What are the best drinking card games in 2024? There are plenty of ways to spice up a boozy evening with friends using just a pack of cards. Whether you want to add some extra fun to your night, or are looking for an easy excuse to down your glass, our recommended games will bring the party.
If you’re prepping for a party tonight and need something now, the first half of our list has fun drinking card games with a standard deck. If you’ve more time to prepare then lower down you’ll find custom-made card games for adults that are well worth trying. For more potent party icebreakers, you could also try these spicy Truth or Dare questions.
Oh and please do drink responsibly. Drinking card games are much more fun when everybody knows their limits, and nobody chucks up on the carpet.
These are the best drinking card games in 2024:
1. King’s Cup
Best drinking game for large groups.
A classic drinking card game, King’s Cup is a staple of college kitchens everywhere. It’s so good that it’s made it onto our guide to the best drinking games, full stop, and we even have a dedicated guide to the King’s Cup rules.
Place a glass in the middle of the table, surrounded by a pack of face-down playing cards laid out in a ring – the ‘ring of fire’. You’ll take turns drawing cards from the ring and performing specific actions based on their value:
- Ace – Waterfall: every player starts drinking, and can’t stop until the player to their left stops.
- 2 – You: pick two people to drink.
- 3 – Me: take a drink.
- 4 – Floor: the last person to touch the floor drinks.
- 5 – Guys: Everyone who identifies as a man drinks.
- 6 – Chicks: Everyone who identifies as a woman drinks.
- 7 – Heaven: the last person to raise their hand drinks.
- 8 – Mate: choose a player to pair up with. Whenever you have to drink, they also have to.
- 9 – Rhyme: pick a word and take turns saying a word that rhymes. The first person that can’t come up with a rhyming word drinks.
- 10 – Categories: think of a category (animals, theme parks, French political parties of the 1970s) and take turns naming items in that category. The first player who can’t think of an item drinks.
- Jack – Everyone drinks.
- Queen – Questions: anytime you ask someone a question, they must respond with another question or drink. Continue until someone else draws a queen.
- King – Dirty Pint: Pour some of your drink into the glass as the center of the table. The person who draws the fourth, last King in the deck drinks whatever’s in the middle glass.
As an added rule, if you ever break the ring when you draw a card, take a drink. Once you’ve learnt the rules with a few games, create your own house rules for even more shenanigans.
2. Ride the Bus
Best tactical drinking game.
Ride the Bus is a drinking card game all about guessing. The whole game is split into four separate rounds, in which players take turns blindly guessing which category a card belongs to. To get started, sit in a circle, deal a face-down card to each player and play through the following rounds. Deal each player a new card at the start of each round:
- Red or Black – each player guesses whether their card belongs to a red or black suit. If you guess right, pick a player to drink. If you’re wrong, take a drink yourself.
- Higher or Lower – guess whether your second card is higher or lower than your first. If you’re right, you get to pick another person to drink. If wrong, you’ll be sipping.
- Between or outside – guess whether your third card will be between the values of your first and second. You can probably guess what happens if you’re right or wrong.
- Suit – finally, each player guesses the suit of their fourth card. Drinks are handed out the same way as the previous rounds.
That portion of the game can work well by itself, but as a final hoorah, move on to the ‘pyramid’ part of the game. Construct a face-down pyramid of cards in the center of the table – one card in the top row, two in the second, three below that, four after, and five in the final tier – and take turns flipping over each card from the bottom row to the top.
Anytime you have a matching card in your hand to the one that’s just been flipped, pick a player to take as many drinks as there are cards in the row. Replace the flipped card with another from the pack, and keep on going.
3. Screw the Dealer
Quickest drinking card game.
Screw the Dealer will get the whole group drinking very quickly. One player, the dealer, grabs a deck of cards, and reads out the value of the top card. The person to their left then guesses whether the next card dealt will be higher or lower – aces are high in this game, so higher than a king.
If they guess correctly, the dealer takes a drink, and the game continues with the next person in the circle taking on guessing duties. If you ever guess wrong, you’ll take a drink and become the dealer.
4. Killer
Best mystery drinking game.
When you want to add an element of murder mystery to your drinking card games, play Killer. To start, deal out a black card to each player, but include one red card among them. Make sure the deal is random, and no one knows who got the red card – that player will be the killer.
The murder mystery game proceeds in two phases: in the first, everyone closes their eyes while the killer discreetly gets up to tap one other player on the shoulder. That player is dead, out of the game, and must take as many drinks as players have been killed.
In the second phase, players use their shrewd detective skills to determine who among them is the murderer. They must make one guess (decided by majority vote). If they’re right, the killer kicks the bucket and must take as many drinks as there are players remaining; if they’re wrong, that player dies and everyone takes a drink.
5. Jacks
A funny drinking card game where you make your own rules.
Jacks, or Hi Jack, Good Morning Jack, Salute the King or any of the countless names this drinking card game and its variants go by, is a fantastic card game that’s hilarious and different each time you play it.
It starts out like Snap. (A bad start, we admit, but it gets better.) Each player takes it in turns to reveal a card, and when a Jack comes up, everyone has to slap it and shout “Jack”. The last person to do so has to drink.
From there, things get more complicated. The first person to slap the Jack gets to add a new action for another type of card. Popular options are saluting, saying good morning (to one of the face cards), or standing up – probably knocking someone’s drink over in the process. Alternatively, if you want to start out at the deep end, you can assign actions to every card at the start of the game for maximum chaos.
6. Irish Snap
A card-based drinking game for those with hands of steel.
Irish Snap has a few simple twists on classic Snap that turn it from one of the worst drinking card games to one of the best. Players take it in turns to lay a card, and all the players count up in card value (from Ace to King, and round again) as each person takes their turn.
When someone lays a card which matches the number they said, everyone has to jam their hand into the center. Last to do so must drink (duh) and pick up the cards.
The free for all means Irish Snap can get very nasty, with the person quick enough to get in first wincing under the crushing weight of everyone else’s powerful palms. Hopefully a few drinks will help to numb the pain.
In 2018, a commercial version of this game, ‘Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza’, came out and seems to have been doing very nicely for itself. This version spices things up further with silly actions and cartoon-y cards. While it’s designed as a family game, you could easily convert it to a drinking game.
7. Up The River, Down The River
An easy drinking game that’s purely luck-based.
A very simple drinking game where all you need is two decks of cards you can shuffle together. At the start of Up The River, Down The River, each player is dealt four cards, which they place face up in front of them. The dealer then reveals and lays down cards from the top of the deck, one at a time.
When the dealer lays the first card, anyone with a card of matching rank must take one sip of their beverage. If you have a match for the second card, you take two drinks. If you match the third, three drinks and if you match the fourth (you’ve guessed it!) you take four.
Then, you go “down river”. The dealer reveals four more cards, one at time. But this time, if your card matches, you assign drinks to other people. The number of drinks also goes in descending order, from four to one.
So now if you have a card that matches what the dealer lays first, you can assign four drinks to other players. Match the next card, you give out three. For the third card you assign two, and for the fourth and final card you just give out one. You can split these drinks up, however you like, or pile them all on the same person – it’s your prerogative.
The game’s so simple, you might say it’s barely a game, but it has the key elements that make for a good basic drinking game: luck, picking on your friends, and lots of drinking.
8. President
A classic, strategic drinking game
President is a fast-paced drinking card game that’s a whole lot of fun. Here’s how it works. At the start of the game, all the cards are dealt out. Your aim is to be the first to get rid of your cards and become the President.
To play, you go round the table laying down cards. Each player must play a card or set of cards of a higher value than what was laid before. So you couldn’t place down a seven if the person before you had played a nine. If you can’t go, or choose not to, you skip your turn, and must take a drink.
There are some wrinkles though. For instance, multiple copies of the same card always beats a single card, regardless of rank. So you can beat a nine with two sevens, for instance, or smash two sevens with three fours.
Threes and twos also have a special function. Twos clear the board, and the person who laid one can immediately play another card of any value afterwards. Threes are wild cards, and can be played as almost any suit. You can’t use a single three as a two, but you can also clear the board with a pair of threes.
The order players finish determined their ‘rank’. The first player gets to be President, the second is VP, and the last player left with cards is dubbed ‘the a–hole’ that round.
You might want to come up with a forfeit for the loser like downing their drink, sitting on a rubbish chair, buying a round – whatever you choose. Meanwhile, the President should have the best seat of the house.
The winner of the previous round goes first in the next round, and the loser, the a–hole, must give them their best card.
9. Horserace
The best gambling drinking card game.
You probably shouldn’t mix gambling and drinking, but at least here no money changes hands. To play Horserace, you remove all four aces from the deck and place them at the starting line. Then create a race track by placing a vertical line of cards on the table (the size is up to you – we’d suggest around six cards ‘tall’).
Next, everyone places drink-related bets on their chosen horse/ace. This could be straightforward, like four sips on hearts, or you can get super specific with the quantity and type of alcohol you’re betting.
Next the dealer reveals cards from the top of the deck. With each card shown, the ace of its suit gets to move one space. When an ace passes the last card of the line, they’ve won the race! The winner gets to dish out the drinks they bet to the player(s) of their choice, while the losers must chug half of what they bet, plus anything assigned by the winner.
10. Drunk Uno
Best nostalgic drinking game.
For this one, you won’t need a classic 52 pack of cards, but a pack of everyone’s favorite color-matching, number-driven card game, Uno. Drunk Uno plays exactly the same as the normal game, with a few additional drinking requirements thrown in for good measure.
Anytime the following happens in Drunk Uno, take a drink:
- If you can’t play a card from your hand
- If someone plays a skip or reverse card against you
- If someone plays a +2 card against you take two drinks
- If someone plays a +4 card against you take four drinks
- If you play a wild card everyone drinks
- If you forget to say Uno on your last card, take four drinks
- If you have the most cards by the end of the game, down your drink
- If you forget the rules of Uno, drink!
11. Cards Against Humanity Drinking Game
Best drinking game for filthy jokes.
You might be familiar with the controversial comedy card game for adults Cards Against Humanity, but have you heard of the Cards Against Humanity Drinking Game? If not, that’s no problem – the rules aren’t too far away from the original game’s. Players are still dealt a humorous hand of cards; each round they must choose one to play in response to the black prompt card, to try to get that round’s judge to laugh.
Players take turns in the role of Card Czar, and the Card Czar for each round gets to pick the winning white card – or, in the case of the Cards Against Humanity Drinking Game, cards. In this version, the Card Czar ranks three white cards as winning first, second, or third place, and the players of those cards must take a drink equal to the place they ranked – so one drink for first, two for second, and three for third.
12. Loaded Kings
Let the cards do the work
Loaded Kings is a commercial variant of Kings Cup (or Ring of Fire). Just as in those games, you’ll lay out a circle of 52 face down cards and take it in turns flipping them over, facing penalties as you do.
So what’s the point? Well, Loaded Kings is ‘drunk proof’. The playing cards are waterproof (and beerproof), so there’s no risk of destroying the deck midway through a game, and you can set the game up on a pool float if you’re on vacation somewhere with a good pool.
And unlike a game played with a regular card deck, Loaded Kings has exactly what you need to do written on each card. The longer a game goes on for, the more you’ll appreciate the reminder!
If you’ve got the table space, you could also consider these drinking board games. Or, if you’re looking for party card games that will suit a get-together even without a beverage, we can recommend plenty of funny card games that are good for a crowd.