The Rules of Flip Cup (Drinking Game)

flip cup drinking game

Whether you are a college student (of legal age) or an adult, it’s always fun to play games especially when those games involve some sort of alcoholic beverage. Flip Cup (also known as flippy cup, tippy cup, canoe and/or taps) is a quick paced game to play.

While this game is fun, please be responsible, give your keys to someone else, Uber/Lyft to wherever you are going o have a designated driver and drink responsibly. Now that the serious information is out of the way, let’s get to the game.

What you Need:

  • Plastic cups: Ideally not the shot glass sizes (although if you want to be creative go for it, but good luck). Look for the Solo size cups. These would work best as the game is generally played with beer.
  • Beer preferably. You will be filling the cups up as much (or as little) as you would like. Remember, you are chugging. You can use whatever beer you want so that whoever is doing the drinking at least enjoys what they are drinking (if you are doing the shots one, you can get liquor, but again, that has the potential to be a lot of shots.
  • A table, a counter, a stoop, whatever the case may be you just need a place where you can sit the cup and then flip it.
  • At least one other person, but this is usually played in a group setting.

How to Play

This is the fun part, where you actually get to play.

Playing with a group

Split your group of people into two (or more) teams. On the flat surface in front of you line up the number of cups as teammates and fill them up to the same place so that it’s fair. Once that is ready the first person to go stands in front of there cup. When “GO” is called the two players on opposite teams race to chug their beer and then flip the cup quicker than the other person.

Once the beer is finished, place the cup on the edge of the table. It has to balance there with a little edge of the cup over the lip of the table. Then flip the cup and it has to land upside down (the top on the table). Once that person successfully flips their cup, the next person does the same, and so on until the last person is done. The team that finishes their flip cups wins!

Playing head-to-head

You can also challenge a single person in this game as well. Each of you (this could be the championship round let’s say) will line up a certain amount of cups and again fill them equally.

Once that’s done, get ready. When it’s go time you each drink the beer in the first cup and then flip it on its top. Go down the line doing the same thing. First person to complete the task wins.

Flip Cup Rules Video

Be Creative

While the game is straightforward, you can always get creative with it as well and add little challenges to it. Here are some great variations.

Spin Around: for this one you can start a rule that after the beer is done, the player must spin around once (or however many times you would like) and then flip the cup. Makes it a lot harder than the original.

Hands Free: Just as the title says, this one you can’t use your hands, at whatever part of the game you see fit. For the drinking they could have to figure out how to drink without using their hands. This one might best be played outside in the grass. Then get the cup on the rim side without your hands as well.

Team Building: You could do this with a larger (at least 3 or more) group where after the cups have been flipped you have to build some human tower such as a pyramid or something crazy that you saw in a video online.

Whatever the case may be if you fail at the building you must head back to the table and start over. This is ideal if you have someone who isn’t drinking and can refill the cups while the team is building their masterpiece.

Have Fun!

So many options for this game for a way to make it unique to you. Consider if you have a group of dancers, they could be required to do some move in between the drinking and the flipping.

A group of mathematicians, math problems. Trivia junkies could be trivia requests, sudoku challenge, dance moves, whatever you want.

Have fun with this game and again, remember to be responsible at the end of the night.