The wager: consequences decided by chance

A remarkable number of couples got started because of a game of cards, and I do not think that is an accident. Chance takes the asking away from both of you, which turns out to be the single hardest part for most people who never manage to start at all.

Consenting adults only. Everything on this page is about adults over 18 who have freely agreed to it.

Written from first-hand experience or extensive research by the editor.

Cut of the deck. Best of three at darts. Whoever loses at the pub quiz, or whichever football team lets its supporter down this weekend. The stake is a spanking, the game decides who gets it, and everyone at the table is a consenting adult over 18.

This is the least literary scene in this section and probably the most used. It is also, for a certain kind of couple, the only version that ever gets off the ground.

Why chance works so well

The hardest sentence in this entire subject is the direct one. Asking a partner to hit you means saying something about yourself out loud and then sitting in the silence while they decide what they think of it. Plenty of people never manage it, which is why asking your partner has a whole page to itself.

A wager removes the request. Nobody asked and nobody decided, the cards did it, and both people can hold the outcome at a distance. If it turns out to be a disaster, nothing has been confessed and the whole thing can be laughed off as a silly bet, which is a great deal of cover for a first attempt.

It does the same job in the other direction, which is the half people forget. A partner who is willing but uneasy about deliberately hurting someone they love often finds the deciding much harder than the doing. Give them a reason that came from outside the room and a lot of that hesitancy goes.

I have watched that unlock more first evenings than any amount of careful explanation. There is a smaller pleasure in it too: genuine uncertainty about what is going to happen to you in twenty minutes, which most planned scenes cannot produce because you negotiated all of it.

Rigging the odds, honestly

Almost nobody involved in this is playing to win, and pretending otherwise is faintly ridiculous. The person proposing the card game usually wants a particular result. That is fine. Build the game so that the result you want is likely, and say that you have done it.

An agreed handicap is entirely honest. Aces low for one of you. The house always takes the tie. One person needs a six to escape and the other needs anything above a two. Both people know the shape of it, both people accept it, and the small residue of genuine chance still does its job.

A secret rig is a different thing and I would not do it. If the deck was stacked without their knowledge, your partner consented to an outcome they believed was chance when it was quietly your decision. That is corrosive out of proportion to how minor it looks, in a context where you are asking someone to trust you with a great deal.

Set a ceiling before the first round. A total for the evening, regardless of how the game runs. Without one, a bad run of cards produces a number neither of you would have agreed to in cold blood, and somebody spends the rest of the night either dreading it or resenting having to let it go.

What to agree before the first hand

On top of the general negotiation:

• The stake per round, and the total ceiling for the evening. Both numbers, in advance.
• Whether both of you can lose, or only one. Symmetrical wagers between two switches are excellent. One-way wagers need saying plainly so nobody is quietly hoping.
• Who chooses the implement, and whether that is also at stake. Winner chooses is a strong twist and a big escalation, so cap it.
• Whether stakes compound between rounds. Double or nothing gets out of hand faster than anyone expects. If you allow it, cap the number of rounds too.
• What happens on a refusal, which must be nothing at all.
• Time limit. Say when the game stops, or you will still be playing at one in the morning with somebody in a hole.
• Alcohol. I would not run stakes past the second drink. Nobody judges a ceiling well when drunk, and consent given at that point is not worth much.
• That the safe word is live during the payment as much as during any other scene. See safe words.

Proposing it

This is the one scene that can legitimately start as an ordinary evening, which is most of its charm. No frame, no announcement, no lighting. A deck of cards on the coffee table and a sentence delivered lightly enough that it could be a joke if it needs to be.

Leave the exit open in how you phrase it. Something that can be met with a laugh and dropped lets the other person decline without having to decline anything. If they pick the cards up, you have your answer.

The etiquette of losing, and of winning

Pay up without haggling and pay up on the night. A loser who spends ten minutes relitigating the rules has spoiled the thing that made the format work, which is that the outcome came from outside both of you. Sulking about a result you agreed to is worse than any number of strokes and it makes the other person reluctant to propose a game again.

Winning has rules too. The winner does not get to invent or inflate the stake afterwards. The winner does not gloat unless gloating was on the menu. Gracious is better than triumphant, partly because you will lose next week. And a game cannot be used to obtain something that was previously refused: if the cane is a hard limit, no run of cards makes it available, and anyone reaching for that logic is not playing a game with you.

Ending it and putting the game away

Settle the stake, say out loud that the score is square, and then physically put the cards back in the box. That last bit sounds twee and it is the thing that actually ends the scene. Without it the evening carries on with a low-level sense that anything might still be owed, and one of you goes to bed still doing arithmetic.

Because a wager starts as an ordinary evening, people skip the coming-out part entirely and go straight back to the television. Do not. Something real happened, however lightly it was framed, and the general shape at aftercare applies to the jokey version as much as to the solemn one. Water, warmth, twenty minutes of ordinary company, and a proper look at any marks.

Where it goes wrong

• No ceiling. The most common failure by a distance.
• Drink. It removes exactly the judgement the format depends on.
• Compounding stakes with no round limit, which is how people end up owing absurd numbers.
• Secretly rigging it, however kind the motive.
• Running the game all evening until someone is deep in debt and the fun has gone out of it. Stop while it is still light.
• Season-long sporting bets that accumulate. Six strokes a goal sounds delightful in August. Settle weekly and cap the total.
• Treating a refusal as a debt unpaid.

Three formats that work

Cards, which is the classic and the easiest. Cut the deck, high card wins, the loser takes the number on the card. Instant, needs no skill, and the numbers are naturally capped by the deck.

A single throw. One dart, one coin, one roll. Where the dart lands or the die falls decides the number or the implement. The brevity is the appeal, because the whole thing takes fifteen seconds and there is no game to get bogged down in.

The forfeit draw. Chance decides which imposition rather than how many strokes, drawn from a set of slips written by both of you in advance. Some of them can be lines or corner time rather than impact, which makes this the gentlest way in for a couple who are still working out whether any of it appeals. See your first time for the wider shape of a first evening.