Drinking game

Drinking games are games which involve drinking alcoholic beverages. The point is either simply to drink, or to make your opponent drink more than you do, so that they become drunk and drink even more, and so forth. Cottabus[?] is an ancient game involving skill in pouring a swig of wine into a large vessel. A modern varient of Cottabus, known as Arrogance, has players take turns to add as much beverage as they like to a central jug before correctly calling a flip of a coin. Failure to call the coin correctly (or dropping it, a real possibility during the later stages of the game), means the unlucky (or clumsily drunk) player must drink the entire contents of the central jug.

What are some common drinking games?

Perhaps the simplest drinking game is the one in which players simply try to out-drink each other. Players take turns taking shots (drinking beers, etc.). The last person standing is the winner.

Numerous drinking games based on popular television shows and genres exist; the rules for these usually instruct the players to drink when some event (such as a character speaking a catch phrase in comedies, or the use or mention of a particular technology in science fiction) occurs, typically with the size of the drink inversely proportional to the frequency of the event - an event that happens rarely can call for finishing one's current can/bottle.

A generalization of the above can apply to other circumstances in which the participants are observing a situation in which certain predictable events occur, such as a movie, a football game, or other people at a party or in a bar. For example, 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.

Other drinking games rely on 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. These games start out simple, but become much more challenging as the series grows and the players get drunker and their coordination and memory deteriorate.

There are also drinking games that can be played with cards:

• Asshole
• Sheps Deal
• Drink your face off
• Kings
• Hi-Lo

External Links: The Screen Savers drinking game (http://www.rapidfish.org/joan/mwwdlsc/drinkinggame)
The Gulf War drinking game (http://www.gulfwardrinkinggame.com/)
The Cops drinking game (http://www.avalon.net/~matrix/drink/cops)
Beer Trek (http://planetofthegeeks.com/trek/beertrek/)
The Ultimate Drinking Game page (http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Set/7200/drinking.htm)