In this game, a deck of cards is shuffled and dealt into a circle around either an empty cup or a full drink of choice.

A major variation in the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa or Canada is that the contents of the King's Cup are drunk by the player who breaks the circle of cards (known as the Ring of Fire in the UK).

In this version, a player needs to possess a Smoko Card to leave the table to smoke or to use the toilet.

A player can have multiple copies of the card and they can be traded, typically under conditions such as; the recipient must refill drinks on demand, crawl for the rest of the game, talk in a funny voice, etc.

Similar to the game Jenga, if the mushroom collapses, the person who last placed their card or was attempting to do so must drink the entire bottle.