Rules

Beer Pong has many different rule variations. Overtime the simple college party rules have evolved towards more competitive formats. For tournament use, the rules should be fair to all and minimize possible disputes between the players. When running big tournaments with many games and high team count, the rules should ensure that the durations remain reasonable and the games don't need too much supervising.

WSOBP rules

World Series of Beer Pong (WSOBP) is the world's largest Beer Pong tournament. The tournament organization maintains their own ruleset, which is also the official ruleset used in our events. These rules are highly competitive and designed to reduce disputes and emphasize player's skill instead of luck. Playing with WSOBP rules require less supervising and thus more games can be run simultaneously. Special rules like the redemption make for exciting comebacks while maintaining high-level of fairness and balance. WSOBP rules are also popular in casual play as they usually speed up the game and are more beginner friendly (while still requiring a high skill level to master).

In 2018, WSOBP made a big rule revision, which for example changed bounces to count as two cups instead of one. Some hobbyist specify these pre-revision rules as old WSOBP rules. The old WSOBP rules are still used in the European Series of Beer Pong.

Summary of the WSOBP rules:

  • Leaning while shooting is permitted. Player must start with both feet on the ground and gentle contact to the cups and the table is allowed.
  • Bounce shots count as two cups; the ball may be blocked after it makes contact to the table or cups; you can't end the game with extra removed cup from bounce shot.
  • If both teams sink their shot, the team gets one additional rollback (Pope's rule).
  • Cups are immediately removed after being hit (no possibility to hit the same cup twice).
  • Blowing a spinning ball out of the cup is not allowed.
  • Automatic reformation to triangle shape is made at six and three cups; last cup is placed at the back center of the table.
  • After the opponent has hit the last cup, there is a possibility to comeback to a 3-cup overtime (Redemption rule).

Official WSOBP rules

(Old) Turku rules

Most of the big university cities have their own rule variations, which are often more closer to the traditional party rules used in college Beer Pong. Before the standard-sized Beer Pong tables were more mainstream, Beer Pong was played in rather short tables, so shooting with your elbow behind the table's edge made the game more challenging. Many old school players consider this way of shooting to be more challenging and thus requiring more skill. Sometimes the local rules in Turku are referred to as ICT or Guild room rules according to some student organization locations where these rules were applied when playing Beer Pong. Depending on the context, WSOBP rules are increasingly referred to as the Turku rules (especially by students from other cities than Turku), so the original city rules are known as old Turku rules.

Summary of the Turku rules:

  • When shooting, elbow must stay behind the table's edge (Elbow rule).
  • Bounce shots count as two cups; the ball may be blocked after it makes contact to the table or cups (or any surface really for trickshots).
  • Cups are removed after the turn ends. If both balls hit the same cup, three cups are removed in total.
  • All the gaps that emerge after removing cups are automatically closed by pulling the separated cups towards middle ("Never leave a buddy behind"). This means that all the cups must have at least one adjacent cup, except if there is only one cup left.
  • Blowing a spinning ball out of the cup is allowed.
  • Each team has one reformation to use anytime during the game.
  • Game ends immediately after either team sinks the ball in the last cup with no chances to recover.

Other rulesets