I find myself at carnival events quite a bit as of late and I notice that the toss a shower-rod ring over a coke bottle game always has the epicly large prizes. I know the rings fit around the bottles and had a friend win at it once by luck, but he doesn’t know how he did it.
Is it better to try to ring it directly, or are they just as likely to make it on if I let them bounce between the bottles in a near miss situation?
In fact, does anyone know of a Web site dedicated to how to beat carnival games?
I’d like to bring home a ton of prizes for the little ones…
Beating a carnival game is a lot like playing the piano at Carnagie Hall: It takes practice, practice, practice. I liken it to juggling. 10 years ago, it took me about two weeks (at over an hour a day) to master 3-ball juggling. It’s this reason that some of the carnival events are easily done by the huckster, yet seldom done by the player. If you really want to beat them, try setting up some coke bottles and tossing rings at them for 2 hours a day for a week. I’ll bet you get a ringer about 10% of the time. Is it worth the effort??
I worked in a Ring Toss during the summer when I was 21. I threw rings all the time and made it once. It shocked the hell out of me. It is luck. That’s it. There is no way you can see the way a ring will bounce after 5 ricochets off bottles. Throw them and hope, I say.
Your best bet is to throw the ring in a very high arc, with the ring horizontal from start to finish, like a frisbee. You want it to drop as straight down as possible to minimize the bounce factor. Even doing so, and with lots of practice, you’re lucky to ring 5% of your throws. Plus, the game runners will probably have a low ceiling or hang stuffed animals around or make you stand farther back so that you can’t get a high arc, making your chances of a ringer even slimmer. Move on to a winnable game, eh.
If they have a low enough ceiling, it isn’t specifically prohibited in the posted rules and/or no one is looking, try to toss the ring until it hits the ceiling. This will slow the momentum and help the ring to drop straight down giving it a better chance at landing on the bottle. I have several very large stuffed animals I won at ring toss games!
I won a huge freakin’ bear at 6-flags by throwing a quarter or dime (can’t remember which) on to a plate. Pure luck. The coin hit the plate and started spinning. Several seconds later the coin settled down onto the plate…the ‘carnie’ had kinda a shocked look on his face.
My sister and I won a carnival game simply by being pretty and with two other guys!! The carnies were a young guy and an older guy, and their booth was in an area that wasn’t being frequented much since the fair just started.
We were with my sis’ boyfriend and his friend and the carnies made them play by the rules, so they didn’t win. They let my sis and I cheat a little though. The game consisted of using a pole with a string attached that had a ring on the end of the string. You had to use that ring to lift a coke bottle into an upright position on an inclined ramp. We cheated by leaning over the counter as we lifted. Easy as pie!! And we won two huge (classy) warner brother’s stuffed animals. (Wile E. Coyote and Marvin the Martian).
So my advice? Be flirty and cute! (just kidding!)
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” --Whitman
They also use highly-inflated basketballs, which makes them much much bouncier. Thus, the odds of a shot other than a ‘swish’ going in are greatly reduced.
Most of those carnival games are grifts, much shadier and much worse odds than anything you’ll find in Vegas. You wanna play a game with crappy odds, just buy lottery tickets.
Not only that, but the basketball hoop is elliptical rather than circular. You can’t tell because of the perspective. The hoop is twice as wide as the ball, but only a little longer than the ball. Look at the hoop from the side and you’ll see what I mean.
If Cecil Adams did not exist, we would be obliged to create Him.
