Poker is never a boring game. You would think that the continual shuffling of cards, folding, and winning or losing money would get boring, but when you put together a house game full of friends, something interesting is always bound to happen. If not, well I hate to break it to you, but your friends suck. I had a poker game recently at a friend’s place, where the premise of the night was to finish off all of their recent party leftovers–food and booze–play poker and dabble with the new Guitar Hero game. After some turkey and PBRs we were all set to start our game of Texas Hold Em. I lost my first twenty quickly and had to re-buy into the cash game, and was getting a bit bored with the situation until somebody heroically came up with a drinking game to go along with our game of cards. The rules to the game were simple–whoever makes the best five card hand out of anybody who folds at any time in the hand has to take a shot. As you would suspect, this made all of the pots in the game include a lot more money than usual, because nobody wanted to fold their hands. Also, it got everybody pretty drunk pretty quickly. People were folding their 3-5 and 4-7 offsuit hands pre-flop and hitting straights by the river. We would all laugh at the fact that their hand would hit a good hand and they would take the shot. I highly recommend playing this next time you host a poker game and you feel like letting it get out of hand.

Out of this madness that I propose to be named ‘Texas Fold ‘Em’, and my friend’s liquor cabinet, came the Three White Men shot. We started the poker/drinking game off by alternating shots of Jim, Jack, and Seagrams. I was still in serious poker mode at the time, so my habit of folding too much pre-flop had not gone away quite yet. That, of course, put me at risk of pulling the best hand out of the folding cards and forcing me to take a shot. In the first hour we played this drinking game with our poker game, I only had to take about two shots, but that caught up with me in a hurry. I ran off a stretch of three hands in a row where I pulled amazing hands from my pre-flop folds. Two of the hands were really low unsuited connectors–like a 4-6 offsuit–which ended up hitting straights on the river. I think the other hand pulled a two-pair. I was getting sick of just shooting Jim or Jack by then, so I figured I would try a nice mix of Jim, Jack, and… vanilla vodka. I had remembered another person had brought Smirnoff® Vanilla Vodka and was making ‘Vanilla Coke & Vodka’, which is tasty but a tad girly, so I had to try this combo. I had the name of the shot in mind as soon as I came up with it–Three White Men. Obviously, its a twist on the popular Three Wise Men shot that all good friends give their buddies on their birthdays. The normal Three Wise Men includes Jim, Jack and Johnny Walker–sorry for leaving you out of this shot Johnny. In fact, a more proper version of this shot may have to include Johnny. That’s not, however, how I tried it. It did made a great dare shot, and could help convince somebody who doesn’t want to take too harsh of a shot to do something with vanilla in it. It still tasted pretty bad, but I think I have added to the Three Wise Men legacy of shots.

Among other variations of the Three Wise Men shots that exist already are the Three Wise Men Go Hunting (adding Wild Turkey) and the Mexican Three Wise Men (adding Jose Cuervo to the bunch). I’m sure there are many other but those are two main ones that immediately come to mind.

Ingredients

1 Part: Jack Daniel’s® Tennessee Whiskey
1 Part: Jim Beam® Bourbon Whiskey
1 Part: Smirnoff® Vanilla Vodka

Instructions

Pour all ingredients into a large shotglass, with Jim and Jack first, and then the vodka on top.

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Filed under: Drinks by Josh