No matter where you’re playing, one sinister directive seems to hold fast across the board: Upon drawing a king, you’re required to pour a portion of whatever’s in your hand into that cup in the middle, regardless of what’s already been added. “I probably learned it from a dude with cargo pants, a fleece vest and a hemp necklace, who drove a truck and was really into how the colors of his glass bowl were changing over time.”

There’s also the built-in ability to create new rules within the game, and it’s up to you to enforce them.

Based on who’s in charge, you could end up crushing a Coors Light tallboy, struggling to remember track names off Surfer Rosa or flailing your limbs around like a holy roller. Each card corresponds to a different mini-game or drinking challenge, depending on who’s dictating the format, which tends to vary wildly. All you have to do is set up a cup, fan out the playing cards face down in an unbroken circle around it, equip yourself with a beer or cocktail and go. Truly one of the easiest drinking games to organize-a quick root through the junk drawer should it-it’s also equally easy to play. Still, much like the trod-upon serf who struggles under the crush of a tyrannical monarch, Kings often ends with a cold, expressionless white guy in a fly crown ruining your life.Īnd it can happen so fast. It’s so named because a deck of cards-along with booze, a liquid-holding receptacle and as many coherent participants one can raise-is all you need to play. Unlike horse racing, Kings, aka King’s Cup (aka Circle of Death, aka Ring of Fire-for fans of nuance), did not earn its regal title filling the idle time of blue-bloods. And most vitally, it requires a willingness to revel in the alcohol-fueled misfortune of others, a boutique brand of schadenfreude accessible only by those who know how it feels to chug a mug filled with equal parts shitty beer, Smirnoff Ice, Steel Reserve and warm Franzia. It demands a worthy, though not encyclopedic, knowledge of the world’s most important topics-like ‘90s television shows, cigarette brands and breakfast cereal mascots.

It calls for some physical prowess, but not so much that you’re asked to stand. It’s more of a game than a sport, really, but one built around the most molecular aspects of competition-quick thinking, risk-taking, self-preservation, picking up what others are putting down.

The sport called Kings, meanwhile, has about as much in common with royalty as John Goodman in King Ralph. There are people-the type of people who use “summer” as a verb-who say horse racing is the sport of kings.

Kings cup score chart drinking game