Beer Pong Universe

The Eight Things to Check Before Any Beer Pong Game

Written by Dr. Manhattan at College OTR

1) The Beer – What are you drinking? Make sure that it’s cheap, but not too cheap, and that you don’t accidentally grab a nearby cup filled with whiskey (a pleasant surprise) or a cigarette (even better).

2) The Cups – Make sure they’re filled high enough, for those of you who don’t know, two is standard, three is better, four is too much. If you puss out and only do a little in each, a line drive shot will send the cup straight to your shoes.

3) The Table – You can pretty much play beer pong on anything, a fold-out, a surfboard, two chairs and a stolen road sign, whatever. But know your table, especially if you’re playing with the douche-tastic bounce rule. You want to know how much bounce you’ve got before you attempt a trick shot and you look like a tool.

4) The Water Cup – People don’t often understand that water cups have to be changed. This is especially true if you’re playing either A) outside or B) in your friend’s dirty ass apartment. After about the third game, the water cup will be so full of dirt, leaves and hair, it’d be more sanitary if you gave it a spit shine yourself.

5) The Environment – It may sound stupid to take stuff like wind into account, but it’s a ping pong ball, not a golf ball, the wind will affect it significantly more. Also, never play on a balcony, the ball rolls off and you have to run three flights down for the game to be able to start again.

6) Your Partner – There are two strategies to selecting a winning partner. The first is obvious, you’re best bud who totally kicks ass at pong and when the two of you team up you destroy everyone in your path. But if he’s not available, the strategy is simple, find a chick with huge boobs. Any male competitors will be distracted, and even females will as well if they’re big enough. Foolproof.

7) Your Form – Pick a style and stick with it. Don’t flop around between “all-knees,” all-arm,” “all-wrist,” “loft-shot” and “line drive.” Just pick one, and eventually you’ll find your groove in that style. And then stay with it the rest of your life.

Your Attitude – It’s only acceptable to trash talk the opposing team if they’re your friends. If it’s two random kids who just wandered into your house from off the street, then play nice, you can win and not be a dick about it. However, the exception to this rule is if they’re from your rival school. Tear their every move apart until they run home crying.

Bouncing off the ceiling? Genius.

Here’s a tip for complete beer pong domination: instead of bouncing off the table, why not try the ceiling?

This is utter genius. To pull off a bounce shot using the table, your opponent either has to be distracted or just really slow. Bouncing a ball off the ceiling not only adds an element of surprise (who would be expecting that, honestly?) but the ball only has to go up and back down again, leaving your opponent less prepared to slap it away. When you bounce off the table, the ball must travel from your hand, down onto the table, back up again and then down once more into the cup; three direction changes instead of two.

Of course, you’ll have to defend your shot against complaints, but hey - a bounce is a bounce, right?

Beer pong tips

I came across wikiHow’s beer pong page and noticed it had a tips section. There aren’t many beer pong tips floating around online, so I thought I’d share a few:

• “Always aim for a specific cup.” This is good advice. The more you practice aiming, the better your accuracy will become.
• “…put your shooting hand on a 90 degree angle…” This is also a great tip. Make sure your forearm, from your elbow to your hand, is at a straight 90 degree angle. When you throw, move your forearm forward and keep it completely straight. This tends to be much more accurate than lining the shot up with your eye while your elbow is not directly under your hand.
• “…follow through.” Make sure your hand continues to follow through toward the cup you’re aiming for after you release the ball.

If you want to check out wikiHow’s beer pong page, here’s the link.