Carnival Games - Beat The Bottle! (Page 2 of 3)

Stand-up the beer bottle carnival game.

The object of this carnival game is to stand up a beer bottle that is placed on a small platform. You do this with a wooden cowl that has a long string and a plastic ring tied to the end of it. By hooking the ring around the neck of the bottle, you must stand the bottle up while only holding the cowl, and have it remain standing upright on the platform when you're done. The carnival game usually costs one dollar for each attempt. When business is slow, they'll sometimes offer three tries for two dollars. As you can see, missing often can start to add up to a lot of money, with nothing to show for it.

The person working the booth will always demonstrate how it's done. He will do it in front of you from where your standing. He makes it look easy. He can do it because he works there and he's had time to practice this technique. The important point here is that once you know how to do it, it requires no luck to repeat it. Once you've stood that bottle up just like the person who showed you, the whole carnival would have seen it and they cannot "disqualify" you in any way and refuse to give you your prize.

Once you've learned how to do this, you will be able to walk into any carnival that has a "bottle carnival game" and be a winner. Now the really fun part is that some carnivals have more than one "bottle carnival game"! I went to one state fair and they had FIVE. I won a prize at every one of them. I had a hard time driving home because my car was filled with stuffed animals.

The prizes they give out are always quite large. They figure that it'll just be pure luck if anybody does stand the bottle up. Nobody would bother to practice the technique of doing it, just to win a couple of hundred dollars worth of stuffed animals. They think everyone would rather throw a dart and win a stuffed four inch banana. Let me tell you now, the best part of winning one of the largest prizes at a carnival is the look on everyones face when you walk past them holding this huge teddy bear. Anybody can learn how to do this with a - little practice and patience, but then most people wouldn't bother. Another point is when you've LOST a lot of money to a person who looks like one of the family members in the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", winning something from them makes you feel a whole lot better.

I've noticed over time that there are a lot of subtle variations to the carnival game that I didn't realize when I first started, but with practice, I've had no problem mastering them. There are also a lot of other tricks and tips you should know so you can win the most prizes for your efforts. I'm now gonna show you how to set up your own bottle carnival game at home and how you should practice.

What you're going to need are the items listed and shown on the next page. I've tried to make my set up as close as possible to what you would usually encounter at a fair. The important part here is that you should strive to make everything so it has the same "feel" as an original carnival game. You don't want to be putting money down on your attempts and end up not feeling too confident because it's just "not the same".

Take a careful look at the photograph on the first page. It shows an actual bottle carnival game. You should refer to this image if you get confused on how I set things up. You are trying to recreate this scenario for yourself.

One of the first things I had problems with is the plastic ring. When I first started, I didn't realize that it was plastic. I thought it was made out of rubber. I ended up using a rubber dog toy ring. This never felt right because the rubber didn't slide on the neck of the bottle like a plastic one does, and besides, my dog was pissed. I soon discovered that they use the exact same plastic rings used in the ring toss onto the coke bottles carnival game. (Take a guess where you can find them.)

Another important aspect is the bottle. Make sure you get an official "bar bottle", do not use a regular throw away kind. They're not the right shape. Bar bottles might take some looking for but they shouldn't be that hard to find.

The square platform that the bottle will be resting on should be made of very smooth material. The carnivals usually use a small piece of Formica. The carnival game will be too easy if you use something that the bottle can "hold" onto. When you first start practicing, you should notice that the bottle may sometimes slide right off the platform if you lift it incorrectly.

The "fake railing" that you will have is also important. It gives you something to work over. If you've tried the real carnival game, you may have noticed that if you stand a certain way, the top beam will block your view of the bottle. You must learn how to deal with that stupid beam because it will be there when you actually try. It teaches you where to position yourself in relation to the platform. When I first started doing this, the end of the cowl would keep hitting the beam, making me lose control of the bottle. You will also be moving the "fake railing" closer and farther from the platform to recreate different set ups that you may encounter.

The platform is almost never set up perfectly horizontal to the ground. A slight tilt is applied to the wooden frame and platform which makes it possible to stand a bottle upright on it. This is done by putting a thin piece of wood or a plastic cassette tape box under one side. This seems to give the frame just the right tilt.

Make sure you use a wooden cowl that is close as possible to 1/2" in diameter. This also helps in getting the right "feel" in using the "bottle fishing rod". You don't want to use something like a broom handle, nor do you want to use something that's too thin. The cowl that you use should not bend when you lift up the neck of the bottle.

Assemble the "fake railing" and wooden frame for the platform as shown in the drawing. Place the Formica platform onto the middle of the wooden frame. The cassette box should be placed under the side of the frame farthest from you so the frame and platform very slightly tilts towards you. The bottle should be placed on the Formica platform with the neck pointing towards you, there should be about 4 inches of space in between the base of the bottle and the top of the platform. It should have enough room to stand up without falling off the far edge.

Set the "fake railing" about 10" from the tip of the bottle. Later you'll be moving this railing closer and farther away to simulate different variations. Hold the dowel in one hand about 3/4 of the way down. I've seen some people do this carnival game while holding the very end of the dowel, so your going to have to experiment to feel what's right. Do not hold the dowel with both hands to steady it, you'll be extending your arm forward to complete the motion of standing the bottle up. You will need all the reach you can get to have the bottle to stay up.

Stand behind your "fake railing" so you can see the tip of the bottle over the top bar. I like to stand with the same foot forward that matches my hand in which I'm holding the dowel. Carefully hook the ring around the neck of the bottle just past the two bumps where the bottle cap is placed. The ring must be lined up perpendicular to the rest of the bottle, it should not have a slight turn to it. If you have to, put the bottle down and try lifting it again. Do not try to lift the bottle with the ring in the middle of the neck or at it's base. When you try to lift it, the ring will just slip from it's position and you'll lose control.

Lift the bottle up about an inch. You may notice the bottle will start to sway a little from side to side. Do not try to lift any farther until you get the bottle to stabilize. The bottle must be pointing directly at you, perpendicular to the fake rail and parallel with the sides of the platform. By giving the dowel a very slight up and down jiggle, you should be able to get the bottle to settle into a tiny groove in the ring and at it's base. My feeling is that the very tiny grit on the base of the bottle keeps the bottle from rolling ever so slightly.

I hope this makes sense, because it's important that you start the lifting motion in this proper position. If you start to lift the bottle when it's crooked, you'll never get it. It will just start to roll on you once you've reached a certain height.

The entire motion of standing up the bottle is done in an arc. You don't lift the dowel straight up like you just hooked a fish. If you watch the person who works at one of these carnival games, they will never let the ring leave the bottle. Let me explain how the whole ploy works.

When an unskilled person tries to do this carnival game, they always hook the ring around the neck and lift straight up. Once they get the bottle almost all the way up, the ring slides off and the bottle keeps on going. The bottle might come up to an upright position, but the momentum pushes it forward. The bottle twirls around and drops off the platform. "Oh, you almost got it!" screams the guy who took your money. They figure, "he's right! I almost did!", so out comes another buck.

The entire trick to this carnival game is once you've stood the bottle up, you have to keep it standing! Don't forget, you're trying to stand a bottle up on a slightly tilted surface. There's a reason for this. If you did this on a perfectly horizontal surface, once you've lifted the bottle upright, the forward momentum pushes the bottle forward, knocking the bottle over. On the slightly tilted surface, once you've lifted the bottle upright, the downwards tilt of the platform cancels out the forward momentum of the bottle. What happens next is when the bottle stops going forward, it sort of recoils and starts to fall back downhill. This is where you use the ring and string to keep it from falling back downhill. After a few seconds of holding it there to steady it, the bottle stays put.

Boy! I sound like Mr. Wizard! If you have a tattoo machine you can burn this into your skin: THE RING BUST NEVER LEAVE THE BOTTLE! (I've left space so you can write in more of your own exclamation marks.) If the ring slides off, you've failed, don't even think you were close. It's amazing how many people think that just because the bottle was upright for a second, they almost had it.