A good drinking card game does three things: it teaches itself in under a minute, it keeps everyone at the table involved rather than watching, and it lets anyone sit a round out without making a scene. Plenty of games manage one of the three. These seven manage all of them.
Full disclosure: we make the first two. The other five need nothing but an ordinary deck of cards, and we play them too. Everything here is for adults of legal drinking age — 21 and over in the US — and every one of them works just as well with a soft drink in hand.
The quick picks
- Best boxed game for a group: Sotally Tober
- Best for close friends: Sotally Tober: Close & Personal
- Best classic for a big group: King's Cup
- Best for a small table: Ride the Bus
- Best for spectators and side bets: Horse Race
- Best for bluffers: Pyramid
- Best zero-rules warm-up: Higher or Lower
1. Sotally Tober — the best boxed drinking card game for a group
Sotally Tober is a drinking card game for four or more players, ages 21+. The whole game fits in one sentence: draw a card, do what it says, or drink. What keeps it interesting is that the 125 cards come in six colour-coded types, and only some of them are over when you have read them out.
- Activities are one-off challenges — a dance-off judged by the table, a silent movie scene the others have to guess, a sentence everyone has to rhyme with in turn until somebody stumbles.
- Curses stick to you: keep one eye closed for two rounds, and start over if you slip.
- Secrets stay face-down until you spring them at the worst possible moment.
- Skills are powers you keep and use when it suits you.
- Decrees are laws the whole table lives under — only two at a time.
- The Bonus card is blank on purpose: your table decides what it does before the first draw.
That mix is why the game runs itself. Nobody has to be the host shouting rules; the deck does it. Whoever takes the fewest drinks wins, and the rules sheet covers playing sober too — swap drinks for points, lowest score wins. There is no board and no setup beyond shuffling, and the full rules take five minutes in our Sotally Tober guide.
Want to try it before buying a box? The original deck plays free in your browser — one person starts a room and everyone joins on their phone with a code.
2. Sotally Tober: Close & Personal — best for close friends
Close & Personal plays exactly like the original — same six card types, same do-it-or-drink rule — but its 125 cards are all new, and they skip straight past small talk. The original asks you to perform; this one asks you to admit. It is a standalone game, so you do not need the first box, and it plays best among friends with nothing left to hide, and badly with colleagues you will see on Monday.
Every card keeps the same escape hatch: do what it says, or take the drink. Nobody is ever obliged to answer anything. Here is what is different, and why most tables start the night with the original and switch decks once the room is loud.
3. King's Cup — the best classic for a big group
Also called Ring of Fire, and probably the best-known drinking card game there is. Spread a shuffled deck face-down in a circle around an empty cup. Players take turns drawing a card and following the rule for its rank. Every table plays it a little differently — this is a common set:
- Ace — Waterfall: everyone starts drinking; nobody stops until the person before them does.
- 2 — You: pick someone to drink.
- 3 — Me: you drink.
- 4 — Floor: last person to touch the floor drinks.
- 5 — Thumb master: until the next 5, whenever you put your thumb on the table, the last to copy you drinks.
- 6 — Never have I ever: one round, and anyone who has done it drinks.
- 7 — Heaven: last to point up drinks.
- 8 — Mate: pick a drinking buddy who drinks whenever you do, for the rest of the game.
- 9 — Rhyme: say a word; go round the circle rhyming until someone repeats or stalls.
- 10 — Categories: name a category; go round naming things in it until someone blanks.
- Jack — Make a rule: invent a rule the table must follow for the rest of the game.
- Queen — Question master: anyone who answers a question you ask drinks, until the next queen.
- King — The cup: pour a little of your drink into the middle cup. Whoever draws the fourth king drinks it.
One house rule we recommend: keep the king's cup small, or fill it with something non-alcoholic. A mystery mix of everyone's drinks is a bad note to end a game on.
4. Ride the Bus — the best for a small table
The dealer asks each player four questions in turn, dealing a card face-up after each guess. Get one wrong and you drink:
- Red or black? Guess the colour of your first card.
- Higher or lower? Will the second card beat the first?
- Inside or outside? Will the third card land between your first two, or outside them?
- Which suit? Name the suit of the fourth.
Many tables add a second phase where cards are flipped from a pyramid and players hand out drinks for matching ranks. The unluckiest player then rides the bus: answering all four questions again, starting over after any miss, until they get through cleanly. It works with as few as three people, which is rare for this list.
5. Horse Race — the best for spectators and side bets
Pull the four aces out of the deck and line them up as horses at the start. Lay a row of about seven cards face-down beside them as the track. Everyone bets a number of sips on a suit.
The dealer then flips the rest of the deck one card at a time, and the ace of that card's suit moves forward one step. Each time all four horses have passed a card on the track, flip it: that suit's horse goes back a step. The first ace past the end wins — its backers hand out their bet to the table, and everyone else drinks theirs. It is the one game here where the dealer barely plays, which makes it a good role for the most sober person in the room.
6. Pyramid — the best for bluffers
Deal everyone four cards, which they can look at once and then leave face-down. Build a pyramid of face-down cards in front of the table: five in the bottom row, then four, three, two and one.
Flip the pyramid one card at a time, starting from the bottom. If you hold a card of that rank — or claim to — you can hand out drinks: one for a card in the bottom row, two in the next, and so on up. The target can call your bluff. Caught lying, you drink double; telling the truth, they do. At the end, everyone has to name the four cards in front of them from memory, which is harder than it sounds by then.
7. Higher or Lower — the best zero-rules warm-up
Flip a card face-up. The next player guesses whether the next card will be higher or lower, then flips it. Wrong, and they drink; right, and the guessing passes on. Aces are high, and a tie counts as a miss. There is nothing to learn, which makes it the right thing to deal while people are still arriving.
How to pick the right one
- Three or four people: Ride the Bus or Higher or Lower. Most party games, ours included, want four or more.
- Five to eight: Sotally Tober, King's Cup or Pyramid — the sweet spot for almost every party card game.
- A crowd: Horse Race, where people can bet without sitting at the table — or split into two tables rather than one giant circle.
- People who barely know each other: the original Sotally Tober or King's Cup. Save Close & Personal for later, or for another night.
- A 21st birthday: we wrote a whole guide to 21st birthday party games.
And the order matters as much as the choice. Open with something nobody needs to learn, play your loudest game once the room has warmed up, and stop a round earlier than you think you should. More on that shape in how to host a game night.
Play it the right way
- Put water on the table from the start, not later. The Sotally Tober box literally prints “drink water, it's good for you” on the side.
- Decide before the game who is driving or calling rides — not during.
- Anyone can play for points instead of sips. Every game on this list works that way, and ours say so in the rules.
- Nobody is ever forced to do anything. If a card asks more than someone wants to give, they take the drink — or the point — and the game moves on.
- Stop while people still want more. The party can continue; the deck does not have to.
Questions people ask
What is the most popular drinking card game?
King's Cup is probably the most widely played — it needs only a standard deck, and plenty of people have played some version of it. Among boxed games, the ones that last are the ones that run themselves, so nobody has to spend the night as the rules referee.
Can you play drinking card games without alcohol?
Yes. Swap sips for points and the lowest score wins — Sotally Tober's rules include exactly that. Every classic on this list works the same way.
How many players do you need?
Most work best with four to eight. Ride the Bus and Higher or Lower hold up with three; Horse Race scales to as many people as you can fit around the table.
What's a good drinking game for just two people?
Honestly, most of these need a group — ours say four or more on the box and mean it. For a night for two, see our two-player picks.
