“You got to get a pingpong ball. You got to get it in the cup. If you don’t get it into the cup, you got to chug your beer. Say what? Let me get this straight, mate. I’m trying to get drunk, yet you’re putting an activity in my way that may impede me from getting to my beverage? They have this drinking game in the UK. Do you know what it’s called? Drinking!” – Jim Jefferies, Australian comic.

If some of you feel the same way as Jim, about long drawn out Drinking Games – get yourself to Asia.

Here we play drinking games alright, but just a lot more straightforward, with our eye firmly on the prize – to drink. 

Allow us to present: Uniquely Asian Drinking Games that require neither linguistic, athletic, hand-eye-coordination, nor oratorical skills – just a passion for efficient drinking.

1. FIVE-TEN

Say there are 2 of you. You hold up both fists. When it is shut its 0, and when open it’s 5. Together, your combined fists make either 0,5,10,15, or 20. Players take turns to shout a number – and all in play react simultaneously by keeping fists open or closed. If the number you shout coincides with the number displayed, you win!   

2. ASIAN-RUSSIAN ROULETTE

Best played with Sake, although I have faint memories of stupidly replacing it with vodka, which explains memory lapses. This is a game for the hardcore. On a tray, cups – number of cups coincides with number of people in play) are placed, overturned. No one peeks, and one person plants a coin under one cup. The tray is passed around in a circle and each player picks up a cup, and leaves it overturned, pours some sake in it, and passes the tray along. If you lift the cup under which the coin is hidden, you have to drink the lot that has been filled in before you. That means if you’re the fourth person to find the coin, you have to knock back four hits of sake. And you know what happens if it finds its way back to the person who concealed the coin in the first place!

3. ZERO-ONE-HUNDRED

Seated in a circle, a player-facilitator fills a nasty drink to the brim, and writes down on a piece of paper a number between 0 and 100, and leaves it face down on the table. He/she goes around in a clockwise (or anti-clockwise, who cares) direction, and players take turn to guess the number. Say the number written is 77, and the first person says 50, the facilitator then has to say 51-100 to the next person. If you get the number right, you drink, so the idea is to narrow down the parameters, and close in on the number as soon as possible. Everyone takes turn to be facilitator, and if the facilitator messes up, he/she drinks.

4. 7-UP

Basic point of the game is to keep the counting going, but every time there’s either a 7, or a multiple of 7, you have to say “7-up” (great branding innit?). So, a round would go like this: “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, *7up, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, *7up, 15, 16, *7up, 18, 19, 20, *7up…” Gets really fun when you hit 70! Needless to say, if you mess up, you drink!

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