You know how sometimes you just need to decide something silly? Like who takes out the trash, or what movie to watch. People flip coins, draw straws, all that stuff. I was looking at those old street hustler games, you know, the three cups and a ball? Looked easy enough. So, I thought, why not make my own little ‘gambling cup’ setup? Not for actual high-stakes betting, mind you, just for fun, a bit of a laugh.
First off, I needed the cups. Sounds simple, right? Wrong. I went through my kitchen cabinets. Plastic cups? Too flimsy, they’d blow over if someone sneezed. Glass ones? Nope, you’d see right through them, defeats the whole purpose. I was about to give up, then I spotted them – a set of old, opaque, kinda heavy-duty plastic tumblers I got from goodness-knows-where years ago. Perfect. Or so I thought at the time.
Then, what to hide under the cup? A coin felt too small, might slide around too much. A marble? Knowing my luck, it’d roll off the table and under the sofa, never to be seen again. I rummaged through my junk drawer – everyone’s got one of those, admit it. Found a little wooden token, a bright red one, from some ancient board game my kids don’t even play anymore. Good size, wouldn’t roll too far, and easy to spot when it wasn’t hidden.
So, the ‘assembly’ process began. I grabbed three of those tumblers. Big discovery: one was slightly shorter than the other two. Ugh. You wouldn’t think it matters, but it just looked off. Would it affect the game? Probably not for my purposes. I wasn’t planning on taking this show on the road. So I just shrugged and went with it. “Character,” I told myself.
Next, practice shuffles. I put the red token under one cup, lined up all three, and tried my best sleight of hand. Swish, swish, swap. Okay, where is it? Lift cup one… nope. Lift cup two… bingo! Felt like a regular magician. Then I got my wife to try and guess. She got it right on the first try. Then the second. Then the third. “Are you even shuffling them properly or just pretending?” she asked. Turns out, my ‘super-secret’ shuffle was pretty darn predictable. My table was also a bit too grippy, so the cups didn’t slide smoothly, they kind of juddered. More ‘character’, I guess.
I spent a good hour just practicing the shuffle, trying to make it look smoother. Changing the surface, trying different speeds. It’s harder than it looks on TV, let me tell you! Those guys must practice for ages. My arms were getting tired. For a couple of plastic cups and a token! It’s funny, isn’t it? You start these little projects thinking they’ll take five minutes, and suddenly you’re deep in the weeds, trying to perfect the art of cup-sliding.
Why bother, you ask? Could’ve just bought some fancy dice or a decision-spinner app on my phone. Yeah, sure. But there’s something about making a thing, even a silly, simple thing like this. It’s mine. It’s got its quirks – the slightly shorter cup, the token that’s seen better days. It’s not some mass-produced piece of plastic from a factory. It’s my ‘Gambling Cup Deluxe Edition’.
And you know what? It works. We actually use it. Mostly for dumb stuff, like who has to get up and get snacks during a movie. The stakes are incredibly low, which is probably for the best. Sometimes my youngest tries to peek under the edge while I’m ‘shuffling’. I just tell him that’s advanced strategy. It’s not about winning or losing, just the fun of the moment, I suppose. And it’s a lot less hassle than those complicated board games with rulebooks thicker than a dictionary. This is just three cups, one token. Simple. Sometimes, simple is all you need, isn’t it?
