I love to play card games
I enjoy good alcohol
I have also had alcohol while playing card games
What I have never done (well, until now), is play card games involving drinking. The record has been broken! Second day into the event in the evening, the powers that be and the hotel organized the simple affair with pizza (yuck), chicken fingers and bottomless cases of Heineken, Bud Light, Miller Light, Beringers White Zinfandel and some other beers and wine. As we lounged after the long day of running around, giving directions and being 'on' constantly, this was the time to let the hair down and relax and enjoy each others company. The average age for this group is about 25 years! And one of them just turned 21!
The suspects
So, one person was sent off to look for a pack of cards. I hadn't the faintest idea of what I was getting into. This is what we played:
First Game: Kings Cup
The rules: A empty glass is placed in the center of the table and all players sit in a circle around it. This is the Kings Cup. All cards are shuffled and spread out face down around the empty glass. All players in turn pick a random card and turn it over. Based on what the face value of the card the following actions need to be done.
Ace: Waterfall. When this card is drawn, the all players starting from the players left (including the player) starts drinking in succession, that is each person waits for the player on their right to start and does not stop until the player on the right stops drinking. This is lots of drinking.
2: Is for You. The player who draws this card picks someone in the circle to drink.
3: For Me. The player who draws this card, drinks.
4: Touch the floor: All players must touch the floor, the last one drinks
5: Guys drink: All guys drink
6: Chicks drink: All the girls drink
7: Raise hand to heavens: Everyone must raise hand to the heavens, the last one drinks
8: [Best one] The player decides on a rule and implements it anytime, and other players have to watch and follow suit, the last on drinks. (The only rule that got made was: Thumb on the table. This meant whenever the player who decided the rule, invoked it, the others had to follow suit...needless to say, who remembers when you are all tipsy and there is lots of nudging going on to remind people).
9: Bust a Rhyme, The player starts a rhyme, and player on the left must add a new sentence that rhymes.
10: Category: The player who pulls the card, decides on a category, such as car models, dog breeds, name of people/places etc) and then each player in the circle starting from the left of the player, has to give and example of the category such as for the category car models it could be Toyota, Mercedes etc etc. If the player cannot come up with an example, stalls or mentions something duplicate, the waterfall of categories stops and the player drinks.
Jack: Back, person to the left to player drinks.
Queen: Question. The player drawing this card, picks another player and asks a question (any random question). The recipient player turns someone else (who has not been asked) to ask a question to another player. This goes around, until either the player cannot remember to ask the question, or answers the question instead of asking forward, or asks a person already asked.
King: The player that draws the King, pours (any amount) some of the drink into the center glass. Each time the king is drawn, the drawing player will add to the center glass.... So depending on the crowd and what the mix of drinks that are going around, the center glass can be a serious drink. The last person to draw a king (one deck = the fourth king), then that player has to drink from the center glass.
Second Game: Up the river & down the river. This one has a very high get-drunk and buzzed factor.
This game involved a full deck of cards and about 11 people. It is usually played with 6 people per deck, but we were too many people and not enough cards. So we played a drastically modified version. We played with the following rules:
1. Everyone sits in a circle including the dealer.
2. The dealer in turn asks each player in turn: "Red card? or Black?". The player has to guess if the card to dealt will be from the red or black suit. If the player guesses correctly, then player asks anyone in the circle to drink and if the guess is wrong the player drinks.
3. Round 2 dealer asks: "Over or Under?". The player has to guess if the card value to be dealt will be over or under the first card dealt to the player. Again if guessed correctly, player asks anyone in the circle to drink, otherwise drinks themselves.
(Of course, nothing stops the other players simply drinking).
4. In the next round the dealer asks: "Inside or Outside?". The player has to guess whether the next card to be dealt will be within the two cards already dealt or outside the two cards. If it is value is same as either or both cards, then it is considered inside. The drinks go up in this round. If the player guesses correctly, then player can asks any two other players to drink (player can also ask just one other player to take two drinks.... nasty!).
5. Onto the next round, Eight cards a placed face down. Each is earmarked as (a) Give one (b) Take one (c) Give two (D) Take two.... you get the picture..... until the last two cards are Give four and Take four. Two other cards placed face down are marked as Drink Half and the other Drink Full. (Dang!) Each card is flipped over, and all players who have the same card face value, have to follow the earmarked instructions. So for example, if the face up card was earmarked Give Three, then the player with the same face value can dole out other players three drink requests. All three could be to the same player or split up with other players.
The third game.... by now, I must have had a whole bottle of wine and was a bit tipsy, but no buzzing in the head and that's when my super boss joins the party and introduces a vegetable game (nothing to do with cards). In this game, each player had to pick a vegetable that would be the players' given name. One player starts (funnily it is my boss) and the idea is to repeat your given vegetable name twice and pick some other name from the circle and repeat their name twice. Sounds easy? well, it ain't, because rule two is that you cannot show your teeth. So I could say "Corn Corn, Zuchinni Zuchini" (I was corn). The player named Zucchini would then have to respond with "Zucchini, Zucchini, <some other veg> <other veg>" And so on and so forth. Why is this game ludicrously funny? It is because, remember we have already played two drinking games, so everyone is already mostly drunk and on top of that the only way to really talk without showing teeth is to wrap the lips over the teeth.... and that alone maketh for jocularity.
And.... so on and so on.... by 10:30PM.... I was ready to call it day and head back to my room.