Beer pong

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Beer pong
Players	typically 2 teams of 2
Age range	legal drinking age, however widely played by underage participants
Setup time	2 minutes
Playing time	10-20 minutes or less
Random chance	Easy
Skills required	aiming, taunting and alcohol tolerance

Beer pong (also called beirut, lob pong, and other names) is a drinking game in which players throw a ping pong ball across a table with the intent of landing the ball in one of several cups of beer on the other end. The game typically consists of two two-player teams, one on each side of a table, and a number of cups set up on each side.^[1] There are no official rules, so rules may vary widely, though usually there are six or ten plastic cups arranged in a triangle on each side. The number of players on a team can vary as well, from one to three or more.

When a ball lands in a cup, the defending team must consume all of the beer inside that cup. The game is won by eliminating all the other team's cups before one's own cups are eliminated. The losing team must then consume all the beer remaining in the winning team's cups.^[1] The order of play varies – both players on one team shoot followed by both players on the other team, or players on opposite teams can alternate back and forth.^[2]

Today, beer pong is played at parties, North American colleges and universities^[3][4] and elsewhere, such as tailgating or other sporting events.^[5] The game is also played by high school students, despite the fact that furnishing alcohol to persons under the age of 21 is illegal in the United States.^[6][7]

Although the preceding guidelines are common, the rules may be subject to a wide variety of modifications and additions that often vary based on the area of the country, the state, or even the house in which a particular game is played.

Contents 1 Origin 2 Nomenclature 3 Setup 3.1 Teams 3.2 Playing field 3.3 Equipment 3.4 Alcohol 4 Game play 4.1 Shot techniques 4.2 Winning the game 5 Special Rules 5.1 Spliting the Last Two Cups 5.2 Five Consolidation Rule 5.3 "DP Win" 5.4 "Facial Win" 5.5 'Mon Back 5.6 Bouncing shots 5.7 Blowing 6 Legal restrictions 7 Tournaments and leagues 7.1 Businesses 8 Bud Pong 9 External links 10 References

[edit] Origin

The game is a spin-off of a similar game, also called pong, which uses ping pong paddles and was said to have been created at Dartmouth College.^[8]

The most common modern version of the game is played without paddles and has a murkier beginning. The Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper of Princeton University, attributed the naming of the paddle-less game where balls are thrown into cups to the early 1980s at Bucknell University or Lehigh University.^[8] Many students at Lafayette College, rivals of Lehigh, insist modern, paddle-less Beirut was invented at their school, but The Lafayette, the college's student newspaper, says there is no proof to back up the assertion.^[9]

[edit] Nomenclature

The meaning of the terms Beer pong and Beirut may vary depending on where the game is played. Beer pong is the more common name of the game, with a CollegeHumor survey showing that 77% of respondents called it "Beer pong," versus 23% for "Beirut".^[10]

The naming of "Beirut" is disputed. The Daily Princetonian suggests that the name was coined at Bucknell or Lehigh around the time of the Lebanese Civil War, Beirut being the capital of Lebanon and scene of much fighting.^[8]

[edit] Setup

[edit] Teams

Beer pong is usually played with two teams of two persons each. Each team begins the game standing at either end of the table behind their rack of cups.^[1]

[edit] Playing field

According to the World Series of Beer Pong, the regulation table size is 8 × 2 feet (2.44 × 0.61 meters), and it stands 27.5 inches (69.8 centimeters) above the ground.^[11] Although the game is typically played on either a ping pong table or a folding banquet table, beer pong enthusiasts may create a personalized table for use by friends and visitors. In general, this will be a plywood board cut to proper size, sometimes painted with sports, school, or fraternity symbols and given a liquid-proof coating.^[12]

[edit] Equipment

The most common and preferred cups used are Solo or Dixie 16 ounce cups. These cups have ridge-lines which can be used precisely to measure the amount of beer to be poured.^[13] On each side of the table, teams assemble equilateral triangles, with the convergence point focusing on the other team.^[1] Games typically use either six, ten, or fifteen cups.^[1]

38 mm or 40 mm table tennis (ping pong) balls are typically used for game play.^[14]

[edit] Alcohol

Usually an inexpensive pale lager or light beer of 3.2-5% abv (for example, Bud Light, Keystone Light, or Coors Light) is used since large quantities may be consumed during the course of several games.^[4] Cheap wine like Franzia can be used but this is not advisable due to the increased chance of vomitting.

[edit] Game play

There are very few universal beer pong rules. Typically, players abide by a uniform set of "house rules", which are often consistent within one university or region of the country (e.g., "Ivy League rules" or "West Coast rules"), or may vary on a house-by-house basis.^[15] Number of cups, bouncing, amount of alcohol, the distance shots must be taken from, etcetera, all may vary.

In some house rules, players must immediately drink any cup that has been hit. Failure to do so incurs a penalty, such as drinking more beer or losing the game.^[16]

Some houses allow for re-racking, which is also known as rearranging or consolidation. This is when teams can get their cups rearrangements into different formations once or twice and even more as dictated by the rules of the house.^[17]

After shooting, teams may dunk the ping pong balls into cups of water in order to wash the balls off. However, research showed that the wash cups still hold bacteria, such as E. coli.^[18][19]

[edit] Shot techniques

There are three major ways to shoot in beer pong: the arc, the fastball, and the bounce. The most common throwing technique is the "arc", where one grasps the ping pong ball with the tips of the thumb and forefinger, holds the arm at an angle with the ball upwards, then throw by using gentle elbow motion, holding the upper arm parallel with the table.^[15]

Some players throw "fastball" style, which uses more of a hard chopping motion to send the ball in a more direct line to the intended target cup.^[15]

Ninja Style: Players reverse the position of their hand so the palm is facing away from the cup. wrist is curled away from the cups, the lower arm elevated, and the upper arm parallel to the table. During the throw the lower arm extends out toward the cups and the wrist uncurls, releasing the ball with topspin instead of backspin. Tough to execute but deadly in the hands of a skilled player.

A "bounce" is performed by bouncing the ball toward the cups. Since the other team has the opportunity to swat away a bounced ball, a bounce is usually worth two cups. The "muck" bounce is a low trajectory shot achieved by bouncing the ball in a sideways motion as opposed to overhand.^[15]

[edit] Winning the game

If the opposing team makes the last cup, the other team must usually make either all remaining cups or simply one cup, depending on "house rules", or the opposing team wins - this is called a rebuttal or redemption.^[17][15]

A shutout rule is a house rule usually stated before a game or during the game in the midst of a shutout. If the shutout does occur the losing team must do whatever the two teams decided on, such as going streaking.^[17] This rule has colloquially been referred to as the "naked lap."^[20]

[edit] Special Rules

[edit] Spliting the Last Two Cups

In this variation of the game, when a team has made all but the last two cups, the cups are split to the corners of the table.

[edit] Five Consolidation Rule

In the course of a fifteen cup game, teams consolidate their racks at 10 and 6 (triangle), 4 (diamond), 3 (triangle), and 2.

[edit] "DP Win"

An automatic win occurs if both teamates make their shots into the same cup before the opposing team has removed the cup from the playing field (table). This is a Double Penetration of the cup, hence the name.

[edit] "Facial Win"

Cups removed from the table by the opposing team are still in play. If a player makes a shot into a partially full cup held by an opponent it is an automatic win for the team that made the shot. The losing player is typically splashed in the face by a successful shot. That person is said to be "facialed".

[edit] 'Mon Back

If both players make his or her shot on the same turn, the other team must remove both made cups, and return the balls to the other team for them to shoot again. In theory this could result in a game where only one team shoots, but this is very unlikely as the target formation gets smaller. A 'Mon Back can end the game if it occurs on the last two cups.

[edit] Bouncing shots

Bouncing is generally considered to be an ungentlemanly act and is typically frowned upon. However, for a team down by a significant amount of cups, the dignity lost by bouncing is less than the dignity of being blown out by the other team. Sucessful bounced shots count for two cups, but do not grant a 'Mon Back (see above). Since a bounced shot must necessarily hit the table surface before hitting a cup, it is considered perfectly legal for the other team to swat a bounced shot away, just as they would a regular shot that bounces up off the cups.

[edit] Blowing

On rare occasions a ball will spin down the inside of a cup (similar to a hula hoop). This can allow players defending the shot to blow into the cup, propelling the ball out of the cup, and negating the made shot. Most college fraternites live by one rule: Only bitches blow, period.

[edit] Legal restrictions

Some municipalities and states have attempted to ban beer pong, either from bars or in general. In Oxford, Ohio, where Miami University is located, the city council tried to ban the game from being played outdoors,^[22] and in Arlington, Virginia, bar owners were told to stop allowing the game to be played in their establishments.^[1] In the fall of 2007, Georgetown University officially banned all beer pong paraphernalia, such as custom-built tables and the possession of many ping-pong balls.^[23] Some writers have mentioned beer pong as contributing to "out of control" college drinking.^[24][25]

[edit] Tournaments and leagues

National Beer pong tournaments are held in the United States. Some of the larger tournaments held in the United States are the World Series of Beer Pong and those hosted by the World Pong Tour. The World Series of Beer Pong (WSOBP), hosted by bpong.com, is the largest beer pong tournament in the world. WSOBP III, held in January 2008 in Las Vegas, NV, had a $50,000 grand prize and attracted 600 participants nationwide. A more common and decentralized organization of beer pong games is small leagues. Ordinarily, a group of college students or other pong enthusiasts will create teams (partnerships) and play weekly against each other, such as at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with the "Isla Vista Beer Pong League",^[26] and New York University.^[27]

The game also appears in the Nintendo Wii games Game Party^[28] and Frat Party Games: Beer Pong.

[edit] Businesses

The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets have reported on the increase is businesses selling beer pong paraphernalia, such as tables, mats, cups, or clothes.^[29]

[edit] Bud Pong

Bud Pong was the branded version of beer pong that brewer Anheuser-Busch said involved the drinking of water, not Budweiser or any other beer. In the summer of 2005, the company began marketing "Bud Pong" kits to its distributors. Francine I. Katz, vice president for communications and consumer affairs, was reported in The New York Times as saying that Bud Pong was not intended for underage drinkers because promotions were held in bars, not on campuses. And it did not promote binge drinking, she said, because official rules call for water to be used, not beer.^[30]

The New York Times quoted a bartender at a club near Clemson University as saying she had worked at several Bud Pong events and had "never seen anyone playing with water. It's always beer. It's just like any other beer pong."^[30]

Some expressed incredulity at Anheuser-Busch's public statements. Henry Wechsler, director of the College Alcohol Study at the Harvard School of Public Health, said: "Why would alcohol companies promote games that involve drinking water? It's preposterous,"^[30] while advertising news site Adjab opined that "someone playing Bud Pong with water is about as likely as a teenage kid using the rolling paper he bought at the convenience store to smoke tobacco."^[31]

[edit] External links

• Bpong.com, the World Series of Beer Pong
• Pong Rules, a beer pong rules wiki
• Beer Pong Articles, Beer Pong mechanics

[edit] References

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