Drinking Games With Shots: Never Have I Ever, Quarters and a Tray of Tiny Pours

It usually starts around the last slice of pizza, when the plates are stacked and nobody wants to get up. Somebody finds a deck of cards in the drawer with the takeout menus. Somebody else says the words “never have I ever,” and the room gets louder.

We’ve hosted enough of these nights to know the game matters more than what’s in the glass. A good one runs two hours on very little alcohol, because people are laughing too hard to drink much. So we pick the game first and pour for it second, and what we pour is small.

Our house rules, before anyone sits down

These go on the fridge. They aren’t negotiable, and after a few years nobody tries.

• Every pour is an ounce or less. Most of the time a penalty is a sip, not the whole glass.
• Anyone can sit out any round with water or a mocktail, and nobody asks why.
• Nobody gets talked into anything. Teasing about the game is fine. Teasing about what’s in someone’s glass isn’t.
• Grown-ups of legal drinking age only. One person stays sober and holds the keys, and everyone else leaves in a car they aren’t driving or sleeps on the couch.
• The tray is the limit. We set out four small shots per person, and when it’s empty the game carries on with seltzer.

That last one does most of the work, because nobody has to count. The tray stays sweet and low, too. A liqueur sits at around 15 to 20 percent alcohol, roughly half of what vodka carries, so an ounce of something creamy comes to about a third of a regular drink. Four of them over a whole evening add up to little more than one cocktail. On the rare night we run short of a bottle, we type the cupboard into Cocktail Builder and see what it can still make.

Never Have I Ever

No cards, no coins, nothing to set up. That’s why it’s the game we reach for first.

Everyone holds up five fingers. Going around the table, each person says something they’ve never done, and anyone who has done it folds a finger and takes a sip. Run out of fingers and you’re the night’s champion, or its cautionary tale.

The questions decide the mood. We keep ours on the funny side of embarrassing, the kind of thing you’d admit to your aunt:

• Never have I ever pretended to know a song at karaoke.
• Never have I ever faked a phone call to leave a party.
• Never have I ever sent a text to the person I was texting about.

Pour a Butterscotch Cookie Shot for this one, half an ounce each of butterscotch schnapps and Bailey’s layered in a shot glass. It tastes like the bottom of a sundae. You’ll sip one for ten minutes, which is exactly the pace this game wants.

Most Likely To

Everyone drinks at about the same rate here, so a tray of the Washington Apple Shot suits it: a third of an ounce apiece of Crown Royal, sour apple schnapps and cranberry juice, with a splash of 7-Up if you like. They shake up fast in a batch and taste like the first cold apple of the season.

The game itself is better with people who know each other too well. One person reads a prompt: most likely to miss their own flight, most likely to adopt a third dog, most likely to cry at a commercial. Everybody counts to three and points. Whoever collects the most fingers takes a sip and has to defend themselves.

We write the prompts on index cards beforehand so nobody stalls, and we leave out anything about money, exes or bodies.

Kings

Here’s where the deck from the drawer comes in. This folk game goes by Kings or Ring of Fire, and every family plays it differently, which is half the fun. Spread the cards face-down in a circle around the table. On your turn, you draw one and do what that card means. The meanings are yours to invent. Ours, for what it’s worth:

The traditional ending pours everything into a shared cup for whoever draws the last king. We dropped that years ago. One cup and a dozen mouths is a bad idea for several reasons, and it’s the only part of the game that ever turned a good night sour. Our last king picks the music instead.

Kings hands out the most sips, so go tiny. The Black and White Shot is a third of an ounce of vanilla schnapps with a third of an ounce of Kahlua layered on top, two-thirds of an ounce altogether. Coffee and vanilla, gone in two small sips.

Quarters

The coin game. You bounce a quarter off the table and try to land it in a glass. Sink it and you choose who sips. Miss and it passes left.

One change from how we learned it: the target is a heavy rocks glass with nothing in it. A coin has been in a lot of pockets, and we’d rather not drink after it. The drink stays on the side, well out of range.

That drink, around here, is the Little Beer. An ounce of Licor 43 with a slow pour of cream on top, so it looks like a pint for a very small person. Sweet and vanilla-gold, it gets a laugh every time it comes out on the tray.

Pong, the small version

You know the setup: two teams, a table, triangles of cups at each end. We fill those cups with water, because a ping-pong ball spends half the night on the floor. When a ball lands, the shooter’s opponent drinks from a clean little glass on the side instead.

With ten cups a side, regular pours would flatten a room, so the penalty glass holds a third of a recipe at most. Split a Grape Crush (a third of an ounce each of vodka, Chambord and sweet and sour mix) among three small cups. For a sharper round, try a Peach Tart. It’s equal parts lime juice and peach schnapps, so half of what’s in the glass is juice, and it’ll make your whole face pucker.

Just the two of you

Most of these fall apart with two players, but a couple of quieter games get better. We like Two Truths and a Lie, where you say three things about yourself and your partner guesses the fake one. Wrong guess, one sip.

Higher or Lower only needs a deck. Turn a card over and call whether the next one will beat it. Get it wrong and you sip. One Oatmeal Cookie, split into two small glasses, can last the whole hour. Half an ounce each of cinnamon schnapps, butterscotch schnapps and Baileys go in, and it tastes like its name.

For the folks sitting out

We pour a thimble of Shirley Temple with a good pour of grenadine, or a little Virgin Bellini made from peach juice and soda water, and it goes on the same tray as everything else. The designated driver plays every round. Our mocktail recipes cover anyone who wants a proper glassful.

Our 2-ingredient shots line up in a hurry if the tray needs more variety, and the list of shots that taste good skips anything you’d grimace through. We usually forget to finish them anyway. Around eleven the cards drift into piles, the kettle goes on, and someone starts telling the story about the dog and the flight.

Last modified on November 1, 2026