How to Play Bar Baron: Rules & Free Online Game

Object of the game

On The Strip, the bars belong to whoever buys them. You take turns rolling two dice and moving around a board with twelve bars in four districts. You can buy free bars, and anyone who lands on one of yours afterwards pays you a tab. Upgrade your bars, collect whole districts and take over the other players’ best bars.

A game lasts exactly ten rounds. Then your worth counts – coins plus all your bars including upgrades – and the richest player is the Bar Baron. Nobody gets knocked out: even if you go broke, you keep playing to the end.

What you need: the board

A board with 16 spaces, two dice and 14 bar cards. Everyone starts on Payday with 1,000 coins – players later in the turn order get 100 more per seat: the second player 1,100, the third 1,200, the fourth 1,300. That makes up for the first player’s head start, who would otherwise snap up the best bars too often. Who goes first changes from game to game.

At Tavern Jack it’s all digital: every bar shows its price, owner and tab, and the table always shows every player’s coins and worth. Dice and sums are handled on the server.

The 16 spaces form a ring: four corners, and along each side a district of three bars, from cheapest to dearest. Clockwise from the start, each with its price and base tab:

• Payday (corner, start): pass or land on it and you collect 150 coins.
• Campus: Lecture Hall 3 and Semester Bar (80 coins each, tab 20), The Mortarboard (100 coins, tab 25)
• Jukebox (corner): draw a bar card
• Old Town: The Jug and Golden Rooster (120 coins each, tab 30), Town Cellar (140 coins, tab 35)
• Curfew (corner): skip your next turn
• Harbour: The Anchor and Lighthouse (160 coins each, tab 40), The Galley (180 coins, tab 45)
• Regulars’ Table (corner): draw a bar card
• The Strip: Neon Light and Night Moth (200 coins each, tab 50), Golden Mile (240 coins, tab 60)

A turn: upgrade, roll, move

Players take turns in order. Before you roll, you may upgrade one of your bars by one level – once per turn, and only if you can pay for it (see Upgrades). You don’t have to.

Then you roll two dice and move that many spaces clockwise. If you pass or land on Payday, you collect 150 coins. What happens next depends on the space where you stop. There are no doubles and no extra rolls: once your space is dealt with, it’s the next player’s turn.

A round is over when everyone has had a turn. After ten rounds the game ends – so everyone gets exactly ten turns, unless they’re sent to Curfew and lose one.

The spaces

Where you stop decides what happens:

• A free bar: you may buy it at its price – or leave it. You can only buy it if you have enough coins. From then on, anyone who lands there pays you a tab.
• Your own bar: nothing happens – you’re at home here.
• Someone else’s bar: you pay the owner the tab. Afterwards you may take the bar over if you have enough coins (see Takeovers).
• Jukebox and Regulars’ Table: you draw a bar card and do what it says.
• Curfew: you skip your next turn.
• Payday: you collect 150 coins – just as you do every time you pass it.

The tab: rent with a district bonus

The tab is the rent on The Strip: if you land on someone else’s bar, you pay the owner its tab. Every bar has a base tab (see the board). Upgrades multiply it: with Happy Hour you pay three times as much, with a Draught Tap six times.

On top of that comes the district bonus: if the owner has two bars in the same district, both charge one and a half times as much; if they own all three, double. The bonus applies to every bar they own in that district, upgraded or not. The result is rounded to the nearest 5 coins – 52.5 becomes 55.

The formula: base tab × upgrade (1, 3 or 6) × district (1, 1.5 or 2). Example: another player owns Neon Light with Happy Hour and Night Moth as well – land on Neon Light and you pay 50 × 3 × 1.5 = 225 coins. If they own all of The Strip and Golden Mile has a Draught Tap, a visit there costs 60 × 6 × 2 = 720 coins.

Upgrades: Happy Hour and Draught Tap

Before you roll, you may upgrade one of your bars by one level. Each level costs half the bar’s price. The first level is Happy Hour (triple tab), the second the Draught Tap (six times the tab) – that’s the maximum.

Only one level per turn, and only if you can pay in cash. So getting a bar from nothing to a Draught Tap takes at least two turns. You don’t need a whole district to upgrade.

Example: The Jug costs 120 coins, so each level costs 60. With Happy Hour its tab rises from 30 to 90, with a Draught Tap to 180. Upgrading doesn’t cost you any worth: at the end a bar counts at its price plus upgrades – here 120 + 60 + 60 = 240 coins.

Takeovers: buying out other players’ bars

If you land on someone else’s bar, you pay the tab first. Then you may take it over – whether the owner likes it or not. It costs one and a half times the bar’s value (price plus upgrades), rounded to the nearest 10 coins, and the money goes to the previous owner. The upgrades stay with the bar and are now yours.

You can only take a bar over if you still have enough coins after paying the tab. Example: The Jug with Happy Hour is worth 120 + 60 = 180 coins – taking it over costs 270.

A takeover pays off above all when it completes a district for you or breaks up a rival’s full district. But remember: in your worth the bar only counts at its value – the 50 percent premium goes to the owner.

Running out of money

If you have to pay – a tab or a card – and don’t have enough coins, your bars are sold to the bank automatically: the one with the lowest value first, each for half its value (price plus upgrades), until you can pay. Sold bars are free again, without upgrades, and anyone can buy them.

Example: you owe a 300-coin tab and have 260 coins. Your cheapest bar, Lecture Hall 3 (value 80), goes to the bank for 40 coins – now you have 300 and can pay.

If even that isn’t enough, you pay everything you have – the other side gets no more than that – and you’re broke. But you’re not out: you keep playing, collect your wages and can buy bars again. In the end, only your worth counts.

The 14 bar cards

On the Jukebox and the Regulars’ Table you draw a bar card. The 14 cards are shuffled and drawn in order; once they’ve all been drawn, they’re shuffled again. Each card takes effect immediately:

• Round on the house! You’re buying: pay every other player 30 coins.
• Regulars: the regulars tip generously – +100 coins.
• Bouncer: move forward to Payday and collect your 150 coins in wages.
• Birthday at the bar: every other player pays you 25 coins.
• Health inspection: pay 25 coins per upgrade level on your bars – a Draught Tap counts as two levels.
• Pub crawl: move 3 spaces forward – from the Jukebox to Town Cellar, from the Regulars’ Table to Golden Mile – and that space takes effect as usual.
• Police check: off to Curfew – straight there, no wages – and you skip your next turn.
• Lottery ticket: your ticket wins – +150 coins.
• Broken glass: a whole tray of glasses hits the floor – −60 coins.
• Tax audit: pay 10 percent of your coins, rounded to the nearest 5.
• Taxi to The Strip: move forward to Neon Light; that space takes effect as usual – buy, pay the tab or take over.
• Free keg: your cheapest bar without an upgrade gets Happy Hour for free. If you have none, you get 50 coins.
• Influencer video: +20 coins for every bar you own.
• Burst pipe: pay 20 coins for every bar you own.

End of the game: closing time after ten rounds

After the tenth round it’s closing time on The Strip, and your worth counts: your coins plus all your bars, each at its price plus upgrades. You don’t have to sell anything first.

Example: you have 640 coins, The Jug with Happy Hour (120 + 60 = 180) and Neon Light (200) – you’re worth 640 + 180 + 200 = 1,020 coins. The richest player is the Bar Baron; if several are worth exactly the same, they share the crown.

Play Bar Baron online with friends or Homies

At Tavern Jack you play Bar Baron for free in your browser – on your phone or your computer, no sign-up and no app. Create a room, send the link to your friends, and off you go.

Short of players? Homies can fill the empty seats if you like: our bar’s regulars, computer opponents in three levels. Easy buys more or less on a whim, Normal keeps a fixed cash cushion and takes over a bar when that completes a district, and Hard weighs up the other players’ dice odds, whole districts and the risk of having to pay up itself. “Play the Homies” seats three of them at your table.

When at least two people play together, a turn timer runs: you have 40 seconds for each decision – rolling, buying, taking over – or an autopilot plays your turn. A game with four players takes about 10 to 15 minutes. New to The Strip? A short practice round shows you buying, upgrading and taking over, and in the lobby “How it works” explains the rules in short animated scenes.

In a quick match with people from anywhere you can also play for bottle caps, the bar’s play money: everyone puts the same stake into a pot, and at the end it’s split between everyone who staked in proportion to their worth – twice the worth, twice the share. Homies don’t take a share, and if you leave early you forfeit your stake. This only happens at public tables, never at private tables between friends – and bottle caps are pure play money.

Origins and ideas for game night

Bar Baron isn’t a traditional game but Tavern Jack’s own invention – made for this bar and on the menu since October 2026, our second house game after the Drink Exchange. So there are no other names or editions: the rules on this page are the original.

It’s inspired by the classic property-trading board games in which you buy land, collect rent and build houses. Those often take hours and only end when everyone but one player is bankrupt. Bar Baron turns that into one short night out: exactly ten rounds, nobody gets knocked out, and whoever is behind can buy the other players’ best bars out from under them – whether they like it or not.

Want to play it at a real table? Draw the 16 spaces on a sheet of paper, write the 14 bar cards on slips and use bottle caps as tokens – pen and paper will do for the coins. Here are a few ideas for house rules – not official rules; at Tavern Jack everything above always applies:

• Forgotten tab: if you don’t ask for your tab before the next player rolls, you miss out – that keeps everyone awake.
• Trading allowed: between turns you may swap bars or sell them to each other, at any price you agree on.
• Long night: play 15 rounds instead of 10. Upgrades and full districts pay off even more, and takeovers become your sharpest weapon.