Coins

a drinking game wherein 2-5 players sit a distance of 5-10 feet from a wall. Each player then flicks a penny (it must be flicked, not thrown) towards the wall. After all players have gone, the person who has landed their penny the closest to the wall proposes a toast. Then all players drink. This is a fun and rather gentlemanly drinking game. If a player actually lands a penny that is touching the wall, that player has his or her picture taken with the shot for future fame. This drinking game is best enjoyed using mixed drinks but can also be played with beers. Play however your tastes are suited.

Aussie Rules

Evidently the game is played differently Down Under- here's how:

Seat all players around a hard-surfaced table (ideally wooden, NOT glass) and place a bowl or short glass in the centre.

Take an Australian 10-cent coin (or similarly light, thin coin- the UK 10p would suffice) between your thumb and forefinger, and fling it at the table in a controlled strike. You are aiming to bounce the coin off the table and land it in the receptacle (bowl/glass).

If you miss, pass the coin to the next player. If you land the coin in the receptacle, you may nominate 1 drink to a player (not necessarily a poured drink, more usually a sizeable swig or slug of their drink) AND you can keep trying until you miss.

If at any time you try for the receptacle and almost get it in- that is, you hit the rim of the bowl/glass (and not below)- it is a 'rimmer' and you may try again.

If you land the coin in the receptacle 3 times, you can make up a new rule.

Making rules is what makes Coins a really fun game to play. Any breach of the rules incurs a penalty of 1 drink (which must be drunk immediately). Generally the better Coins players set most of the rules, at least to start with, but if they're too vindictive the most likely outcome is that everyone nominates them drinks, and so the odds are quickly levelled.

Here are some of the more successful rules I've encountered.

Changing the required number of 'hits' to make a new rule to 2 (this is a favourite of mine as it hastens the anarchy and democratises the game)

Drinks must be nominated by pointing with the elbows only- any other pointing (especially with fingers) becomes strictly disallowed)

Word substitutions. Instead of a word you might frequently use, you have to use something ridiculous. These rules are great because you can have several taboo words running at once, AND change them at odd intervals. It takes a rare stalwart to remember all of the language rules (I'm pretty good at it and invariably call people out on their mistakes).

Mandatory gestures. For example, every time you have a nominated drink, you have to perform a humiliating little ritual of some sort, and if you forget, well then it's double drinks for you.

To illustrate, I recently played a game of epic, nightmarish proportions in which the following rules applied.

A short glass was placed in the bowl in the centre of the table. Coin in the bowl -> nominate 1 drink. Coin in the glass -> nominate 2.

Elbow rule.

When taking a penalty drink, one had to sing 'Ay, ay ay ay, Carnival in Rio'. This was later changed to 'any line from Britney Spears in a death metal voice'. (This caught out a few people who persisted with 'Carnival in Rio'- double drinks.)

Instead of saying 'you' or 'your', one had to sing the words 'Chocolate Rain' in one's best approximation of Tay Zonday's voice (it had been a bit of an Internet party up 'til we started heavily drinking). Furthermore, it was considered bad form to refer to a person by name so as to avoid singing 'Chocolate Rain'. This was a very easy rule to break, thus as often as not the nominator and nominee wound up drinking in equal measure.

No leaving the table without unanimous permission (hard to obtain in a grudgematch!) Of course if you did leave the table you could expect a very large drink waiting on your return.

Anyone nominating a drink must adopt a 'retard voice'. I called a lot of people out on this and the more I did so, the more retarded they became.

A series of 'chain drinks' rules along the lines of 'if she has to drink, so do you'. This ruined the suspense because eventually everyone had to drink on every turn and the game lost all point.

By which time, we had all drunk to stupefaction!!! This took about 2 1/2 hours.