One-Time Path (2009)

One-Time Path is a really simple 2-players dice game.

You just need a die, 5 coasters, 12 coins (or chips or counters...) and a glass.

Put the 5 coasters forming a path between both players and the glass over the middle coaster.

In every turn, the two players (Up and Down) show at the same time several coins (from 1 to 6) and add them to obtain the 'threshold' (the 'threshold' should be a number between 1 and 6 so if the 'threshold' is greater than 6 you must subtract 6).

Then, one of the players rolls a die and moves the glass following this instructions:

• If the die punctuation is greater than the 'threshold' the glass is moved one position towards the Up player.
• If the die punctuation is less than the 'threshold' the glass is moved one position towards the Down player.
• Is the die punctuation is equal to the 'threshold' the glass is not moved at all.

When the glass reaches one of the players the game is over and this player has lost.

Obviously the Down player wants to have a 'threshold' of 1 or 2 and the Up players prefers a 'threshold' of 5 or 6 so both players are trying to guess what the other thinks to adjust their coins in consequence.

If you can guess how many coins the adversary is going to show you can have better chances to win the game.

One-Time Path it's a interesting drinking game. Just fill the glass with some liquor and force the loser to drink it ;-)

The name of the game comes from a cryptographic protocol called "One-Time Pad". The kind of "cyclical-sum" performed to obtain the threshold is really usual in cryptography and it can be proved that if you select the number of coins that you show each turn in a random (and independent) way this is a fair game (so you can play with money if you want).