Chances are you’ve played this before; more than likely, several times before. Beer Pong is the fastest growing “sport” in America and has a National Championship called the World Series of Beer Pong (WSBP). There are official rules, and house rules, regulation equipment, and what ever you can find. Most importantly, it’s a game that brings strangers close and friends closer together.
Background
There are two forms of Beer Pong: The first is similar to Ping Pong (Table Tennis) in that you use paddles to try and “sink” a ping pong ball into a cup. The second being the player throws the ping pong ball into a cup. The WSBP utilizes the throwing format. A regulation table is 2′W x 8′L x 27.5”H. And any star rating of ping pong ball may be used. The standard cup is the red party cup. Normal cup arrangement is a pyramid of 4,3,2,1; with two beers being equally distributed between them (depending on your personal preferences, and availability of beer 
, more or less may be used). Finally, a wash cup is placed on each side of the table to wash your balls after they’ve been in the beer.
Rules
The game starts with a version of a rally. In California, we call this “Eye-to-Eye”. Staring straight into your opponents eyes, you attempt to toss your ball into their cups. With a partner, you alternate shots until only one player sinks their ball. From this point on it’s a game of sinking and drinking (there are several house rules that can affect play during a game, but we’ll discuss those in a later post). Alternating shots, the goal is to force you opponent to drink all of their cups before you are forced to drink yours. When playing with a partner, you both sink your balls in separate cups you get the balls back and get to shoot again while you opponent must drink both cups. Alternately, if you both sink your balls in the same cup (great mental image huh) your opponent must drink three cups and you get the balls back. Thus it is possible to win a game without letting you opponent shoot at all.
One of the most important aspects of Beer Pong is the re-rack rule. WSBP allows for two re-racks at specific points in the game; six cups and three cups. Under this system cups are automatically re-racked into a six cup pyramid and a three cup pyramid. Commonly, house rules allow for re-racking at anytime into any number of designs. Most commonly re-racks requested at some point between six cups and two cups. These are: (Level, cup placement from back to front, and common name)
6 cups: 3-2-1 a.k.a. pyramid
5 cups: 1-2-1-1 or 1-1-2-1 a.k.a. Diamond plus 1
4 cups: 1-2-1 a.k.a. diamond
3 cups: 2-1 a.k.a. pyramid
2 cups: 1-1 a.k.a. landing strip
At the end of the game, when there are two or fewer cups left, rebuttal comes into play. Should you sink your balls in separate cups your opponent has the opportunity to rebut (fancy lawyer term for a come back) your shots by making them the same number of shots, either two or one, though in the rare case that you sink your balls in one cup with three to go, you opponent must rebut with two balls in one cup as well. If a rebuttal is successful, the game continues with no team drinking any of the previously made cups. After the last ball is sunk and the last cup is finished, the winning team gets to divide their remaining cups up and give them to the losers to drink; whether they think it is punishment or a reward is up to them. Lastly, and I’m sure this is obvious, the winners will automatically have the next game against a new set of challengers.
Finale
Now that you know how to play the most widely played drinking game in America, and maybe even the world, start practicing, and hit up some parties to show off your skill.
