Blind Man’s Bluff (also widely known as Indian Poker) is a bluffing and betting drinking card game for 3 or more players using a standard 52-card deck. Each player holds a single card to their forehead without looking at it. You can see every other player’s card but not your own. Games take 2-3 minutes per round.
This game is one of 8 drinking card games worth playing with a standard deck.
What You Need
A standard 52-card deck, drinks for everyone, and at least 3 players. The game works with any group size but hits its stride around 5-8 players, where there’s enough information on the table to make betting interesting.
Setup
Choose a dealer. The dealer shuffles the deck and deals exactly one card face-down to each player. Players pick up their card without looking at the face and hold it against their forehead, facing outward. Everyone at the table can see every card except their own.
How to Play
Once all cards are up, a round of betting begins. The dealer starts, and betting moves clockwise. On your turn, you can bet (wager a number of drinks), raise (increase the current wager), or fold (drop out and drink whatever the current bet is).
As seen on Kickstarter, our brand new party game Gentle Jack is now available on Amazon. Check it out on Amazon →
The strategy is inverted from normal poker. You’re reading the table to figure out what you can’t see. If everyone else is showing low cards (twos through sixes), the remaining cards in the deck skew higher, and yours might be strong. If the foreheads around you are full of face cards and tens, yours is more likely to be low.
After the betting round, everyone still in reveals their card (take it off your forehead and look at it for the first time). Highest card wins. The winner assigns drinks equal to the total pot (the sum of all bets made during the round). Anyone who folded already drank their penalty. Anyone who stayed in and lost drinks the difference between their card’s value and the winner’s card.
Aces are always high. If two or more players tie for highest card, they split the assigning privilege.
Shuffle all cards back into the deck and deal a new round.
Rules People Get Wrong
Folding penalty. When you fold, you drink the current bet amount at the time you fold, not the final bet amount. If you fold early when the bet is two drinks and someone raises to five later, you only owe two.
Tie resolution. Standard Blind Man’s Bluff does not rank suits. If two players tie with the same card value, they share the win. Some groups introduce suit rankings (spades highest, then hearts, diamonds, clubs) as a house rule, but that’s not default.
Looking at your card. If you accidentally see your own card before the reveal, you’re out of that round and drink a penalty (usually the current bet amount). No peeking, no reflections, no asking someone to “describe what they see.”
House Variants Worth Trying
High-Low Split: The highest and lowest cards both win. They split the drink assignments between them. This rewards bold betting from players who suspect they have a terrible card, which flips the psychology in interesting ways.
Two-Card Bluff: Deal two cards per player. Players hold both to their forehead. Best single card wins. This gives more information to read (you can see 8-14 cards around the table instead of 4-7) and makes the betting decisions more complex.
Dare Fold: Instead of just drinking when you fold, you can substitute a dare decided by the table. This variant works best when the group knows each other well.
From the makers of this site
Want to play a game right now?
We built a free digital drinking game with 110+ illustrated Omen cards. Draw one, do what it says, suffer the consequences. No download · No signup · Single device.
Play It Now →
