Beeramid

Beeramid (rhymes with pyramid, as the name suggests) is a memory game with a bluffing problem. Of all the drinking card games that use a pyramid of face-down cards, this is the one where your own hand goes face down too, so every drink you hand out is a claim that you remember your cards, and every claim can be challenged, which at most tables means shouting “bullshit”. It involves a tremendous amount of drinking, and it is honest about that from the first row.

What you need

• A standard 52-card deck
• A drink for every player, ideally beer, because the drink counts climb fast
• One bottle of something unpleasant to serve as the Penalty Beer (optional, but traditional at our table)
• A table with room for the pyramid and a row of cards in front of each player
• 2 to 8 players

Setup

1. Build the pyramid face down. Lay a base row, then a row one card shorter above it, and keep going until a single card sits at the top. The base depends on the group: 5 cards for 2 to 4 players, 6 cards for 4 to 6 players, 7 cards for 6 to 8 players.
2. Deal the rest of the deck as evenly as possible. Every card that is not in the pyramid goes to a player, and hands stay hidden from everyone else.
3. Everyone looks at their own cards once and arranges them. Order them any way that helps you remember, then lay them face down in a horizontal line in front of you. Give people a minute for this; it is the only look they get.
4. Cards stay face down from here on. Once the first pyramid card is flipped, nobody looks at their own hand again. The only time a card is turned over is to prove a claim.

How to play Beeramid

1. The dealer flips the first card of the base row and calls its value. Work along the base from one end before moving up a row.
2. Anyone who claims to hold that value may give out one drink. Point at a player and say who drinks. You do not show the card when you make the claim.
3. The player given the drink either drinks or challenges. Drinking ends it. A challenge means the claimant must pick the matching card out of their own face-down line.
4. A correct pick means the victim drinks double. The claimant turns over the card, it matches, and the victim drinks twice the value of the row.
5. A wrong pick, or no card at all, means the claimant drinks double. If the claimant turns over the wrong card, or never had the value in the first place, they drink twice the row. The card they turned stays face up, so a failed bluff also costs you information.
6. Each new row is worth one more drink. When a row of the pyramid is finished, move to the first card of the row above it. Base-row cards give 1 drink, second-row cards give 2, third-row cards give 3, and so on up to the top card. Challenges always double the row, which is why they get scary near the top.
7. Two of the same card means two claims. If a 5 is flipped and you hold two 5s, you can give both drinks to one player or split them between two. If you are challenged, you have to find and show both cards.
8. A lost challenge on the top row costs the Penalty Beer. By the final row the honest drink count is close to a full beer anyway, so whoever loses a challenge there finishes the Penalty Beer without taking it away from their lips. Then the game is over, and usually so is that player.

Variations and house rules

• Four-card Pyramid. The version most people call Pyramid: deal four cards to each player instead of the whole deck and set the leftovers aside. Hands are small enough to memorize properly, so the bluffing gets bolder and the game runs quicker. Still face down.
• Open hands. For a first game or a mixed group, let players hold their cards face up and skip the memory element. All the bluffing rules still apply; the only thing that changes is that a wrong pick is impossible, so bullshit calls only catch people claiming cards they never had.
• Give and take rows. Label alternate rows of the pyramid “give” and “take”. On a give row, a match hands out drinks as normal. On a take row, anyone holding a match has to drink the row themselves, and nobody has any reason to claim it, which is exactly the point.
• Kings clear the table. Whenever a King is flipped in the pyramid, everyone drinks the row and no claims are made on that card. Breaks up the tactics and gives the quiet players a turn at drinking.
• Ride the Bus finish. Play Beeramid as the middle phase of Bus Driver: whoever has the most unplayed cards when the pyramid is done rides the bus. Works best with the four-card deal.
• Taller pyramid. An 8-card base with 8 players makes a 36-card pyramid and a 2-card hand. It is mostly luck at that point, and the top rows get brutal. We mention it so you can say no to it.
• No-peek penalty. Anyone caught looking at their own face-down cards mid-game drinks the value of the current row. Enforced by whoever is sitting next to them.

Tips

• Arrange your hand in a pattern you can recall, low to high or grouped by value. The game is won by the person who can find a 7 in a line of nine face-down cards thirty minutes and several drinks later.
• Call bullshit early, in the base rows, when it costs 2 drinks to be wrong. By row four a bad call is 8 drinks, and nobody is still sure what they are holding.
• Play the top rows with beer, not spirits. The last row of a 7-card base hands out 7 drinks per honest claim and 14 on a lost call, and the Penalty Beer comes on top of that. If someone is struggling, the right house rule is to skip them for that row.
• Keep the flipped pyramid cards in place. A 5 that has already come up twice tells you how many 5s are left, and that is the whole bluffing game.