World Series of Beer Pong IV

WHAT? You have never heard of the World Series of Beer Pong? Its the greatest sporting event in the history of sporting events! You have never heard of Beer Pong? Well then, let me explain it to you.

Beer pong is a game played with cups ping pong balls and beer. Simple enough right? Wrong! Every place you play has their own set of "house" rules but the basics are simple. Get an eight foot table and place ten cups at either end of the table. The ten cups should be in the shape of a triangle and should be touching one another like when you rack billiard balls. Now fill all cups with an equal amount of liquid (preferably beer). You form teams of two people per team. One team stands at each end of the table. One team then throw two ping pong balls at the other teams cups with the goal of making the balls in the cups. Each teammate throws one ball. Once one tam has thrown both balls then the other team can throw. If a ball lands in a cup then that cup is removed from the game ( and if the players are not square they will drink the beer in the cup). The object is to remove all your opponents cups before they remove yours.As I stated before, these are just the basic rules and there are many variants to them from place to place.

Now that you have a basic idea of how the game is played we can talk about the World Series of Beer Pong (WSOBP).  The fourth WSOBP was just held in Las Vega, Nevada at the world famous Flamingo Hotel and Casino on January 1st through 5th 2009.  The WSOBP have come up with a standard set of rules they use to govern all of their official tournaments which can be found at http://www.bpong.com/wsobp/official-rules-of-the-world-series-of-beer-pong .  These rules are worth reading and some of them are very humorous such as the dipshit rule.  The dipshit rule is "If TEAM1 knocks over one of its own cups, that dipshit's team (TEAM1) loses that cup(s).  However, if the other team (TEAM2) also contains dipshits not paying attention that do not catch the first team of dipshits (TEAM1) knocking over their cup, then Team1 may keep that cup."   With that being said the WSOBP I was held in 2006.  The grand prize for the winner was $10,000.  This past year the WSOBP IV grand prize was $50,000.  Yes you read that right $50,000.

     The WSOBP is a gathering of the best beer pong players in the world.  Or at least we like to think we are.  This past year 414 teams competed for the championship. Some teams paid the $1000 team entry fee to play and other teams got in through satellite tournaments just like in the world series of poker.  The WSOBP is a very organized event with games being played over three days.  The first two days are a round robin set up where each team plays six games a day.  Teams are ranked based on win/loss and cup differential.  Cup differential is the amount of cups left on the losing teams side of the table.  If you are the winning team you get a positive cup diff.  if you are the losing team you get a negative cup dif.    After the second day the top 128 teams wen to on to a double elimination bracket.  With the winner of the winners bracket and the winner of the losers bracket  playing at the final table for $50000.

     You may think this is all about who can chug the most beer but its not.  It takes a lot of skill to place a ping pong ball into a small cup from roughly 8 feet away.  Try it if you don't believe me.  If you still think its about chugging beer then check out the articles on the WSOBP from ESPN, USA Today, MSNBC, Art Mann and so on. 

I look forward to beating you at the WSOBP V