SpitShake: Free Contracts for Ridiculous Wagers

I am very, very happy to finally announce the launch of my latest project: SpitShake.com. In a nutshell, the site provides free contracts for ridiculous bets/dares between friends. If there’s more at stake besides just money, SpitShake is a great way to generate a formal document that everyone involved can sign.

Hey look – I made a promo video:

Each contract lets you define a variety of elements: the people involved, an impartial third-party arbiter, the conditions for success/failure (as well as the consequences for each). And the whole thing is styled to look like a legal contract… or at least, styled to resemble what I think a legal contract looks like.


Sometimes, bets end up having a whole host of rules – things that can or can’t be done during a specific timeframe. Other times, it’s not so much the actual bet itself so much as the consequences of the bet – what’s at stake if someone wins or loses. I’ve been witness to some pretty ridiculous challenges, but I’ve also seen some pretty fun things happen after-the-fact (an example is the Red Sox v. White Sox bet between Mike and Chris).

SpitShake aims to handle all the nitty gritty details, letting you shape the conditions of your bet and making sure everything’s laid out – it’s all there, black and white, clear as crystal.

So far, these contracts seem pretty ideal for food-related challenges, or for wagering things based on the outcome of a sporting event. But I think there are a lot of other ways these contracts can be used as well – like setting the terms for someone to quit smoking, or challenging someone to not use Facebook for a month.


The idea for this site came up over 7 years ago, back when Ben took on a challenge to eat 6 Arby’s roast beef sandwiches in an hour.

Ben got a good start, but Chris (who instigated the bet) was sitting next to him the whole time, verbally taunting him. Chris was saying things like How’s it tasting? Is it greasy? It looks greasy. Does it taste greasy?

To focus on eating (and to block out Chris), Ben got a pair of headphones and started listening to music. It was at this point that both of them got into a heated discussion – Chris felt he had the right to try to prevent Ben from finishing, and Ben felt he had a right to eat without interruption.

Afterwards, we realized that we should have thought about the logistics of the bet a bit more, and wished we had some kind of formal contract that was signed, beforehand. And now, many, many years later… I ended up building something that hopefully addresses this need. If this site helps even one bet come to fruition, I’m going to call it a win.

On a technical note, this project involved me learning more about WordPress’ Multisite functionality. In conjunction with Gravity Forms, I got to play around a lot, behind the scenes. Each contract is technically a blog post, in and of itself… with most of the data stored inside custom fields. When you look at a contract on the screen, it’s a generic blog post (but stripped of a lot of styling, navigation, sidebar, footer, etc).

It was a really fun thing to work on, but after many months… I’m ready to set this project down, and move on to the next. I’m pretty proud of the work I put into this guy, and invite you to look around.

If you ever have any kind of food or sporting bet in the future, you’re more than welcome to create a contract to hash out the terms. And if you end up doing so, drop me a line… I’d love to hear all about it.

[CC photo via abbynormy]

Related:
The Arby’s “Six Roast Beef Sandwiches in One Hour” Challenge
The Vending Machine Challenge
Someone Else Takes On The Vending Machine Challenge!
White Sox vs. Red Sox, Terms Amended
Portrait of a White Sox Superfan

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. I love it, dude! Great promo video, too. Good luck with the launch! Starting my challenge scheming now…

    Chris Reply


  2. What about pinball & nudity bets? Will this work for those too?

    Juliet Reply


    • They absolutely work for those sorts of bets, if you’re foolish enough to engage in such shenanigans.

      :|

      avoision Reply


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