Top 10 Best Bar Sports

by John Gorman
Love of Sports Correspondent

If you’re like me, after you get a couple o’ brews in ya, you start looking for various ventures to keep your ever-shifting mind occupied.

Also if you’re like me, if those various ventures include asthetically pleasing members of the opposite sex, you spend most of the evening drooling back into your beer and coming up with sucktastic Shakespearean syntax like “Uhhh… [stares out window, whistles]… sure is a nice place in here. Want to go somewhere els… can I buy you a… [duck and cover]? Well, I’ve seen better in Agricultural Monthly.”

Don’t fret, young lad or lassie. For there are now other things to do at the local hangout besides get your broken dignity handed back to you on a wadded up pile of soaked bar napkins.

Bar games soothe the sting of a sword fight breaking out at your local dive. They provide comfort, solace and entertainment for you. Yes, you: the everyman, the champion of the underdog, the weekend warrior of wasted. Glenlivet always tastes better when hand-delivered while tears of inadequacy well in the eyes of the defeated.

Today, we canonize these saintly outlets for the athletically challenged by counting down the 10 greatest games to play while you may or may not be intoxicated.

Top 10 Best Bar Sports

10. Dance Dance Revolution

Or, as the kids are calling it these days, DDR. This game properly went out of style with the Von Dutch trucker hat and Pokemon cards, but for a while this was the hottest hopping hot spot in the nation. Now, what are the benefits of playing a full-body version of the game Simon? We’re not really sure, but this game was a fave amongst the ex-cheerleader and anime-nerd crowd. Wouldn’t it be sweet if they went home together?

9. Golden Tee

Question: Where can you find the chicks at the bar?

Answer: Nowhere near the Golden Tee.

Does that make this game any less fun? Not in the least. I mean, who doesn’t love putting in dollar after dollar to spin a free-flowing wheel with enough force to poke the eyes out of a rhino? My top score in this game, in case your wondering, is twenty-four over par. Little known fact: they throw magnets in the water hazards.

8. Deer Hunter

Now, this is what I’m talking about. You’re in the bar with your boys, cranking back cans of Ice Beer while listening to some Bon Jovi. What should appear to your blurry-eyed soul? A giant moving screen in a box ... with guns. This is Duck Hunt on steroids, Oregon Trail for the Apple IIe kids who didn’t think the Buffalo hunting was lifelike enough. You can blast away at Deer, bust a cap in a beer can’s behind and impress all your gang-running friends with your sniping abilities.

7. Foosball

Whoever came up with this game was clearly not European. I mean, only an American who knew nothing about Soccer could come up with a certifiably addicting Soccer experience that plays nothing like the game itself. You can perform flips seventeen times over by brushing the handle with brute force, spinning the ball in every direction but the goal itself. Bonus points to this game because chicks dig it. Girls love the foos, and that means you should, too. Partner up with one next time you’re by the table. Should you run the room for a while, she’ll be headed home with you that evening.*

*Results May Vary

6. Touch Screen

Video Crack. You can play the game alone or you can play the game with friends. There’s all sorts of strategy puzzles involving cards, Japanese symbol blocks and jumbled words. We were partial to 11-ball. What’s better on a beer-n-coke binge than trying to slap your fingers against magically colored pool balls, to make them add up to 11 and disappear? Nothing. We played it from the happy hour to the witching hour to the “Turn off the [bleep]ing sun!” hour.

Of course, you may know it better for trying to decipher differences between naked ladies or dudes, if that’s your thing. Yes, there’s no denying the raw sensual pleasure of Erotic Photo Hunt. Please, though, refrain from giggling. It makes you seem like you’ve never seen one in real life.

5. Wii

So, after a random night out in Buffalo where we met a cute young lass from Akron, we decided to make her acquaintance the following weekend in her stomping grounds. (Call it a home-and-home series, if you will.) We set up shop one evening at a fairly posh (by Akron’s standards) lounge, and I ordered my usual Newcastle. This place was off the chain! They had a dance club, a V.I.P. lounge, a dive bar, and a pool room all within four walls! But the best part, oh, was the Wii room. Against a 120’ projector screen lay Wii bowling with an untouched controller lying lonely on a glass table. We sat on the plush chairs on wheels (they were in the shape of hands!) and Wii’d till the break of dawn. This was clearly one of the highlights of my life. I may not have talked to the lady from Akron since, but I will forever remember the night we Wii’d together in a black-lit room. Wait, that came out dirty…

4. Beer Pong

We’ve already mentioned that this is the most superior drinking game of all time. What I will mention to you is how this game is not quite as spectacular when played with virtual strangers, in front of an audience of 47 drunken frat-boys who chant “chug! chug! chug!” after every ball is sunk. (We, too, were once a frat-boy, but we were too busy making out with your girlfriend to chant.) Let’s not kid ourselves here, Beer Pong is a classic. The concept of playing a basketball-type skill game in an attempt to reach unholy levels of debauchery is a stroke of brilliance. Beware, though, the correlation: the better you get at Pong, the worse you are going to be at driving. If you find yourself running the table, do call a cab.

3. Bubble Hockey

You don’t see it in bars like you used to, but it is still one of the finest sports simulations ever created. Foosball’s Canadian cousin made inroads in the United States during the Miracle on Ice era, as many bars set up the plexi-glassed time-waster to give the everyman a chance to knock that Commie scum back to Vladivostok. Personally, I enjoyed playing as the CCCP and riding my imaginary line of Bure, Mogilny and Federov to plastic puck domination. While we’re here, we gotta give a shoutout to deceased Wing bar Rootie’s. Their mix of suicide wings, Labatt Blue and bubble hockey made for some of the best class-skipping a University at Buffalo student could ever have.

2. Darts

Darts is a humbling experience. In theory, it seems so simple. You toss a winged needle at a dimpled board and try to get that sucker to stick in the slice of pie that yields the number you need. Fat chance of that ever happening until you’ve had a six-pack or two. Your hands shake, the eyes of patrons gaze at your intense stare and you end up spraying that dart against the window. However, once you get good (or drunk) enough to calm yourself down, the perfectly struck Dart round is second only to the perfectly struck golf shot in terms of pure ecstasy. More bonus points go out to the pizza board because ladies love it.

1. Pool

So this one time, we were playing some billiards at a dive bar, and some biker challenged us to a game of nine-ball, with drinks on the line. Now, there’s a hustler! Naturally, we took him up on the challenge. Somehow, we defeated him on the felt table and it was his turn to bring us an icy cold Eliot Ness.Well, this no good drifter forgot to inform us he was on a tab and his credit card got declined. After he spent some time swapping jabs with the bar owner and cursing off a few cops, Eliot Ness was ours on the house for the rest of the evening. We loved pool before that night. We really love it now. There’s nothing sexier than the way a girl caresses the cue, there’s nothing sweeter than a well-struck break and there’s nothing more satisfying than running the table at your local bar, drinking for free till the sun shines.

So go ahead and debate, sports cadets! What’s your favorite bar game? Got any outrageous stories you’d like to share with the class?

Come hang with us in the comments.

We’ll buy the booze if you bring the quarters.

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(You’re at the bar already. Why not order up a tall glass of ice cold beer!?! If you’re a fan of ice cold beer, like we are, then check out our sister site, The Love of Beer, to see what flavor we’re trying out today.)