[Philip-J-Fry]

After reading this the first thought I had was how do you stop people flipping the same way? Like, give me a baton and I could throw it at varying heights and control which side I caught it on. In theory the same applies to coin flipping. You can get quite consistent with your positioning and power.

You could probably control for it by making people alternate which side was face up before the flip.

That's my intuition anyway.

[aspenmayer]

Your comment reminded me of two-up.

> Two-up is a traditional Australian gambling game, involving a designated "spinner" throwing two coins, usually Australian pennies, into the air. Players bet on whether the coins will both fall with heads (obverse) up, both with tails (reverse) up, or with a head and one a tail (known as "Ewan"). The game is traditionally played in pubs and clubs throughout Australia on Anzac Day, in part to mark a shared experience with diggers (soldiers).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-up

[pirates]

Two-up sounds pretty fun. Your comment in turn made me think of Chō-han, which is somewhat similar but involves rolling dice instead of flipping coins. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%8D-han

[aspenmayer]

It’s wild and raucous and usually takes place outside pubs and local workers’ clubs, lawn bowl clubs etc. The spinner puts the coins on a flat stick made for the game, but basically a popsicle stick but wider like a tongue depressor. They toss the coins up and flick the stick to tumble the coins. If you called the two matching coins correctly, you double your bet in winnings. Each game takes like 30s-1m and they go on from mid-morning til early afternoon ish.

The losers indirectly pay the winners based on your call of two heads or two tails and if there’s a split, the house wins that game.

Most of the time is spent drinking your beverage of choice, yelling and cursing your own luck and talking smack to the coins, the spinner being booed or cheered for a well run game or a bad string of luck, but the bets are typically fairly low in my experience, although it’s up to each individual player what they bet, but the spinner or venue sets the bet amount per section or per spinner. Each spinner usually takes a set amount, like $5/$10/$20/$50, even $100 in some cases. It’s all cash and pretty much the honor system in that they aren’t handing out receipts or tickets with your bet, so that sets an upper limit on how many bets each spinner can keep straight. No one wants to see someone lose their shirt, so most folks play against their friends/mates for fun, and ultimately you’re all playing your own game because you decide your bet and it’s actually fairly unpredictable due to the crowds milling around the spinners, of which there will be many, all taking bets and running games independently and simultaneously, and players can place bets in any or all of the games around them if they want.

It’s a wild affair. Highly recommended.