Back in my uni days we used to play this game with a pong table and way too much beer, it was simply known as Beer Pong. Imagine how amazed I was when I found out that beer pong has been played in the states since mid last century. I don’t know if one of my mates had heard about it and introduced us to it or if all great beer minds think alike, but we thought we were the only ones to play the great game.

I’m not a hundred percent sure on the rules of the US version, but ours consisted of your pong table, two cups and plenty of beer. The point of the game was to play pong normally but attempt to hit your opponents cup with the pong ball. If you managed to hit the rim or side they took a chug, and if you sunk the ball they had to knock off their whole drink. I had a quick look over other rules of beer pong and they seem to have a similar general rules, basically to play pong and get drunk!

In our uni days no one was particular wealthy but everyone had a good taste for the amber liquid, so we started brewing our own beer. This is where beer pong became particularly difficult, especially when we brewed a bad batch or if it was way too young and just tasted green! In fact I remember once or twice having to break the beer laws and mixing a little ginger ale or lemonade with the green beer so that we could play beer pong (don’t call it a shandy!).

Beer pong took up so much of our uni days that we actually started making up rules and laws of the game, I believe we call it the International Beer Pong Association (IBPA). The American version has actually got an association that runs the game called The National Beer Pong League (I don’t believe it is fully recognised though!!), maybe we should merge the leagues together and have international comps - anyone who has seen the movie Beerfest knows what that is all about.

To this day I still cannot believe I graduated uni at all thanks to the great game of beer pong, for anyone that hasn’t played it before you should give it a go..

Share This