Title: Fireball

Interview Link: Fireball Interview Continued: Fireball Interview 2

General Information about Item:

• Type of Lore: Drinking Game
• Language: English
• Country of Origin: America
• Informant: Craig Glassbrenner  
• Date Collected: May 4, 2019

Informant Data: Craig Glassbrenner is a male student at the University of Lacrosse-Wisconsin. Craig was born and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin until he moved to Lacrosse, Wi after he graduated high school.

Contextual Data: This drinking game was observed in 2018-present during the informants college years. This game was observed at a cabin in northern Wisconsin.

Item:

Fireball is a drinking games that uses a deck of cards that are dealt out to players that are often sitting around a table. Depending on how many people play will determine how many decks will be used. Typically, the game is played with five to eight people. The dealer deals out an even number of cards to each player leaving four left over cards to flip over face up and those cards will be considered. “fireball cards”. The player to the left of the dealer starts by flipping over their first card. The player then proceeds to guess whether the next card they flip will be higher or lower than the previous card. Two being the lowest card and aces being the highest. The player continues to guess higher or lower until they guess incorrectly. At any point during their turn the player flips over a card that corresponds to a “fireball card” they have to take a shot of fireball. This is where the game gets its name “fireball”. Once the player get guesses the next card wrong, for example they guess “higher” and the card happened to be lower than the previous card, the player takes a sip of their drink. Now the next player gets to begin to guess higher or lower after they flip over their first card. Also if at any point in the higher/lower portion of the game a player flips up a card that is the same number as their previous card they must take two fireball shots. This continues until a player successfully gets rid of all of their cards. The first person to successfully get rid of their deck of cards gets to give away a shot of fireball to any of the remaining players. The last player with cards still remaining at the end of the round must take a fireball shot.

So who taught you this game?

The informant learned this game when at his cabin in northern Wisconsin from a family friend.

Informant’s Comments:

This game is best played with five or six people, usually friends of yours. With larger groups, greater than 7 players, the game is less fun because each player only gets a certain amount of cards. Also with larger groups people tend to lose focus easily which negatively impacts the game.

Collector’s Comments:

I found this game to be very interesting and fun. It doesn’t, however, require much skill and is mostly based on chance. This game is considered an overconsumption game.  

Collector’s Name: Henry Eilen

Tags/Keywords:

• Card Game
• Overconsumption Game