Looking to plan the party of the year? Bet on a fantastic night by offering casino games to guests for fun card games and exciting roulette wheels. Anyone can become a croupier with these easy and affordable casino-themed games.
All great entertainers know that in order to give the best bash, you need to keep your guests well-entertained. While there are dozens of ways to do this, the same party games can get old, and fresh ideas are sure to be crowd favourites.
What could be more rewarding than attending a party and walking away from the night with something extra?
A growing trend in Western society is Casino parties. Combining the thrill of the chase for rewards with a fun social atmosphere, these parties form quite the combination and are bound to provide laughs if done in the right spirit.
House party casinos don’t have to be about the wins as much as the fun factor. There is no need to re-invent the wheel either when there are already some fabulous casino games that would translate very well into the home.
Best Games for Minimal Fuss and Maximum Reward
Right off the cuff, there are 4 casino games that could be played from home without the need to purchase or hire special tables and hardware. Simply haul out a pack of cards from the closet, and a pair of dice from the Snakes and Ladders box, and you could be set for a night full of social gambling entertainment!
Blackjack - The last thing you want to introduce to your friends are games heaped in rules that will take the best part of an hour to explain. For that simple fact, we suggest that you introduce them to blackjack. As the party host, you could be the dealer and host each gaming session, helping players as you go.
It’s a simple game of 21. The player with the closest value to 21 wins. Simply deal 2 cards to each player and yourself. Then give players the option to ask for more cards. If they go over 21, they are out of the game (called a bust) and will have to sit out.
All cards are taken at face value, but the Ace is worth either 1 or 11 (the player chooses). Royals are worth 10.
Poker - This is a good time to see if your rowdy bunch can contain themselves and hold a poker face. 5 Card draw poker or Texas Hold’em are perfect group games. As long as the majority of your players know what all the different hand values are, things should go alright.
Because it is a social environment, you could even make up a poster for the game with the different hands displayed on it. Each time you catch a player reading it, you could penalise them with a downer, or make them do something goofy as payment for ‘’cheating’’. At the end of the day, you can add to the rules the way you want to. The goal is to create laughs, not to win money!
Hi-Lo - This is an awesome game to play with friends as it takes very little skill and a tremendous amount of luck to be successful. It’s played with a pair of dice.
Hand a friend the pair of dice and ask them to call whether the throw will be ‘high’, ‘low’ or ‘even’. After placing a bet, they should roll the dice to reveal the result. A high roll is a value of 8, 9, 10, or 11 while a Low roll is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6. An even roll is a 7.
Slots Gamble Feature - While you thought you could only play slot games online or on a machine, all you really need is a deck of cards. While you cannot mimic reel rolls, you can mimic the double or nothing Gamble Feature that some popular slots offer.
Shuffle the deck and put it face down. Allow all the players to place a bet. They must decide what colour the next card in the pack will be. If that gets too easy after a few rounds, change it up and make them guess which of the four suits the top card represents. Once the bets are in and the guesses made, reveal the card and settle the bets.
Another variance of the gamble feature could be the high/low variant, where one card is drawn and placed face-up on the table. Players will need to decide whether the next card in the pack is higher or lower than the face-up card. If it is the same value, the bets are a push.
Top Ideas To Get It Right
To keep the evening as fun and social as can be (because you don’t want fights breaking out over money), here are a few ways you can lighten the mood and prepare your peeps for the evening’s entertainment.
- As this is not serious gambling, your betting currency could be a host of things. If you don’t have betting chips, use matches. In fact, why not use real chips (the edible kind), or peanuts, or anything else you can think of!
- If you really want to go the full haul, you could buy betting chips from any party store and dish piles out to your guests as they arrive. These chips can then be used to pay for drinks, and snacks throughout the night. This way, people will be motivated to win more playing casino games, because it will give them more credits to spend on treats.
- Another option is that you don’t implement betting. Instead, if someone loses, they have to down a drink. Of course, you may have to leave the designated drivers out of this game.
- Depending on the company, you could suggest that the cost of a failed round is that you discard an item of clothing. You might have heard of strip poker, but this could be applied to any game really.
- Keep the décor within the theme. If you are going to have cupcakes for instance, then decorate them to look like cards or a roulette wheel, or something that resembles a casino. The more creative you are, the more impressed people will be.
- Perhaps make people dress up for an evening at an exclusive casino. The environment will have to fit the part though.
- Have prizes ready for the night’s overall winners. A nice bottle of wine will go down well after a good night of hysterics. It’s not a lifechanging jackpot, but it will be a real night to remember if done properly!
Think out the box and people will be stunned at the amount of fun that can be had with a simple casino theme. Casino gambling has been entertaining crowds forever, so why not use some of that motivation to entertain your crowd?