Every player drinks a one ounce shot of beer every minute for one hour (60 minutes = 60 ounces of beer, equal to five 12 ounce bottles). All players that successfully complete the sixty shots without retiring are winners. The game sounds deceptively simple and may appear to be easy to those accustomed to moderate or heavy drinking, but players often have difficulty completing the game.

Rules

The rules of the Power Hour are very simple:

• One timekeeper must be assigned. He or she has the very important role of instructing everyone to take a shot each minute. Traditionally, it is best to use a pocket watch, but any timekeeping device may be used.
• Whenever a minute passes (i.e. the second hand passes “12″), the timekeeper yells the word “SHOT” or anything else that makes it clear to everyone else that it is, indeed, time to drink their shot of beer.
  • Alternatively, many Power Hours are played with specially programmed CD that plays songs for only a minute. When the song changes, everybody knows they must take a shot of beer.
• Normally, people are allowed bathroom breaks, and must “catch up” when they come back. The group may decide to make proceedings more strict by forcing the player to drink extra shots in advance before taking the break.
• Vomiting or inability to keep up usually results in elimination. Sometimes, if a person spits out his or her beer (which is a common urge later in the game), he or she is eliminated, though spitting into a glass and then drinking it again before the next shot is due may be allowed (though difficult to do in its own right).

Variations

The Century Club

An extended, and potentially dangerous variation of the game is known as the century club, where the game is extended to one ounce of beer per minute for 100 minutes. Also known as a Centurion.

The Century Club can be played competitively. If more than one person reaches the end, places are decided by either continuing the game until all but one player drops out (at one ounce per minute), or by having all remaining players try to drink a pre-designated amount of beer the fastest.

Elite Centurian

Elite Centurian is played just like Century Club, except the game extended to one ounce of beer per minute for 150 minutes, and is much more dangerous.

Monash Centurian

Monash Centurian is another variation, in which the players must drink two ounces of beer per minute for 50 minutes. Although the amount of beer is the same as The Century Club, it is more dangerous due to the condensed time.

The atomic century

There is an even more dangerous variation of the century club known as the atomic century. In this variation, the players must take a shot of tequila (or perhaps a different liquor) on every tenth shot (i.e. at the end of each ‘decade’). This is in addition to the beer shot which must also be drank for each of the 100 minutes. This effectively adds 10 shots of liquor over the course of the game.

This version of the game is extremely dangerous. It will put a player well above the LD50 of alcohol consuption, and is not recommended for even the most hardened heavy drinkers.

Physiological effects

Like many other drinking games, alcohol poisoning is a legitimate danger to players of power hour or its variants. Typical beers have one unit of alcohol (0.25 ounces of alcohol, or 7.4 mL) per 8 ounces, meaning that a player completing the power hour would ingest approximately 7.5 units of alcohol, or 1.88 ounces (55.5 mL). Assuming a typical metabolism rate of .4 ounces of alcohol (12.7 mL) per hour, a person’s blood alcohol content upon completing the power hour would be 0.232, well over the legal limit defining intoxication and considered “serious intoxication.” Completing the century club would raise the player’s blood alcohol content to .393; the LD50, or lethal dose for 50% of humans, is .400. Any drinks had before starting or after completing the game would raise the player’s BAC to even higher levels.

Habitual drinkers often have a much higher metabolism rate for alcohol (up to three times the average rate used in the sample calculations above) and therefore some feel that they can complete the power hour or century club games without significant danger. However, alcohol metabolism rates vary by many factors, even for individuals, and playing the power hour or century club drinking game can lead to dangerous blood alcohol content for anyone.

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