records for 1/4 liter (0.137 seconds), and for 1/2 liter (0.4 seconds), but Guinness accepted only the record for 1 liter.

The Guinness Book of Records began to list world records for speed drinking in this category in the early 1960s. These early drinking records involved drinking beer from challenging vessels such as the yard of ale glass, which, if not correctly mastered, resulted in the user recieving a blast of beer in his or her face. The 1969 edition of the Guinness Book lists Lawrence Hill (age 22) of Bolton Lancashire England as having consumed a 2.5 pint yard of ale in 6.5 seconds on December 17, 1964. The 1974 edition lists Jack Boyle, age 52, of Barrow-in-Furness England as having consumed a 3 pint yard of ale in 10.15 seconds on May 14, 1971. In the mid 1970s, Guinness began to list speed records achieved using any drinking vessel. The 1977 edition dropped the earlier records established by Hill and Boyle and listed a 2.5 pint yard record by "R.A.F. Upper Heyford, Oxfordshire" in 5.0 seconds and a 3 pint yard record established at "Corby Town, S.C., Northhamptonshire on January 23, 1976 in 5.5 seconds". The 1977 edition listed the new world record established at the Gingerbreadman Pub by Steven Petrosino (age 25) of New Cumberland Pennsylvania on June 22, 1977. Petrosino drank 1 liter of beer in 1.3 seconds. [Video: 1/4 liter in 0.18 seconds]. Petrosino approached the challenge scientifically and used 2 [specially designed half-liter drinking vessels to establish this world beer record]. The 1977 edition also lists Peter G. Dowdeswell of Earls Barton, Northhampton England for drinking 2 pints (one liter) of beer from a single vessel in 2.3 seconds on June 11, 1975 and 2 liters in 6.0 seconds on 7 Feb, 1975. These records (along with all food and alcohol consumption records) were all dropped from the Guinness book in 1991 due to concerns about litigation.

Games of speed consumption

Drinking games involving memory, the power of observation, or intellectual skill

Games that involve creative thinking (i.e. naming a sports player whose name begins with a particular letter) might be played under a "drink while you think" rule in which a player must consume his beverage until he can come up with an answer.

Numerous drinking games are based on popular movies, television shows, or books. The rules for these games usually require that the players drink when some event occurs, such as a character speaking a catch phrase in comedies, or the use of a particular technology in science fiction. Typically the size of the drink is inversely proportional to the frequency of the event — an event that happens rarely can call for downing one's current drink. These games might have simple, easily remembered rules, or they might have detailed rules, often available on the Internet.

In games involving the powers of observation, each player may be assigned the name or number of a football player, and must drink when that name or number is mentioned by the commentators or shown on the screen. Current events such as the State of the Union address, the Oscars, and the Eurovision Song Contest have become targets of such drinking games, often as a means of injecting humor into long or monotonous events. Variants of this theme may penalize participants who fail to observe an expected event.

In drinking games involving memory, each player must repeat a series of events, and then add to it. If a player repeats the series incorrectly, he or she must take a drink. Another variation on this memory theme is a game that is played while drinking with the non-dominant hand (left hand if you're right-handed, and vice versa). If a player accidentally picks up their glass with the wrong hand, they have to finish their drink. Such games are not difficult at the onset, but become much more challenging as the game continues as players become inebriated and their coordination and memory deteriorate.

Drinking games of skill, memory or repetition

Drinking games involving coordination

Some drinking games, such as Quarters, involve performing certain skills, which become more difficult as the level of intoxication increases.

Drinking Rules

Many drinking games have their own set of governing rules. While a drinking game is in progress, or between games, International Drinking Rules may be in force.

Other drinking games

Card games

Dice games

Quarters Games

Movies, television, music, etc.

1 shot (4 oz) of beer at the beginning( a toast to the simpson's) 1 shot every min 1 additional shot for double numbers (that is, 11 min's, 22 min's) 1 shot for every instance of Duff's beer 1 shot for every Doh! 1 shot for the ending

Other party and pub games

Conversion of other games

Almost any game of skill or chance that does not traditionally involve drinking can theoretically be converted into a drinking game. In some games, conversion could be as easy as letting the winner distribute shots to the other players, while in more complicated games, shots can be forced upon players for specific events in the game.

For example, in the game of chess, players may have to take drinks when one of their pieces are captured (or perhaps the opposite, where they have to drink upon capturing a piece), as portrayed in the checkers-game scene of Our Man in Havana (in which the pieces are replaced with mini-whisky bottles). In a popular variant of baseball called Beer Ball, players have to drink some beer every time they reach a base.

The Cambridge University Tiddlywinks Club have experimented with ways of converting many existing games into drinking games, and have frequently invented their own as a consequence. It has often been found that some quite complex algorithms are required to produce a good fining system. Those trying to convert an existing game into a drinking game should therefore not give up easily.

Players should exercise caution before choosing to add drinking to any sport that could be dangerous under intoxication.

External links

 

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