Beer Chess

Beer Chess is chess where every piece is a drink, which makes it one of the few drinking games for 2 that rewards thinking. Move a piece and you sip from it. Lose a piece and you drink it. A full game takes an hour or more, so it suits a quiet night in rather than a pregame, and the player who is better at chess is not always the one who finishes in better shape.

What you need

• 32 drinks to act as pieces: 16 per side, one side light beer and the other regular, or any two drinks you can tell apart at a glance
• A large board with 64 squares big enough for a can. Painter’s tape on a table, bathroom tiles, or coasters laid in a grid all work
• Two cups or glasses if you would rather pour measured amounts than play with full cans
• A marker or sticky labels to mark which can is which piece
• A chess clock or phone timer, optional, for the speed version

Setup

1. Lay out an 8 by 8 grid that fits a can in every square. Tape lines on a table are the quickest way. If you are using coasters or tiles, leave a finger’s width between them so pieces do not get knocked over on the way past.
2. Assign a drink to every piece and label it. Pawns get the smallest cans, rooks, knights and bishops get standard cans, and the King and Queen get bottles. Write the piece name on the can with a marker, or use the table below.
3. Set the pieces up as in normal chess. The light side is white and moves first. Bottles on the back rank, small cans in front.
4. Agree on the checkmate rule before the first move. The traditional ending is heavy (see step 8 of the rules) and most tables cap it. Decide now, not at move 30.

How to play Beer Chess

1. Normal chess rules apply to every move. Pieces move as they always do. If nobody at the table knows how a knight moves, play Drunk Jenga instead; it is a better two-player game for people who do not play chess.
2. Sip from the piece you move. One sip per move. Castling counts as two sips, one from the King and one from the Rook.
3. Once you have sipped from a piece, you must move it. That is the touch-move rule with teeth. No taking it back.
4. When your piece is captured, you drink the rest of it. Take as long as you like, but it must be gone by the time your next piece is captured. Two open pieces in front of you is not allowed.
5. After an exchange, toast each other with the captured pieces. Then drink them. It is the only polite moment in the game.
6. When you are put in check, sip from your King. Every time, including repeated checks.
7. A promoted pawn is drunk by your opponent. Get a pawn to the far rank and your opponent finishes whatever is left in it. The pawn then becomes a Queen, which means it is now a full bottle, so bring a spare.
8. Checkmate ends the game and the loser drinks the Kings. The traditional rule is that the loser finishes their own King, the winner’s King, and everything left in their own pieces. That is why step 4 of the setup exists.

Piece table

Piece	Suggested drink	Sip on move	When captured
Pawn (8 each)	8 oz can, or a half-filled cup	1 sip	Owner drinks the rest
Rook (2 each)	12 oz can	1 sip, or 2 when castling with the King	Owner drinks the rest
Knight (2 each)	12 oz can	1 sip	Owner drinks the rest
Bishop (2 each)	12 oz can	1 sip	Owner drinks the rest
Queen	Bottle	1 sip	Owner drinks the rest
King	Bottle	1 sip, plus a sip every time it is in check	Cannot be captured; see checkmate

The old way is one brand family per side, light on white and regular on black, so you can tell them apart across the table. Any pairing works: cider against beer, two colors of cup, or shot glasses for Shot Chess below.

Variations and house rules

• Shot Chess. Same game with shot glasses as pieces on a normal chessboard. No sipping on moves, since you cannot sip a shot. Capture a piece and the owner takes the shot. Some tables flip it so the capturing player drinks, which stops anyone from trading pieces just to get their opponent drunk. Pick one before you start.
• Sip-count chess. Normal pieces, one drink per player. Every move is 1 sip, every capture is 3 sips for the player who lost the piece, and every check is 2 sips for the player in check. Checkmate is a finished drink. This is the version to play when you do not want to buy 32 cans.
• Capped checkmate. Our house rule: the loser finishes their own King and nothing else. The traditional three-part ending can be more than a litre of beer at the end of an hour of drinking, and nobody needs that.
• Beer Checkers. The same idea on a checkers board, with half-full shot glasses of beer as the pieces. When your piece is jumped, you drink it. A piece that reaches the far row is kinged by filling the glass to the top, and the loser drinks everything left on the board. Faster and easier to teach than the chess version.
• Speed Beer Chess. Five minutes each on a clock. Run out of time and you finish your King. The sipping slows everyone down, which is the point.
• Bathroom rule. The old rule is that you cannot leave the table before your move. Keep it if you like; most tables allow a break during the opponent’s thinking time.
• Intermissions. Either player can call a ten-minute break once per game. Traditional, and sensible.

Tips

• Sip deep from pieces you expect to lose. A pawn you are about to trade should be nearly empty when it goes, so the capture costs you almost nothing.
• Avoid trades when you are behind. Every exchange is a full drink for each side, and the player with fewer pieces left is usually the one who has already drunk more.
• Use small cans or pour half cups. Thirty-two full 12 oz beers on a board is a bad night for two people even if most of them never get captured, and a full game already runs past an hour.
• Do not sacrifice pieces for position. In normal chess it can be clever. Here it is a drink you volunteered for.