Buffalo

Buffalo is less a game than a rule you agree to. Of everything in the drinking games without cards section, it is the only one that can start at a bar on a Tuesday and still be going at a wedding ten years later. The rule is that you drink with your non-dominant hand. Break it in front of another player and you finish your drink. That is the full explanation, and the rest of this page is about what happens once a group of people actually commits to it.

What you need

• A drink for every player
• Two or more players who are willing to watch each other’s hands
• Knowledge of which hand each player writes with
• Nothing else, which is the point

Setup

1. Establish everyone’s dominant hand. Right-handed players drink with the left hand. Left-handed players drink with the right. Anyone who claims to be ambidextrous gets assigned a hand by the table.
2. Agree on whether the game is for tonight or for life. The traditional version is for life. Say which one you are playing, because the difference matters a great deal in six months.
3. Agree on the penalty. The common one is finishing your drink. A lighter table can make it a long drink or half the glass.
4. Confirm that everyone is in. Some clubs mark this with a handshake or a pinky promise. Nobody can be buffaloed until they have agreed to play, and nobody can be dragged in without knowing.

How to play Buffalo

1. Drink only with your non-dominant hand. Every sip, every time. Holding the glass in the other hand is fine in most versions; drinking from it is not.
2. Watch everyone else. Buffalo is a game of attention. The player who forgets to watch is the one who never catches anyone and gets caught themselves.
3. If you see a player drink with their dominant hand, shout “buffalo” at them. Point if you want. The call has to be made while the glass is at their mouth or just after; you cannot call a sip from ten minutes ago.
4. The buffaloed player finishes their drink. As fast as they can. The rest of the table chants “buffalo” and bangs the table until the glass is empty. Hesitating makes the chant louder.
5. A false call reverses the penalty. If the player was using the correct hand, had an empty glass, or had not agreed to play, the caller finishes their own drink instead.
6. The game does not end. In the for-life version there is no final round. You are a Buffalo now, and so is everyone who watched you agree.

Buffalo Club lore

Nobody knows where Buffalo started, and every club has its own story. The one most often repeated is the Wild West version: a gunslinger kept his shooting hand free at all times, so he drank, ate, and played cards with the other one. Anyone seen with a glass in the gun hand was a target. Whether that is history or a story invented to sound like history, it is the origin the game has settled on.

Players call themselves Buffalos, and a group of players is a Buffalo Club or a herd. The game has spread far enough that you can be buffaloed by a stranger: it is common in North America and in Switzerland, and it travels well through student exchange, rugby tours, and any group that drinks in the same place every week. The club-style groups, including the version kept alive inside the Round Table service clubs, treat it as a lifelong custom with a short list of formal rules. The bar version is looser, and the rules on this page are the ones most tables agree on.

Variations and house rules

• Buffalo for life. The default. Once you are in, you are in, and a member can call buffalo on you at any future event. This is why people who play Buffalo drink with their left hand at funerals.
• Tonight only. The rule ends when the night does. A sensible choice for a group with new people in it, and the version to pick if anyone hesitates during setup.
• Left hand for all. Everyone drinks with the left hand regardless of dominance. Removes the argument about who is really left-handed, and makes the game easier to spot across a crowded bar.
• False buffalo. A wrong call costs the caller their drink, or half of it in kinder clubs. Most tables play this; it is listed here because a few do not, and you want to know before you call.
• Double buffalo. Getting caught with a drink in each hand, or getting caught twice in one round, costs two drinks. Some clubs rule the opposite: if both hands are full, you cannot be buffaloed at all, because there is no free hand to switch to.
• Buffalo Time. A Swiss version where the required hand changes with the clock: one hand on even hours, the other on odd hours. Requires a watch and a memory, and produces a lot of buffalos at five past the hour.
• Buffalo Vegas. A name that comes up in club talk with no agreed meaning. Our house rule reading: the game is suspended inside a casino, on the grounds that what happens there stays there. Check what your club means by it before you rely on it.
• Ambidextrous rule. Claiming to be ambidextrous costs a drink, and then the table assigns a hand. Prevents the only real loophole in the game.
• Reverse buffalo night. One night a month, or on a day the club picks, the rule flips and you drink with your dominant hand. Expect to catch the long-time members, who have forgotten how.

Tips

• Make the penalty fit the drink. “Finish your drink” is a sip of beer or a full pint depending on when you got caught. For spirits and cocktails, play the half-glass version or switch to a long drink, because a buffaloed double whisky is a bad way to end a night.
• Never buffalo someone who did not agree to play. It is the one thing that gets the game banned from a friend group, and the false buffalo rule exists partly to punish it.
• Practice holding the glass. The hand that drinks is the hand that picks it up, so train the habit of reaching with the wrong hand and the game mostly plays itself.
• Watch the phone hand. The most common buffalo is someone holding a phone in the non-dominant hand and drinking with the one that is free.