Awesome Version of How to Play Ride the Bus Drinking Game

Ride the Bus is one of the most popular drinking games and a personal favourite of mine and my girlfriend Claire. We have played it many times by ourselves and with groups of friends. Once you understand the rules it is so easy to play.

So how do you play ride the bus?

Ride the bus drinking game is played with a deck of cards with the aim that each player must lose as many their cards as they can. The game is played in 3 stages with the player with the most cards left in their hand at the end of stage 2 is the loser and gets to Ride the Bus

Claire and I have has written our best article and described how to play ride the bus in a simple but detailed way. We included images and a great infographic summary for you to download onto your phone. I have recently discovered the online drinking game version of ride the bus and it’s awesome. It’s one of many, great online drinking games that Claire and I now add to our date nights and game nights with friends.

I am going to cover both the original Ride the Bus Drinking Game rules and the online ride the bus app version.

What I have discovered is that there is a heap of different versions on ‘how to play Ride the Bus’, including different rules. I am going to show you the way we play which is the most popular version.

I am going to start with the online drinking game version of ride the bus. This is because is it so simple to play, you will pick it up in a few minutes and it will make the original game much easier to understand.

Ride the Bus Online Drinking Game

The app: iphone | ipad or Android
Drink – Beer or favourite drink
Number of player 2+

Note: These instructions are for the IOS – iphone version. The Android maybe slightly different.

The object of the game is for each player to pass through what we will call 4/5 bus stops. The only way you can do this is by answering (guessing) 4 questions. Guess right you move forward to the next stop, guess wrong you take a drink and start again… It’s that simple!

Set up

When you open the app you will be presented with 4 tabs

Play
Options
How to Play
Support

Brief description of each tab

By pressing play you will enter and start the game

By going into options, you have the choice to set up the to your preference. This is worth playing around with to see the different modes available.

These Are The Options Available:

The Game Mode: allows you to choose the questions and in which order.

Choose the Classic mode and you will get the following questions:

Stop 1. – Red or Black

Stop 2. – Guess the suit

Stop 3. – Is the card outside or in between

Stop 4. – Is the card, Club, Diamond, Spade or Heart

Stop 5. – card any of the previously chosen

Choose the Red or Black Game Mode and you will get the same question (red or black) at each stop

Choose the High or Lower Game Mode and you will get the same question (higher or lower) at each stop

Choose the Guess the Suit Game Mode and you will get the same question (Guess the Suit) at each stop

Choose the Custom mode and you will get the option to the above questions in any order you choose.

Grid Layout – This allows you to choose the layout of the cards. The most popular layout is the pyramid

Corridor
Pyramid
Diamond

Drink Allocation – Speaks for itself!

Always One
Always Two
Increasing
Decreasing

Ace – Choose if you want the ace to be high or low

High
Low

Card Colour – Speaks for itself – Colour layout

Blue
Red

Card Selection – Options of how to select the card.

Drag or tap
Drag
Tap

When Claire and I played we used the following set up

Game Mode: Classic

Card Layout: Pyramid

Drink Allocation: Always One

Card Colour: Red

Card Selection: Drag or Tap

By choosing How to play, it will give the playing instruction for this game.

By choosing Support Us, you get to:

Rate the app
Remove ads (Cost of $1.49)
Give feedback
Access Facebook
Look at other Apps

How to play Online Ride the Bus

Start the game by pressing play and typing in the name of the players. You can play with any number of players from 2 +

Player 1 starts the game by tapping on a card
The card turns over and the first questions appears – Is the card red or black
You got it – you guess the answer.
Guess right on move on to the next stop
Guess wrong, take a drink and pass to next player
This example is in classic mode so the next question will be
Guess the suit, followed by
Is the card outside or in-between followed by
Is the card, Club, Diamond, Spade or Heart.
That should be the final 4^th question but when I got to the end there was another question
Is the card any of the previously chosen

The extra 5th stop (question) seems only to be in the classic mode setting. The rest are 4 questions

The End of the Game

One player gets through the 4 / 5 stops without guessing incorrectly, which is called getting off the bus – easier said than done.

My hope is that the detailed description allows you to get a feel for the game before you down load the drinking app and just start playing.

Original Version of Ride the Bus Drinking Game

2 + players

What you need

Deck of Cards
Drink
Choose the dealer

Unlike the online version, the object of this game is to have the least number of cards in your hand by the end of the round.

There are 3 stages to game

Stage 1 – Deal the cards – answer questions

Stage 2 – Climb the pyramid – get rid of your cards

Stage 3 – Person with the most number of cards to – Loser, must Ride The Bus

Stage 1 – Deal the cards

The game starts by the dealer, dealing out 4 cards to each player in 4 separate rounds or games. That is 1 card to each player per round/game.

In each round the dealer will ask a question to each player, which they then have to guess the answer.

Will the next card be:

Red or Black
High or Low
In-between or outside
What suit – Pick a suit

Game 1.

The dealer asks the player 1 to guess the colour of the card Red or Black
He then turns over a card in front of the player
If the player guessed correctly he/she gives out 1 drink (to your partner or player of your choice)
If it was an incorrect guess they take a drink
The player keeps the card and the dealer moves onto the next player

Game 2

The same as game one except the question is: Guess if the next card is going to be Higher or Lower than your first card.
Call the Ace high for this example but you can decide at the beginning of the games whether the ace is going to be high or low.
If the card turn over matches the first card, it is classed as an incorrect answer.
Optional – You could add an extra rule similar to the online version giving the player the option to say: Higher, Lower, or Same.
Optional – This time the drinks increase to give 2 for a correct answer (choose to give 1 player all drinks or distribute between players) –, take 1 wrong answer
Or If the player guessed correctly he/she gives out 1 drink / If it was an incorrect guess they take a drink
The player keeps the card and the dealer moves onto the next player

Game 3

The same as game two except the question is: Guess if the next card is going to be in-between or Outside the value of your 2 current cards.
For example: You have 2 cards – 4 and 8 (suit doesn’t matter) . The in-between value will be – 5, 6, or 7. Outside value will be – Ace, one, two, three or nine, ten, Jack, Queen, King
If the card turned over matches the either card, it is classed as an incorrect answer.
Optional – You could add an extra rule similar to the online version giving the player the option to say: In-between, outside or same.
Optional – This time the drinks increase to give 3 for a correct answer (choose to give 1 player all drinks or distribute between players) – take 1 wrong answer
Or If the player guessed correctly he/she gives out 1 drink / If it was an incorrect guess they take a drink
The player keeps the card and the dealer moves onto the next player

Game 4

The same as game three except the question is: Guess the suit of the next card. – Spade, Club, Heart or Diamond
This time the drinks increase to give 4 for a correct answer (choose to give 1 player all drinks or distribute between players) – wrong answer take 1
Or If the player guessed correctly he/she gives out 1 drink / If it was an incorrect guess they take a drink
The player keeps the card and the dealer moves onto the next player

Stage 2 – Climb the pyramid

In stage 2 the dealer starts by creating a pyramid with 5 rows and the cards face down. Each row is given a drink value. This value is optional and can be agreed upon at the beginning.

The aim is for the players to get rid of all cards by pairing them with the ones on the pyramid and giving as many drinks as possible to other players.

The row 1 has 5 cards – 1 drink
The row 2 has 4 cards – 2 drinks
The row 3 has 3 cards – 3 drinks
The row 4 has 2 cards – 4 drinks
The row 5 has 1 card – 5 drink

How to play stage 2

Starting with the bottom (row 1) the dealer turns over each card one at a time.
A player with a matching card (e.g. Pair of Aces) puts their card on top of the corresponding card and gives the number of drinks for that row to any player (e.g. row 1 – give 1 drink)
Any number of matching cards from any players can be used (e.g. If there is an ace in the row and more than 1 player holds an ace in their hand, they can both put down their card)
If there is an ace in the row and you have 2 aces in your hand you can put them both down and distribute the drinks 2 times
If you don’t have a matching card you need to wait for the next row is turned.
This continues up the pyramid, turning over each row at a time until you reach the top

Stage 3 – Finally Ride the Bus

At the end of the pyramid climb the player with most cards left is classed as the ‘Loser’ and then Rides the Bus.

If there is a tie in the number of cards held, then add up the value of the cards.
The player with the highest value is the loser and Rides the Bus
If the values match then each player to pick a card from the deck, the one with the highest value to ride the bus.

The player who Rides the Bus must:

Answer all 4 questions correctly in one go to get off the bus

As in the online version, if the question is guessed incorrectly, they take a drink and go back to the beginning

4 Questions

Red or Black
High or Low
In-between or outside
Pick a suit

How to play the final stage of ride the bus

There are a many different versions available of this stage of the game, some we find to be a bit complicated so we keep it simple. We play it the same as the stage one except it’s with just 1 player

This is how we play it