Play Pogs
Pogs started as a popular schoolyard game in Hawaii. Cardboard bottle caps from the popular POG brand were put into stacks and slammed with metal bottle caps, a game that spread like wildfire to the mainland in the 1990s. If you're curious about this nostalgic game, you can learn how to play and collect pogs.
Contents
Steps
Playing Pogs
- Get some pogs and a slammer. Pogs are cardboard discs about the size of a US half-dollar. They're usually blank on one side, with some kind of design on the other side. Slammers are metal discs that are somewhat larger than the pogs themselves. They were typically sold in big bins throughout the 90s, and can still be found in some kids stores, attics, and thrift shops.
- The original pogs were the cardboard caps from bottles of POG, a popular juice in Hawaii. The game was played using bottle caps for a long time before it was commercialized for the mainland, where it became very popular in the 1990s.
- If you want to make some pogs, trace a circle onto a piece of paper {{safesubst:#invoke:convert|convert}} in diameter. Tape it onto a slab of cardboard. Cut the circle out and draw a design on the top using with black pen. Color if you want. To make the slammer, simply tape two pieces of cardboard together and flatten it.
- Compare pogs with your friends. Pogs is mostly a game of collecting the biggest and coolest collection of discs. A game of pogs requires a big pot of pogs, so it's usually played between a few friends all of whom have a big stack of them. The object of the game is to end up with your buddy's pogs in your stack, to make your collection grow.
- Most games start with everyone comparing their favorite pogs in a pile. If you see some that you like, you can offer to trade for them or play for them.
- Decide whether or not you're going to play for keeps. Once you see some pogs that you like, you can challenge your buddy to a game to keep them, but only if you both agree. If you don't want to play for keeps, make sure you both know it.
- Before the game, the players decide whether to play for "keeps" or "no-keeps". If you play for "keeps", a player keeps the pogs that are won, even if they are his opponents.
- Back in the 90s, when playing with pogs was really popular, lots of schools outlawed the game. Teachers claimed that playing with pogs was a form of gambling. While its not super-common anymore, it's still good to make sure that it's allowed with your parents or teachers before you play.
- Find a good surface to play on. Any hard flat surface will be fine to play pogs. Carpet, counter tops, and concrete are all good places for pogs. Just make sure you don't dent up your mom's table with your slammer.
- If you play on the concrete, sometimes it's good to put all the pogs on a book, or on a binder to keep your slammer from getting all dinged up.
- Each player puts an equal number of pogs into the stack. Go around the circle, and takes turns putting in the pogs that you're going to play with. Just make a big pile of them facedown. Each player must put in the same number of pogs. It's usually best to play with at least 10-15 pogs total. Make sure the stack is at least that big.
- Start by placing all the pogs into a pile, then shuffling them and stacking them face down. This helps to ensure that someone's pogs aren't all at the bottom.
- If you're playing for keeps, remember that any pogs you put into the stack might not come back to you when you're done. You have to decide which pogs you're willing to risk to get the ones that you want.
- Stack the pogs facedown. Once you've shuffled them, arrange the pogs into a big stack. Make sure that all of the pogs are facedown, so you can't see the design side. The way you win the pogs is by flipping them over using your slammer, so it's important to make sure that they start facedown.
- Flip to see who goes first. Once you've got your stack built up, start the game by flipping the slammer as you would a coin to see who goes first. The slam should pass in counter-clockwise order around the circle, after you find out who goes first.
- The first player typically gets the most pogs out of the slam. It's a lot harder to flip over a very small stack of pogs.
- Hold the slammer correctly. Depending on who you play with, there may be a rule for how you're supposed to hold the slammer. In American Pog tournaments, it was required that the slammer be held between the index finger and the middle finger, and flicked downward, over the back of the wrist. But there are lots of ways to hold the slammer, so it's fun to experiment and see which is best. Here are some common techniques:
- Hold the slammer flat against the inside of your fingers, and keep it in place with your thumb. Slap it down toward the stack.
- Curl the slammer into your index finger and hold it with your thumb, like you were going to skip a stone.
- Hold the slammer like you would a dart, between your index finger and thumb, sideways. Or turn it so the flat side is between your finger and thumb.
- Take turns "slamming" the stack. Take your slammer in whatever grip you've chosen, and forcefully slam it down onto the top of the stack of pogs. Let the slammer go as it makes contact. If you hit it correctly, many of the pogs should flip over onto the other side.
- You collect all the pogs that you've flipped over. They now are yours, if you're playing for keeps. If you're not, just keep them in your pile until the game is over.
- Restack the rest of the pogs that didn't flip over into a stack again, still facing down. Pass the slammer to the next player.
- Keeping passing and slamming until someone has more than half the pogs. The game is over when one player has collected more than half the pogs from the stack. The remainder of the pogs go back to whoever put them in to begin with, and the winner keeps the pogs in his pile.
- If you're not playing for keeps, return all the pogs to whoever started out with them in the first place.
- Play variations. The basic game of pog is pretty simple, but you can play a few little variations and specific rules to have more fun. Make up your own, or try some of these common classics:
- Play best of 15. Some players play that the stack must always remain at 15, but it's not important who puts in more. If you really want to get your best friend's favorite pog, putting in 14 to his 1 might be a daring way to try to gamble for it.
- Play the pogs where they fall. After the pogs scatter, pick up the ones you flipped, but don't restock them. Instead, play that you have to hit them where they fell. It's a lot harder.
- Play long-range pogs. In some games, you're allowed to get right up on top of the stack before you slam them. In other games, you have to stand a few feet away, making it much more difficult to actually hit the stack. It adds a little fun to the game.
- Just keep playing. One of the fun parts of the game is losing pogs, then getting them back, then losing them again. It's fun to keep playing for the same pogs over and over again. If you lost one of your favorites, it'll be easy to get it back in the next game.
Collecting Pogs
- Play for them. The easiest way for players to collect a bigger stack of pogs is to play for them regularly. Challenge your friends to games with their collections and try to win as many games as possible to grow your collection quickly.
- The best way to grow a bigger stack? Play with lots of people. If you play in a big group and everyone only puts in a few pogs, you don't stand to lose many, but you can gain a bunch pretty quickly. It's a fun way to play.
- Keep the cool ones. Got a pog you really love? Don't put it into a stack to play for it, if you don't want to lose it. The only sure way to keep the pogs you like is to keep them in your possession.
- On the other hand, putting ones you really like into the stack helps to keep the game exciting. If you might lose your favorite, there are big stakes!
- Trade for them. Sometimes, people prefer trading pogs for pogs, instead of playing for them. Collecting them was often a more fun part of the game than actually playing the game. Like baseball cards, Pokemon cards, or other kinds of kids' trading cards, a good trade is half the fun.
- Get a storage keeper for your pogs. Clear plastic storage containers were common for pogs back in the 90s. These were great for keeping your pogs new and clean looking, instead of all dinged up and dented. While these might be hard to find now, you could use PVC pipe of the appropriate size, a paper towel roll, or even just loose in a pencil case.
- Buy them. It used to be that you could just find pogs in big bins everywhere for a few cents each. Those were the days. Although pogs used to be widely available at toy stores, they're pretty uncommon nowadays. The best bet is probably Craigslist, or to find some in an older relative's attic if you want to score an old stash.
Tips
- If you don't have a slammer, you can also use a regular pog. However, you must use more force because of the cardboard in order to win more.
- When playing for "keeps", remember that if the person flips them, they keep it, so it's always good to use pogs that you don't mind giving away. Never play with unique or "hard-to-find" ones.
