The Best Ways to Bet at The cup game
My brother and I learned of the cup game in a Yankees-Indians game in 1996. The Yankees, they of loaded roster and ultimate World Series title, started Brian Boehringer that afternoon and got slaughtered. So beyond just being at Yankee Stadium for the first time and Jim Thome and Manny Ramirez homering, the drunks in the front of us were the primary source of amusement. That is mostly because over the course of the three-hour cup match, they were in charge of a section’s value of swear words, which at ages 11 and 9 we thought was the funniest thing we had ever seen.
The cup game (swearing actually optional) is your easiest option for how to bet on baseball and keeps you moving through any blowout. It is a perfect option for people attending a match with lots of extraneous dollar invoices and no forethought.
The basics: 3-6ish players, one cup, ideally rinsed. Lots of $1 bills. Strangers in your row welcome if you keep an eye on their sneaky hands whenever they are in possession of the cup. Put in cash and collect cash from the cup dependent on the game’s events.
The rules: These can differ, but they should be written down in pen before the match begins. The cup starts with the very first person in the row and can be passed down one batter at a time, changing hands when a fresh batter enters the box. Players have to collect or pay based on what occurs when they are holding the cup. For beginners at this, try out a $1 ante, pay $2 to get an outside, $3 for a strikeout, $5 for a double play, $20 to get a triple play. Do not make a lot of collections, because you want to maintain the pot large. Maybe collect $1 for each base on a hit and $3 for each run. What you are really playing is that the whole pot goes to the holder onto a house run (using a re-ante) and when the game finishes.
Variants: Oh, lots of stuff. Throw in $20 if somebody gets ejected as you are holding the cup. Maybe decide on some trigger event ahead of the match such as a 1-2-3 double play that pays just like a home run. From the time you’re veterans at this, the balance sheet of plus-plays and minus-plays need to be more than a page .
Just a little math: No matter how many players are playing, try to sit in the next seat from the beginning of the game. (Your fight over the third seat in the row should look something like this.) Eighty-five of this home runs in the top of the first last year came in the No. 3 hitter in comparison to 59 in the leadoff guy and 38 from the No. 2 hitter.