Trivial Pursuit: Bet You Know It
How to Play Trivial Pursuit: Bet You Know It
The Rules for Trivial Pursuit - Bet You Know It
In an attempt to update Trivial Pursuit for the gaming tastes of a new generation of board game geeks, Hasbro put together Trivial Pursuit: Bet You Know It. This is the first major departure from the basic Trivial Pursuit rules, although this version of the game has many similarities to the tried and true classic game play of Trivial Pursuit.
Hasbro isn't a dumb company--and the number of popular board games released in recent years that involve more than just answering trivia questions must have caught their attention. Look at games like Bezzerwizzer and Apples to Apples, popular board games ("party games" some call them) that combine traditional board game play with new interactive and competitive features. Surely, the popularity of these games, and the numbers of awards they've been winning, were the reason Hasbro came up with Trivial Pursuit: Bet You Know It.
Bet You Know It will look very familiar to Trivial Pursuit regulars. There are still six categories, and players still collect pie pieces in their little player tokens.
Trivial Pursuit: Bet You Know It Rules
There are three major changes in the Trivial Pursuit Bet You Know It instructions--a new die, the "wagering" portion of the game, and the "mixologist" category device.
The new die is not all that different--instead of the "six", there is a tag that says "move anywhere." Rolling "move anywhere" lets you put your piece anywhere on the board. This includes the new "Buy" spaces, any category headquarters, or to the final category to be asked your final winning question. This shortens the game and changes the strategy of Trivial Pursuit quite a bit.
Unlike traditional Trivial Pursuit, players of "Bet You Know It" start with 15 wagering tokens. Before a trivia question is asked, player wager between 1 and 10 of their tokens on whether or not the player will answer the question right or wrong. Tokens are paid out based on the outcome of the question--should you bet on "wrong" and the player gets it right, that player wins your bet. If your bet matches the response, "right" or "wrong", you double your tokens. Payout for correct answers is a straight up 2:1, while wrong bets earn the guesser your tokens at a 1:1 ratio.
A slight wrinkle in the betting--if you think the player will get it "right" and they get the answer wrong, neither of you wins. The tokens are added to the bank and no one earns tokens. That way, you can't earn your opponent's tokens by intentionally getting an answer wrong.
The game includes two other means to earn tokens: you can elect to answer a question in exchange for 5 tokens instead of the pie piece OR you can answer a question category for which you have already earned the pie piece for a 5 token payout.
There's another new rule in Trivial Pursuit: Bet You Know It--no longer do players continue their turn when they get a question right. Each player gets one question per turn. This cuts out the trivia buff's ability to run through the game, earning two or three or four pie pieces at a time. In Trivial Pursuit: Bet You Know It, there's no such thing as momentum.
Alright--what are tokens good for, anyway? Unfortunately for Hasbro, the tokens aren't all that useful. There's only two things you can do with your tokens. This is an area of the game that needs improvement. You can turn in ten tokens to "buy" a pie slice without answering a question (only when you land on a "Buy" square) OR you can turn in fifteen tokens on your game-winning last question to choose your own category, and turn in fifteen more tokens (if you have them) to choose the specific card that questions comes from. Basically, the tokens only help you to win the game.
There's another element of Bet You Know It that represents a major change in Trivial Pursuit play--the "mixologist." The mixologist is a contraption with four slots that holds specific category cards--each category is further broken up into TP's traditional six categories. The categories are things like "Saturday Night Live", "Large Birds", "The Simpsons", etc. The mixologist lets players pick their four category cards, which cuts down on the "random" aspect of Trivial Pursuit's question and answer cards. The only time this mixologist device doesn't come into play is on the final question round, when other competitors choose the category and question for you, unless you have the tokens to pay them off.
Trivial Pursuit: Bet You Know It - Tips for Winning
In my experience, the ability to "buy" pie pieces turns Trivial Pursuit into more of a wagering game than a trivia game. Every time I play, the winner is the person who was able to buy the most pie pieces and rush through the game. Making a handful of good bets will secure you the victory. The game board includes 5 "Buy" spaces, giving people with lots of tokens plenty of chances to buy their way into a win.
The wagering part of the game really adds to the traditional Trivial Pursuit game, and if Hasbro markets this game correctly it could be a huge hit. This one added element has eliminated the dreaded Trivial Pursuit Downtime, since everyone can participate on every question. Even though Hasbro has the built-in rule where you yourself can't earn tokens by giving a wrong answer, you can mess with your competition's ability to earn tokens by intentionally getting a question you know wrong. You don't win anything that way, but your opponents lose out.
Trivial Pursuit purists have been whining about this new version since before it came out. Bet You Know It is clearly a ripoff of new-ish board game Wits & Wagers, a trivia game giving TP a run for its money in terms of trivia race games. TP fans say the "move anywhere" part of the die ruins TP strategy, and many people play Bet You Know It with a traditional six-sided die. Other people say that Hasbro hasn't gone far enough, that the tokens and wagering are fun features but don't really make a positive difference in the way the game itself plays.
Whether you love it or hate it, Bet You Love It is a sign that Hasbro is ready to make some changes to Trivial Pursuit to sell the game to a more active and younger board game audience.
