Hi-Lo
Hi-Lo is a drinking game in which players must guess the rank that was dealt to another player’s card. It is usually played with 1oz “shots” of beer. Many shots must be consumed at a time, making it more convenient to drink approximate 1oz sips, unless one has many (preferably 13) shot glasses lined up for use. Hi-Lo is popular for usually leaving one player stuck with having to drink many shots at the end of the game (over 30, and even 50, is common). It is best played with three to eight players.
Preparation
For a drinking game, Hi-Lo has a fairly complicated setup, but it still doesn’t take long.
From a deck of 52 standard playing cards, one of each rank is placed on a table (or other playing surface). The ranks Ace through Six are placed on the left side, with the Ace closest and the six furthest.
The Seven is placed to the right of the other six and further away. The ranks Eight to King are placed to the right of the Seven, symmetrical to Ace through Six, with the Eight furthest away and the King the closest.
The remaining 39 cards are shuffled and placed anywhere on the table. Someone is then designated to hold the deck at the beginning of the game. Holding the deck is generally undesirable because it leads one to potentially drink a lot.
Rules
One turn of Hi-Lo plays like this:
1. The player holding the deck asks to the next person to play (In the first turn of the game, this is the player to the left of them) to guess what card they are holding.
2. The other player guesses a rank from Ace to King. If they are right, move down to step 4.
3. The player holding the deck informs if the correct rank is “higher” or “lower” than the number they guessed. Aces are low. The guessing player now has one more chance to guess the right rank.
4.
- If the guessing player is right, the player holding the cards must drink the number of shots of beer that is the rank of the card. For example, if the player guessed Six, and this was the correct rank, the player holding the cards would need to drink six shots of beer. Aces are worth 1, Jacks 11, Queens 12, and Kings 13.
- If the guessing player is wrong again, he or she must drink the difference between his or her second answer and the correct rank. For example, if they guess King, and the correct answer is Nine, they must drink the difference between 9 and 13, which is 4 shots.
- If the guessing player was the second player in a row to lose to the player holding the deck, the deck is passed onto that player.
5. Regardless of outcome, the card is placed on top of the card(s) on the table with the same rank. So, if the card’s rank was Six, it would be placed on top of the Six(es) that are on the table. If this card was the fourth (ie last) of a rank, the set of four cards is placed face down, meaning that no more cards will have this rank.
6. Regardless of outcome, the next player to guess the next card’s rank will be the player to the left of the last player to guess (unless that player holds the cards, then he or she is skipped to the next person to the left).
Strategy
There are some basic strategies to Hi-Lo which should be explained to newcomers before their first game is played.
Since there are 13 ranks, guessing seven is normally described as the best guess at the beginning of the game. This way, if the player isn’t right, he or she will definitely have six ranks to guess from afterwards. If one were to guess nine, for example, and the answer was lower, they would be stuck choosing from eight different possibilities (Ace through Eight). However, there are two reasons why one should not always make seven their first guess:
Firstly, higher numbers will force the player holding the cards to drink more if guessed correctly. For this reason, an aggressive player will guess eight or even nine as a first guess in the hope that the answer will be higher, and they will have fewer possibilities to guess from. Aggressive players, on a second attempt that is higher than their first, will usually bet King (on even odds, more on this next paragraph), because the chances of any of the choices being right are the same, and the King will force the other player to drink the most. On the other hand, it can make the potential difference between their answer and the right answer higher, forcing them to drink more themselves if they’re wrong.
Secondly, cards are placed on the table after they are played, and as such, players can freely work out the probability of each rank (something that is easy to do, even while drunk). If only the initial card is there, there are still three of that rank in the deck, and if three are on the table, only one is left in the deck. If there are many higher cards on the table, the first guess should be lower to make up for this. If there are 3 kings on the table, it may not be wise to guess the King.
Being the guessing player when the player before you lost (but didn’t receive the cards) means that you must guess the next card correctly, or you will be given the cards. In this case, it’s probably better to ignore what will force the other player to take the most shots and to focus on guessing correctly.
“Stuck” with the Deck
Wrong guesses are frequent at the beginning of the game, so it is common to see the deck change hands a lot at the beginning of the game, but as the possibilities for certain ranks are eliminated, being “stuck” with the cards becomes an inevitability, and the player holding them is powerless to do anything about it, other than to “bluff” the guessing player into guessing the wrong number (which isn’t very effective in practice).
When the possibilities for only three ranks remain (ie 10 of the ranks have been turned face down), the player holding the cards is doomed and might as well reveal all of the remaining cards, add the values up, and drink the resulting number of ounces. The other players usually deal a sort of sympathy with the player, and tell him or her to finish their bottle of beer if it’s reasonably full.
It should be noted that players can often be “stuck” with the deck at the beginning of the game due to good luck (or possible cheating) on the part of the other players, so the drinking in this game is often very unevenly distributed.
Theory
A average of roughly 150 ounces of beer will be drank during a game of Hi-Lo. The amount varies depending on which values are guessed correctly and how much guesses are missed by. The theoretical minimum is 42. If every player guessed correctly, 273 ounces would be given to the player who started the game with the deck. The theoretical maximum, assuming that players follow the rules sensibly but make some improbably poor guesses, is 363 ounces.
More players will make each player drink less shots, on average, but regardless of the number of players, there will usually be a player who drinks a lot as a consequence of being stuck with the deck.