Bar Bets: Part One
Here’s a tip. Check out the airport’s limo pool. You can often park your car there and walk to the airport bar (or grab an employee shuttle) and no one will be the wiser. You save on paying for parking this way and if you have to make a quick break for it, you run to the car and you do have to wait to pay to get out of the lot. Just an idea.
Bar bets can range from obscure trivia to feats of strength and skill to flat out cons. I’ll teach you a little of all four and you can be on your way to making a few dollars, or at least impressing some stranger in a bar.
Before you scoff at the bar bet, don’t forget it’s noble history. Hemingway once bar bet Howard Hawks that he couldn’t turn his worst novel into a good movie. The result was TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT; and I am told, but I’m not sure it’s true, that Scientology came about as a bar bet between Robert A. Heinlein and L. Ron Hubbard, so there you go.
A word of warning: it has been shown that even mildly negative social interaction, like feeling mistrusted by a stranger, can trigger surges in testosterone which, in turn can trigger very aggressive behavior, but don’t worry: I’ve included a couple of tricks to help you take care of that as well.
In fact, if a guy is getting up in your face, bet him 20 bucks he can’t place a pool ball in his mouth. If he’s dumb enough to take the bet, hand him the ball. It’ll fit and you’ll be out 20 bucks but the guy will have to have the ball surgically removed from his mouth unless he’s got fake teeth. Like I said, most of these trick are best done on strangers.
Another good way out, if you can tell a particular mark is about to get ugly, is to bet them you can make a cue ball jump a ramp made with a comb and land on two other balls knocking them to go into the corner pockets. Only do this when you are ready to burn the room.
Put a couple of random balls next to one another at one end of the pool table. They should be in the middle up against the rail. Place a hair comb about 10″ in front of the balls, parallel to the rail.
Tell the jerk that the best place for him to stand is right behind the balls and look down on them. Go to the other end of the pool table and hit the cue ball hard at the comb, like you were making a break. The ball will hit the comb, jump over the two balls on the table and hit the jerk in the groin. Grab your money and run. Depending on his testicular fortitude you should have enough time to get away. Just watch out for his friends, and that bane of all existence, the Good Samaritan, tripping you up on the way out the door.
Of course these are extreme measures. More often than not you can skin a stranger (or even a friend) with a couple of bar bets and they’ll thank you for the lesson (while secretly planning to use the same trick on the next sap in the bar). Here’s a simple one:
A VODKA FLOAT
Bet a fella drinking a Screwdriver that you and float vodka on top of the OJ. He may balk and think you’re going to freeze the OJ or something, but get him to go along with betting something simple, like five bucks, you can float vodka on top of OJ. Even let him try it once, if the bartender is friendly.
What you do is fill a glass about �¾ with OJ and then cover the top with a handkerchief. If I have to tell you to use a clean hank, please stop reading this now and go kill yourself.
Let the top of the hankie touch the OJ. Now slowly pour a shot of Vodka on top of the hankie. Slowly pull the handkerchief tight so the vodka starts to strain through. If you do this with a light touch the vodka will, in fact float on top of the OJ.
You do this on a slow night and the bartender might be so impressed she forgets to charge you for the booze. If not, use the five you just won off the chump to pay for it.
It’s tough to pull a bar bet on a good bartender because if they’ve been around enough, they’ve seen them all. Heck, if you watch reruns of CHEERS you’ll see Harry Anderson doing most of the classic ones. Here’s an oldie but a goodie that any bartender worth their salted rim should know, so don’t try it on them, but it should work just fine on a ‘layman’, as they say.
AN OLIVE-ER TWIST
Bet a sap that you can put an olive into a brandy snifter without touching the olive with your body, rolling the olive off the bar and catching it, or scooping the olive in any way.
Once you have them on the hook what you do is place the inverted snifter over the olive and start to slowly rotate the snifter around. The olive will start to roll around the inside walls of the glass thanks to our old friend centrifugal force. Once the olive has spun it’s way up to about the middle of the glass, flip the snifter upright and place it on the bar. You win!
As with everything I’m teaching here. Practice, practice, practice before you try this in the real world. When you first try this trick the olive will more than likely fly across the room as you flip the snifter over. Keep at it. You’ll get the flip right quickly.
All good bar bets want to start off sounding impossible. In fact, the sucker should be able to try the feat and fail miserably before you do it and win. Once they see how really easy it is, they’ll kick themselves, but they will also be looking around for a sucker that they can try the trick out on so they can win their money back. Here’s one such trick:
MATCH POINT
Bet the sap that you can toss a paper match into the air and make it land on its side. Let them try it first then make the wager. They will toss it a few times with no luck getting it to land on it’s side and after they are through embarrassing themselves, you take the match, bend slightly and it’ll land on it’s side every time.
Be careful thought, anytime you let a sap go first, they might have already seen the trick before and know how to do it. Wording is very important. The simple phrase ‘I can’ takes the danger out of that last trick. Wording is also very important for this next one:
FLASH GORDON
You slap a twenty on the bar and say, ‘I got a twenty dollar bill right here that says the bartend is going to give us a free round of drinks and flash her breast to the whole bar. Any takers?’
You might be able to get a little action on this one, especially if the bar is full of regulars that know the bartender isn’t in on the trick with you. I had a friend who owned a great bar down in Marshfield, MA called the Ranch House. He maintained that he would never go broke as long as he had a blond bartender with big tits working the lunch shift. So try this one around noon one day and you might even get the bartender to bite. After all she’s the one that knows she isn’t giving out free drinks or flashing anybody.
After you get the bets on the bar turn your bill over where previously you had written, “the bartend is going to give us a free round of drinks and flash her breast to the whole bar. Any takers?” and say, “See, I told you I got a twenty dollar bill right here that says “the bartend is going to give us a free round of drinks and flash her breast to the whole bar. Any takers?” Collect up your money and you might want to leave.
This next one won’t win you much money, but it’s a good way to make someone look like a dope and you might be able to get him or her to bet a round of drinks on the outcome:
BLOW HARD
Dry off the neck of a beer bottle and hold it out horizontally. Take a small piece of napkin, wad it up into a ball and place it just inside the bottle. Hold it in front of the sap’s face and bet them that they can blow the napkin all the way into the bottle.
Promising them you will hold the bottle perfectly still might help calm some of their fears.
They can’t do it because moving air has lower pressure than still air so when your mark blows the still air in the bottle will push the napkin out of the bottle and hopefully into the blower’s face. The harder they blow, the fast the napkin will pop out.
Give them another try at double or nothing. It still won’t work. I once had a fish on the line for five tries, although I heard legend that ‘Hurricane’ Thompson got a sucker to try it 15 times in a row before they quit.
Another good way to get drunk for free is this old ruse:
THREE THE HARD WAY
Bet a sap that you can drink three 16 oz. beers (or whatever size they have on tap) before he can shoot down three shots. The loser pays for all six drinks and the rules are all the drink must be drunk and you can’t touch the other person’s glass.
Once you have them on the hook: slam down your first beer as quick as you can (hopefully you have developed your skills so that you can pull this off before the sap has a chance to finish all three of his shots) Then take your empty beer glass and place it over one of his full shots. Since, according to the rules, he can’t touch your glass, you can now take your time finishing your other two beers as he fumes.
Be careful though. The rules don’t say anything about someone else touching your glass. Don’t dawdle, but you should still be able to finish your beers without too much of a rush before he think of this.
OIL AND WATER
Want a real looking cool way to take advantage of your friends?
Take two identical shot glasses, 1 non-porous piece of paper (like playing card, over-sized match book, etc.) some water, and a nice scotch.
Fill one-shot glass with water and the other with the scotch. Bet your friends that you can get the scotch in the glass that has the water, and the water in the glass that has the scotch without using any other containers including your, or anyone else’s mouth.
Here’s all you do: Place the playing card or whatever on top of the shot of water. Turn the card and water shot upside down carefully. The paper will stay attached to the shot on its own accord. Now, place the water shot glass and card on top of the shot of scotch. Slowly pull the paper out just far enough to make a very small opening between the two shot glasses. Water, being heavier than alcohol will flow to the scotch glass and displace the booze into the water glass. You have just made the switch. If you really hard on your kung fu, you will be able to replace the paper between the two shot glasses and remove the scotch and put it back on the bar.
Don’t forget: Keep the opening between the glasses is tiny. A large opening will cause the water and alcohol to mix and then you’ll have to drink it.
THEY HAVE GOT TO BE DUMB FOR THIS TO WORK.
This works best with a small group of really dumb friends, strangers or beautiful women.
Grab a pile of napkins, an ice bucket and a pen. The bet is that you’re going to take a quick survey, and then read someone’s mind to get the answer.
Your survey can be about anything: who’ll win the Super Bowl or the Oscar, what their favorite color is, who they think the greatest rock and roll band is, cock size or anything else you can come up with. Write each answer on separate napkins and put them into the ice bucket. Ask one person to draw one napkin and show the answer to everyone. Then close your eyes, concentrate and tell them the answer.
Real simple: you write the same answer on every napkin. Make sure everyone is really dumb or drunk and you can pull this off. Just don’t let them near the ice bucket when you are done.
PART TWO: Busting Chops. Coming Soon!
