Barroom Bets

There's a certain type of bet that assumes a special significance in the barroom milieu. It is a simply stated challenge: "I can do something you can't." It's a unique form of wagering--there is little chance involved.

Wagers in this gaming genre are traditionally set up and solved with objects commonly found in any tavern or pocket. Dollar bills, for example, are accouterments with great potential for entertainment. Few people realize a kitchen match can be lit on a bill or that paper money can be engulfed in flames, left to burn and pay for the next round.

To execute the first, simply press the match head firmly against a reasonably new bill on the bar with your index finger and strike it the length of the dollar. It should light by the third try. For the second, immerse the bill briefly in 86-proof liquor and light it. Flames will surround it but will burn off and leave the greenback warm, yet legal, tender. If a quick-change trick is more appropriate than blazing bills, you can drop a coin three inches and have it stand on its edge. Just moisten both a dime and the exterior of a regular glass. Press the coin to the glass near the top and release it and it will slide gently to rest on its edge.

The wording used in presenting a bet is often crucial. It must not seem contrived. The rules must be stated simply yet precisely. Of course, some bets take advantage of this by implying rules that are ultimately not followed because they weren't specifically stated. For instance, you can drink five drafts before someone else can drink one shot, provided your opponent starts with his hands behind him, neither of you may move the other's glass and you are given a one-and-a-half-beer head start. You win by turning your first empty glass over his untouched shot. Or line up six glasses about six inches apart. The three on the left contain beer, the three on the right are empty. By moving only one glass, you can make them (continued on page 190)Barroom Bets(continued from page 153) alternate. Beer, empty, beer, empty, beer, empty. Pour the contents of the second glass into the fifth one.

The following five bets are of a more respectable sort. There are no misleading phrasings. No mystical powers or exotic devices are needed. They require neither accomplices nor prestidigitation. We've set them up so you can test your skill first. If you're still at a loss after setting them up and applying your own powers of reason, take heart: We've supplied the explanations farther on.

If I Get the Dime, You Get the Beer.

As a bet is proposed, an important consideration is who will attempt the solution. By consistently wagering that you can, you are assured of two things: (1) You will not lose, because you know the solution and any person who accepts the bet doesn't; and (2) this will soon be obvious to anyone and you'll find yourself with few takers. Bet others that they cannot and you're increasing the risk, but the challenge will usually be too tempting for anyone to turn down.

The obvious answer is to mix your propositions. But however this wager is made, the setup is the same: Drop a dime, then a quarter, into a standard two-ounce jigger. Its conical shape will hold the coins firmly and about one half inch apart. The challenge is to remove the dime without touching or removing the quarter. Use of hands and/or other objects is taboo.

The Great Grape Effusion

Misdirection of thought or attention is a magician's tool that can also be of valuable assistance in winning barroom bets. In setting up this wager, a preliminary bet on the Perplexing Pepper Penetration Puzzle will help completely baffle the most unflappable quarry.

The P.P.P.P. is constructed by dropping a coin into a shallow glass of water and sprinkling black pepper liberally over the surface. The challenge is to remove the coin with your fingers without touching any pepper, which must remain floating. The pepper will coat the surface evenly, making the wager seemingly impossible to win. It's not. With a small, undetectable amount of soap or detergent (earlier obtained from the rest room or bar) on the tip of the finger, touch the edge of the water. The pepper grounds will immediately accumulate on the opposite side, allowing you to slide the coin up the inside of the glass with one finger and to emerge without a trace of condiment.

The post-prandial lull of a dinner accented by a bottle of wine is the perfect setting for The Great Grape Effusion. Its solution is an impressive spectacle. Place a quarter a few inches off center on a plate, saucer or large dish. Add wine or water until the coin is completely covered. Can the coin be lifted out by bare, dry fingers, without spilling or pouring off any liquid? You bet it can.

Change for a Dollar

Patter is necessary for a magician to create context, misdirect attention and intensify impact. Although this bet requires neither unusual accessories nor sophisticated legerdemain, winning it is magic in the traditional sense, and a snappy line can help.

You remove a dollar bill from your billfold. You hold its ends firmly and snap it as you show both sides. Leave no doubt that it is simply a dollar bill.

Typical patter comes across hokey in print, but an appropriate spiel might be about increasing your money's buying power or expressing sympathy for the dollar because it's always changed into smaller denominations rather than larger. Actually, the theme is of secondary significance; the important thing is that you sound natural. Don't come on stiff or contrived.

You fold the bill three times as you talk. Then you can either hold it or, better yet, place it under a glass where the denomination is slightly distorted. Then you bet that when you unfold it, it will be a $50 bill.

Presence Under Glass

When properly posed, a barroom bet should seem either absurdly simple or impossible to win. When a solution seems obvious, chances are the real one won't be. When it seems impossible, the solution is often obvious after the fact.

There are a few barroom bets that combine an apparently impossible situation with an ingenious solution. Such as this one. Balance a nickel on the bar and balance a match on the nickel. Invert a shot glass and place it over them, making sure the rim sits flush on the bar. The glass should not be touching the match or the nickel. The bet is on who can knock the match off the coin without the glass or the bar's being touched or moved.

The last Straw

Begin with three identical goblets, each of about an eight-ounce capacity. Size is not very important, except that the diameter of the rim should be greater than the diameter of the base. Over the first glass, which is placed upright and empty on the bar, spread about a half-dozen swizzle sticks. Submerge the two other glasses in a sinkful of water, press the rims together to seal in the water and stand them upon the swizzle sticks. Without touching any part of this impressive and precarious structure, get the water from the top glass into the bottom one.

How to Win

If I Get the Dime, you Get the Beer

Perform this solution yourself, if possible. The reason: When people are forbidden to touch something small, desperation sometimes makes them blow on it.

Eureka! By blowing down the inside edge of the jigger, the coins will tumble until the dime, as the lighter one, will spin out. A gust of medium velocity is in order. Blow too softly and nothing will happen. Too hard, both coins will fly.

The Great Grape Effusion

Blowing on the liquid will usually cause it to splatter. Coat your fingers with oil or grease and technically they won't be dry; wine and water will bead on them anyway. If lycopodium powder, which allows one to penetrate water yet emerge completely dry, is not commonly found in your tavern or pocket, try this:

In a break or cut in a cork, place two matches (head side out). Put the cork as close to the center of the plate as possible, making sure the matches are high and dry and the coin is several inches away. Light the matches, then cover the cork with an empty glass. As the flames are extinguished by the lack of oxygen, the liquid will be sucked into the glass, permitting a dry removal of the quarter.

If the evening progresses from grape to grain, another bet can be made and won. Procure an empty fifth that recently contained gin, whiskey or brandy. Drop a match into it. Let it burn out, which will take a few seconds. Bet it cannot be done again. Thinking it to be easy, your gull will try and fail. The bottle must be turned over and shaken for a second match to remain lit. Unless the oxygen inside is replenished, this will work with a total of only three matches, regardless of the number of times the bottle is turned.

Change for a Dollar

Although the solution to many barroom bets is necessarily shown in the winning, this one is an exception. As close as it is to magic, two cardinal rules of the profession apply: Do not reveal how it was done and do not show it to the same people more than once.

This bet requires some preparation and practice, but its unusually strong impact warrants both. To prepare it, fold a dollar bill exactly in half vertically. Do it again. Then make a horizontal fold, so that the bill forms almost a square. A total of three folds. Make sure two corners of the bill, rather than the two middle sixths, are exposed. The creases should be sharp and the edges of the folds must be perfectly aligned.

Do the Same to a $50 Bill.

The bills can be joined with either rubber cement or a loop of cellophane tape. When using the former, which offers an adhesion that is both less bulky and less likely to slip, lightly coat one of the two exposed corners of each bill and allow the cement to dry. Then press these sections together slowly, so that the edges of neither bill are visible when the face of the other is shown. Carrying the bills this way in your wallet will help make them more compact and the sharper creases will enable you to refold them precisely, yet in an apparently carefree manner.

The dollar bill should be unfolded shortly before the bet is made. Take care not to give away the secret nor a $50 tip; don't spend it. As you show both sides of the one to your mark, you'll be covering the folded $50 with two or three fingers. In snapping the bill several times, this finger placement will seem completely natural. Practice this, unfolding the $50 bill while concealing the folded single, and the casual flipping of the folded packet to the $50 side.

(concluded on page 196)

Presence Under Glass

All that is required to win this bet is clean hair and a rubber or nylon comb. Comb the hair slowly. Hold the comb next to the glass. Static electricity will displace the match.

The Last Straw

Use either a standard straw or a hollow swizzle stick. Blow through it onto the point where the water-filled glasses meet, the seam will break slightly and the water will trickle down the sides of the middle glass and into the lower one.

May the betting man win.

"Patter is necessary for a magician to create context, misdirect attention and intensify impact."