Sports have a long legacy of being a grand show of physical prowess. However, not all sports are the same. Some beckon forth humankind’s other skills beyond physical will. Some sports require the players to chug a beer from a boot shaped glass as quickly as they possibly can without spilling a drop.
Much like some of the more widely accepted sports in the world, drinking games have their roots in ancient Greece. The Greeks played a drinking game known as Kottabos, which would be highly unconventional compared to modern drinking games. According to Live Science, Kottabos required players to fling wine lees (residual chunks of yeast left over from the fermentation process) from their cups at a small disk or bowl sitting precariously atop a stand. Players that knocked the disk off gained a point. An interesting aspect of the game was that players were required to fling the lees from a lounged position on a piece of furniture resembling a couch.
Drinking games have since evolved to be tests of speed, accuracy and endurance, all while players are under the influence of alcohol. Entire organizations and tournaments have been formed around playing these drinking games for very large prizes. One such tournament is the annual World Series of Beer Pong hosted in Las Vegas, Nevada, with a $5,000 prize to the winner. Beer pong has a simple objective but can become highly competitive. Players organize 10 plastic cups of beer in a triangular formation on each side of a ping pong table. The players then attempt to either bounce or toss a ping pong ball into one of their opponent’s cups. Should the ping pong ball land in one of the cups the player who didn’t throw must drink that beer (for sanitary reasons many players opt to have their cups full of water and have an empty cup on the side that they fill and drink from as needed) and remove it from their formation of cups. The first player to run out of cups loses. There are several variations on the game including the ability for a player to rearrange their cups after losing a certain amount.
Some drinking games are less about any particular skill and more about speed. A “das boot” is a boot-shaped drinking glass that has a unique contest centered around it. The boot-shaped glasses started appearing in the 1800s and became popular in Germany. The objective of the drinking game is quite simply to drink beer from the boot in a continuous stream faster than your opponent without spilling anything. The boot can be particularly tricky however. The shape of the boot creates an air pocket at the “toe.” While a player is drinking, the air pocket can suddenly cause the beer to come rushing out and splash him or her in the face. To avoid this, the player must turn the boot mid chug to even out the air pocket.
Because alcohol can be dangerous at high levels of consumption, drinking games can be hazardous. Should you attempt any drinking game you should only do so in moderation to avoid long term health issues.