Welcome to the second installment of a series of 5 articles all about winning free drinks from your friends! Remember to leave a comment at the bottom of the page.

If you really don’t want to buy the next round of drinks for your friends, you need to place a bet. A proposition bet to be more precise. This is the kind of bet that makes the other person think ones who can win, when you know that you are almost always going to come out in your favor.

This is one of the most classic ways to win free drinks off your friends. It goes by a variety of different names however one of the common names for it is “The olive and the wine glass” this is due to the fact that the main elements you need to win are an olive and a wine glass.

Your friend, or someone on the table (possibly you) needs to have an olive. You may have got this out of a drink, or there may be a little bowl of them on the table. You also need a wine glass; many people like to have this glass with a little wine left in the bottom so no one thinks about it.

The first thing to do is put forward your bet. You need to say something like “I bet a round of drinks that you can’t get this Olive from this beer mat here to this beer mat here.” It sounds easy, but you need to lay down the following rules:

1. They can’t touch the olive
2. They can’t move the beer mat
3. They can’t attempt to blow it
4. It mustn’t touch the table

They (hopefully) won’t have a clue how to do it. So they may try, but eventually they’ll give up and think it is impossible.

That’s when you step in. Down the rest of your wine (make sure you only have a little bit) and then put it over the top of the beer mat. Catch the Olive on the edge of the glass (inside) and begin to move it round in a circle, until the olive is going round up the side. Then quickly move it over to the next beer mat. Voila! There you go, you have just won the bet.

This is a tricky concept, so here is a video version I found that might help you visualise it better.

Check out part 1 here

Check out part 3 here