Gambling Games to Play at Home With Friends and Family

You are at home with friends. Everyone in the room feels they have exhausted all Netflix possibilities and wants to do something more interactive.

Game nights are becoming increasingly popular, even hip, and you want to give it a try. You pulled out a few dice, a deck of cards, and very excellently decided to turn a classic twist to your simple gambling game-all from the mass of your damned hovel. Everyone knows that a wager makes any pursuit more interesting. Think of the wild, ear-piercing excitement of the Kentucky Derby: millions of dollars at stake on a race lasting but seconds. Just for a penny no bet puts horses out running in an open field. I’m going to show you the best and easiest ways to set up fun betting games with friends.

Some of these games your friends may already know the rules to. Others are games that can be readily picked up.

While complex, neon-lit, high-stakes casinos are the typical connotation with gambling, there also exist simple gambling games played at home that can genuinely equal the thrill of a trip to Vegas. (Well, almost!)

It should be noted, however, that betting itself need not involve money; it could also consist of wagers for fun, for "dares," for Jell-O shots, or even for minor work assignments, especially in those cases where everyone is gathered at home for the games.

Blackjack

Almost everyone is convinced that they have a foolproof system for playing blackjack. For these reasons, it is easy to learn, and dealers always hit on soft 17.

This card game should really be less complicated than that, but one rarely comes across someone who is so intent upon his own cards and upon the game and the dealer's hand.

They have read of some winning strategy from a book or article. They can hardly wait to double down. Faces are tense; the air is lively, sometimes with curses from one corner or the other.

Tired of playing Gin Rummy or Crazy Eights all the time? Thankfully, there are dozens of card games you can cash in on, and blackjack or "21" is just one of those. This game has never waned in popularity perhaps because players go through it very fast, and most people can easily count to 21.

Dominoes

Dominoes are about 800 years old. They originated in China and spread through the western world via Italy.

In many American homes, a set lurks behind the yellowed National Geographics and cocooned within a cobweb-clad cupboard that has served as the resting place for all the discarded artifacts of your elder sibling left behind on moving out (and before your moving back in).

It is a simple enough game for a child to play, but intricate enough to keep the old men crowded in the park, sometimes playing for hours. (Maybe because their wives kicked them out? Whatever the case, the old men are happy.)

How do you turn a game traditionally involving only two players into one that can include an entire roomful of players? Simple. Take two players and have the rest form two factions, make their bets, and talk smack. Great fun for everyone!

Betting on Sports

Okay, isn't that just obvious? Everybody knows that you can fly to Vegas, place a bet in the sportsbook, and many now have learned that they can log on to offshore sportsbooks and do so from home, given the recent changes in U.S. legislation.

It's, however, possible for you to have a sportsbook in your home by inviting friends to your home for a game day. Write up the odds on a chalkboard, whip up a handful of themed cocktails, and even reward whoever makes the most ingenious little side bet.

Such events as football, hockey, tennis, and baseball offer easy opportunities for a win in an event betting scheme, including various prop bets that encompass the quarter-back's completions and interceptions, fights down the line for ice, successful versus failed match points, and walk-offs.

Cricket aficionados can try their luck betting on fours, sixers, half-centuries, centuries, number of wickets, and how many times the third umpire will be consulted. The hardcore fans can proceed with proposition betting, in which they can wager how much time will elapse before another LBW, also known as leg before wicket, gets called.

You may think you know how a game is going to go, but sports always present us with surprises.

The favorite to win beyond the shadow of a doubt does not always win, and the fastest quarter horse can pull up lame. That's the reason we keep going back to sports (and have covered such unique events since the first two hunters raced each other with the woolly mammoth); the thrill is in the element of surprise.

Explore the betting alongside the side bets on real money betting sites; you will learn kind of a lot of interesting facts, such as bet theories with the Super Bowl coin toss and the length of the National Anthem.

Last year's Super Bowl featured a prop bet-a.k.a. a side bet-on the color of Gatorade that would be served to the players!

Gossip Trivia

If you have an out-of-date People Magazine, a Tatler, or a US lying around, pour your friends a shot apiece, ask questions from the magazine, and test who’s up on the latest and greatest gossip. The first one to yell out the correct answer is the only one who doesn’t take a shot.

Rather than considering a drink-it-all game for shots, your friends can pool their money into the game, betting a dollar for each question they answer. The winner gets all at the end of every question.

This game, like a lottery, induces players to participate as each of them is sure that he/she will be the first to settle the next question.

This is an excellent response to tease any non-gossipy friends who mock you for your love of the latest juicy celebrity sightings. Besides, they desperately wish to know the latest gossip from Hollywood and beyond.

Liar’s Dice

This is a game that I've seen played-on sidewalks, behind stores, while the workers are on break-as well as on Friday night house parties, where money is changing hands quite fast and the game is serious. I'm surprised it hasn't gained greater popularity, considering how many people have dice at home.

Liar's Dice is like poker in that you know your hand, you don't know others' hands, and you will be making bets based on what you think they might or might not have as their "hand." Possible hands for a player to have include three of a kind, five in a row, etc.

As with poker, one bets on the strength of one's hand, relative to what one thinks one's friends might be holding. As "liar" denotes, one would bluff, keep a poker face, and, generally, lie about one's real hand.

4rabet App Features

If you would like to start raising the level of gaming parties to the next level, the 4rabet app features might enhance the enjoyment factor for your home entertainment experience. They offer a plethora of gambling games to be enjoyed either solo or with friends, from blackjack, sports betting to live casino games. 4rabet makes real-time betting, odds tracking, and communicating with fellow players easy and fun, whether you're hosting a casual Friday after-work drink or a more raucous weekend game night with friends.

A Word in Closing

Evidence of gambling tokens has been found in Paleolithic campsites. The first dice, made from animal bones, were found five thousand years ago in the Near East.

Even the Dalai Lama is said to make use of a Tibetan gambling stick called a "mo" in order to come to some decision.

Clearly, it seems ancient time was captivated by something about gambling, betting, and winning, and since then there has never been any other winning way to cast a spell.

Gambling games for fun, for profit, even for divination, are as old as man himself.

While you are certainly here to find gambling games to play with friends, it can do no harm to know that we are already wired to enjoy skill games, with a wager or two thrown in for good measure to amp up the suspense.

First, you invite a great mixed crowd—possibly inviting in a couple of people who haven’t been around in a while, just to change the energy a bit—then you choose between wings and pizza or more exotic finger food, let the games begin!