Strip Poker



Strip Poker, as the name suggests, is any Poker game that involves the loss of one's clothing. Either as a penalty of sorts (for folding or losing, for example), or from the clothes being anted in a hand.

Most setups will usually involve one or more attractive women, and the male character eagerly looking forward to making at least one lose her shirt... among other garments. More often than not, however, the scene usually switches to the almost fully clothed woman at the table displaying her Royal Flush to a group of guys in varying states of undress - but with at least one in his underwear. Unfortunately, these are often the types of men no woman wants to see naked.

A common variant involves a regular game of poker where one player is losing so badly that he eventually resorts to betting any stuff he happens to have with him when attempting to win his money back, eventually literally losing the shirt off his back (and the other clothes, as well).

This game, more often discussed than actually played, has been the basis for several computer games, as well as two game shows: Strip Poker on USA Network and Räsypokka on Finland's SubTV. In porn or erotica, it's been so overused and clichéd as to fall out of favour as a Dead Horse Trope which no one but the clumsiest amateur writer dares to mention.

Advertising
"Woman 1: He's gotta be hiding cards somewhere... Woman 2: Eew."
 * An old vodka (Smirnoff?) advertisement has a woman who is "1 part card shark, 1 part cheat, 1 part exhibitionist", where in a mixed-gender game of Strip Poker she deliberately loses, despite palming a card, and has to take off her bra.
 * Another vodka advert has strip chess. The woman wins.
 * Inversion: The regional furniture chain Oak Express had a bunch of ads showing "unnatural" scenarios to contrast with the store's wares. One such scenario has a bunch of nudists playing "Dress Poker".

Anime & Manga

 * Variation in Mahou Sensei Negima One of the girls in Negi's class asks if the students can play Baseball Janken, a quiz game to help review for the big test. Negi approves. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, as the case may be) he's too innocent/uninformed to know that the game's primary rule appears to be "answer a question wrong, lose an article of clothing." The Baka Rangers get stripped to their underwear within four minutes.
 * In Ranma ½, in order to defeat the infamous Gambling King, Ranma "trains" with Ukyô and Akane by playing Old Maid. By morning, he's down to his underwear and the girls own not only his clothes, but many, many IOUs for his services.
 * Faye and Jet from Cowboy Bebop. She cheats. It's plain ordinary gambling (with dice, in this case). Jet just has lost everything in his possession he's willing to bet, so he only has his clothes to put on the line.
 * Gravion Zwei begins with the Gran Knights having to do chores after Eiji loses big against the Maids in a game that left him down to his boxers. Rather than lose those (much to the maids' disappointment), he bet the team's services.
 * In a filler arc of Dragonball Z, Krillin's girlfriend Maron plays this with Korin and Yajirobe. Naturally she ends up winning Yajirobe's clothing and Korin's items.
 * In Gamble Fish, there is a strange variation of Strip Dice: dice are rolled and the two girls playing must come up with a prime number by combining the dice numbers in some fashion. It must be a higher number than the previous turn. If you give a prime number, the opponent loses an article of clothing. If the number you give isn't prime, you lose an article. Later, there is a high-stakes poker match in which Tomu's harem has to take off clothing in his stead.
 * Davis starts to suggest a game of this in the dub version of Digimon's Christmas Episode. Yes, the dubbed version. While the girls (more specifically, his crush Kari) are in the room. My, my... To be fair it is cut off after "Strip", and is really more of a Parental Bonus.
 * In D Gray Man, Allen plays this with Tyki Mikk and his human friends, leaving them without their clothes. One volume of the manga also has a joke inner cover, where it's Tyki and Lavi Allen stripped to their underwear.
 * The Fujiyama Gangsta Paradise arc of Black Lagoon combines this with a Shameful Strip for a villainous version. After is captured, her captors play strip bowling. For every strike they remove a piece of clothing from her. By the time we see her she has lost her skirt and bra, but for some reason she can still cover herself with her (unbuttoned) shirt.
 * In the Asobi Ni Iku Yo OVA, the female Catia cast play strip mahjong, strip poker,, and.

Comic Books

 * In one issue of Marvel Comics' Cable and Deadpool, the latter title character is playing one of these with Bob From HYDRA, Outlaw and Sandi Brandenberg, with only Deadpool down to his skivvies (or less; the characters are shown only from the waist up), until Cable gives him a hint ("She's bluffing") over a psychic link. Later the girls are seen propositioning The Thing for a similar game.
 * The XXXenophile story "Fool's Mate" has a woman playing strip chess. Against her dog!
 * In Issue 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, Andrew complains about how he's bored out of his mind since all the (hot, teenage, female) slayers just want to play strip poker with each other.
 * In one strip of Le Petit Spirou, Spirou is running around the house wearing around fifteen layers of clothing, looking for a deck of cards. His grandfather asks him what the hell he's doing, to which Spirou answers he's going to play the game Gramps taught him. Gramps gets angry and forbids him to play for money, at which point Spirou asks why he'd want to play for money, and we cut to Spirou's similarly attired friends and Suzette in a bathing suit.

Films -- Animation
"Hamm: No, no, not the ear. Gimme the nose, c'mon. Mr. Potato Head: (nasally) How about three out of five?"
 * The first Toy Story movie features Hamm and Mr. Potato Head playing Strip Battleship.


 * Which raises the question of what would have happened if Potato Head won.

Films -- Live-Action

 * Referenced in a brief (no pun intended) joke in Weird Al's UHF: Strip Solitaire!
 * Sort-of example: In Restoration, Robert Downey Jr.'s character stops at a roadside Three-Card Monte game. Jump cut later, and he's nearly nude, having lost all his money and clothes.
 * What's New Pussycat? Woody Allen recalls playing strip chess with a girl: "She had me down to my shorts and I fainted from tension."
 * J.D. and Veronica play (off-screen) strip croquet in Heathers.
 * The remake of The Parent Trap has two girls (who are actually twins, both played by Lindsay Lohan) playing poker against each other. Hallie suggests the loser jump into the lake, naked. Annie, holding a straight flush (non-royal), agrees. Then Hallie reveals a royal flush... After Annie jumps into the lake,
 * Dallas Doll features people playing Strip Golf.
 * Shown in American Pie 2.
 * The Hugh Grant movie Two Weeks Notice features his character playing strip chess with his pretty, red-headed new lawyer.
 * Three of the counselors at Camp Crystal Lake play Strip Monopoly in Friday the 13 th.
 * Captain Ron also features the Strip Monopoly variant.
 * Joysticks features people playing strip video games.

Literature

 * Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine has a woman and her husband recalling how they and his brother had played strip poker, and she won because she had a lot of accessories.
 * Jeffrey Archer's book A Twist in the Tale includes a short story about chess, and particularly a game of strip chess which sounds fairly similar to the vodka advert mentioned above. The titular twist is probably not entirely surprising to a savvy reader though.
 * In Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49, Oedipa Maas and Metzger play Strip Botticelli.
 * There's one essay by David Sedaris in Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim about how he was invited to a sleepover by several boys in his neighborhood, and how a game of strip poker/attempt at borderline-hazing was derailed when he discovered that a) he was very, very good at poker and b) he liked guys.
 * In one of the Grange Hill novelisations there is a reference to two of the kids playing strip snap, as it was the only card game the girl knew the rules of. The person who lost the first round attempted to play it cute by removing one shoelace, at which point they were busted by the teachers.
 * Lilly plays strip bowling with a bunch of other teenagers in the castle in one of The Princess Diaries books, causing Mia to freak out.
 * Referenced in To Kill a Mockingbird; when Atticus demands to know why Jem isn't wearing pants (after he loses them while sneaking around the Radley property), Dill lies and says he won them off him in a game of strip poker and accidentally left them there.

Live-Action TV

 * 3rd Rock from the Sun: Mary plays with some of her and Dick's students (there must be a rule against this!) One of them decides to surrender their briefs instead of their socks on the grounds that their feet would get cold.
 * Mash
 * Hawkeye and Trapper play with a nurse, and Hawkeye demands that the others turn their heads before he will remove his dogtags. To make things worse for them, it was really, really cold outside.
 * Speaking of "really, really cold," one of the later "winter" episodes features everyone bundled up in all the cold weather gear they own, playing strip poker. Of course, because it's really, really cold, losers leave the table when they're down to just "one coat, two gloves, one hat, one scarf," so maybe this doesn't really count as Strip Poker.
 * In another episode, a general walks in on a game of two-person strip dominoes. The guy was down to his skivvies and the nurse was still fully dressed.
 * Chuck: Jeff and Lester of the Nerd Herd, along with Morgan, have weekly poker games. When Captain Awesome is invited out to one after being put in the doghouse with Elle, he comes to the uncomfortable realization that it isn't just any poker—it's strip poker, but only with sad, unattractive men as the players. With the exception of the good captain, they all seem to have a pretty good time with it, though.
 * Mad About You: We see Jamie finally winning the underwear of a group of Paul's friends. Thankfully, the scene ends quickly.
 * Threes Company: "Snow Job"
 * Friends. Joey kept bugging the others to play a game of strip poker. They eventually give in to shut him up, but because they can't find cards they end up playing strip Happy Days Game. The rest of them spend the whole game getting him to take his clothes off. Monica had also lost a few rounds and her pants by the time the game ended. Later in the episode, Joey tried to convince Chandler to play him in a one on one game.
 * Hustle, forcing Danny Blue to wear nothing but a strategically placed pillow.
 * Subverted in the reality show Beauty and the Geek: One of the challenges had the girls playing poker and betting on the guys' clothes.
 * Double subverted in an episode of the revamped Battlestar Galactica Reimagined; a woman playing strip poker is seen peeling off her shirt, revealing her bra, but as the camera wanders around the scene, it is eventually revealed that one of the men she is playing against is pretty much naked.
 * An actual game show in the early 2000's called Strip Poker which aired on USA and that network's stable of local stations which had switched from the Home Shopping Network to program a CITY-TV like format for a bit until the ratings didn't pan out and USA sold them out to Univision. Basically not at all Exactly What It Says on the Tin; the contestants wore four layers of underwear and no thanks to the FCC and USA's advertisers, never got below that last layer. The title promised so much, but it ended up as exciting as playing with paper dolls.
 * In an episode of Swingtown, the teenage characters play a game of strip poker in which the girls beat the guys quite handily.
 * A Saturday Night Live sketch featuring the androgynous Pat had a mixed-gender group try to determine the character's gender with a game of strip poker. Pat loses the first round and a belt. Cut to the end of the game, and Pat's fully dressed while everyone else is practically naked.
 * ECW: 2006. Extreme Strip Poker. All women.
 * Psych, in the episode "Tuesday the 17". Includes the conceited camp counselor who has removed everything but his shoes and socks (much to the discomfort of every other male).
 * Dog Eat Dog
 * Strip Hangman/Darts/Quarterback/Golf were among the challenges.
 * Host Brooke Burns once opened the show in the nude with a golf club saying, "Somebody has to get a hole in one or they might have to get naked!"
 * In the The L Word episode "Lesson Number One", Helena plays strip gin against Catherine in an attempt to clear her gambling debts.
 * Near the end of the Mork and Mindy episode "Mork The Monkey's Uncle", Mork attempts to play strip solitaire. And of course, he's losing fast.
 * On one Love Connection segment, contestant Victoria Upton tells Chuck Woolery and the audience that she and her date, Dwayne played strip backgammon. Dwayne won.
 * Sammy J finds himself on the losing end of a game he started in an attempt to find out who was inside a Wilderness Society possum suit on a Good News World sketch.
 * Subverted in Castle: Castle dares Beckett to play strip poker, but she decides she would rather play for gummies.
 * Married... with Children; Kelly and her boyfriend once tried playing strip Nintendo (not specifying a game) but Al threw him out before they could.

Music

 * In the song "Sofa King" by Danger Doom on their debut album The Mouse and the Mask, there is a line referring to a "game of strip limbo."
 * In the video for the song "Temptations" by Tupac Shakur, there is a game of strip poker going on (and lots of couples having Hollywood Sex) in a sleazy motel.

Music Videos

 * In the music video for "Poker Face", a game is played and everyone but Lady Gaga loses their clothes.

Radio

 * "Strip Trivia" on the Don and Mike Show
 * Parodied on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, in a round called "Strip Quiz" where the players (supposedly) had to remove an item of clothing if they answered incorrectly. Everybody got extremely easy questions they had no difficulty answering... apart from Tim Brooke-Taylor, who got impossible ones.

Theatre

 * Anything Goes has a rare non-Fan Service example, with Billy and Moon attempting to gain the clothes of two Chinese convicts to get out of jail in time to stop a wedding.

Video Games

 * You can do this in Dead Rising 2 while in hiding with various survivors. The women cover up as they are rendered topless.
 * One of Gaia Online's Random Item Generator minigames begins with the casino's Cardbot demanding a game of Strip Poker from its (human) coworkers. Cardbot loses.
 * Studio Gainax made a series of strip mahjong games, including one starring the cast of Neon Genesis Evangelion. This is actually pretty standard dôjinshi for milking the cash out of a successful franchise. Start with a popular game, add the promise of ecchi, produce it for little cost, profit.
 * Implied in the second Knights of the Old Republic with the mention of "Nar Shadaa rules" for Pazaak.
 * Leisure Suit Larry 7 had a game of this, and the player has to actually win in order to progress the ... er ... "Story".
 * One of the household entertainment items that can be played by The Sims. It was even the subject of one of the commercials
 * Strip Poker Night at the Inventory, as the name states. Bonus points since one of the selectable opponents is the mascot of a site documenting Japanese strip poker and strip mahjongg computer and arcade games.
 * One puzzle in Zork: Grand Inquisitor requires you to play strip Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Visual Novels

 * The H-Game Snow Sakura has this. Though there's not much naughty element going on.

Web Comics
"Pintsize: I'm an aggressive better!"
 * Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic does this, of a sort. The cast is playing a casual game of poker, then the horny half-orc suggests switching to Strip Poker. The next scene is the fully clothed women waving goodbye to the naked men as they leave the cabin.
 * Played straight, then turned around at the last moment in The Class Menagerie. Fan Service for all!
 * Gender flipped in this strip of The Princess Planet.
 * AppleGeeks Lite #267: "Maybe playing strip poker against the naked robot wasn't the best idea."
 * Strip poker is played a bit differently in the Insecticomics.
 * Also gender-flipped in Zeera the Space Pirate.
 * Inverted on one Questionable Content: they play reverse strip poker, and have to put on a piece of clothing when they lose. Pintsize ends up in about a dozen sweaters.


 * Referenced by Xkcd here. Strip Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma: remove an item of clothing every time you co-operate. NB: The payoff matrix is only right if you're playing with someone you actually want to see naked.
 * Girls with Slingshots: Strip Scrabble and Strip Laser Tag.
 * Referenced (but not played) on El Goonish Shive is strip scrabble.
 * Friendly Hostility has one comic where Fox suggests playing Strip Risk to cheer Collin up. Cut to a stark naked Fox and a fully-clothed Collin commenting on how this is too easy to be really of any fun to him.

Western Animation

 * On a Rocko's Modern Life episode, Mrs. Bighead gets Heifer and Rocko naked in a few rounds of strip poker.
 * Parodied on an Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (the goofy one) episode where Scratch and Grounder "strip" and lose their mechanical parts to Sonic in several rounds of strip poker.
 * In Futurama, Bender uses his 'lucky glasses' (x-ray specs) to cheat at poker and ends up wearing clothes from all the other players. Meanwhile Zoidberg loses almost everything he's wearing.
 * The premiere episode of The Venture Brothers has Samson losing at strip poker. Once down to his underwear, he gladly complies. Cue spring sound effect.