Buying your round involves not only paying for the drinks, but going to the bar, ordering the drinks and carrying them back to the table. In very large groups, traditional round-buying would be prohibitively expensive. Alternatively, a large group may have a whip round , collecting a relatively small sum of money from each individual to put into a kitty , which is then used to buy rounds of drinks. In some cases, members of very large groups will agree to purchase drinks individually you may see this occasionally among students and others on low incomes but sub-groups and kitties are the more common solutions. In some social circles, couples are treated as one person in the round-buying ritual, in that only the male is expected to buy his round .
Women generally have less reverence for the round-buying ritual than men.
One person may end up buying two rounds during a session , while the other members have only bought one round each. Over several sessions, rough equality is usually achieved, but it is bad manners to appear overly concerned about this. Do take the initiative. If you are visiting British friends or business contacts, one of your hosts will probably buy the first round, but you should be quick to offer the next. When trying to make new friends among native pubgoers, be the first to offer a round.