Why didn’t my guidence counselor tell me about beer pong?

Eight hundred contestants, mostly college aged, descended on the Flamingo resort in Las Vegas for the mother of all beer pong tournaments.  The beer pong tournament, called the World Series of Beer Pong, lasts for three days.  The winner gets $50,000 USD.  Not bad for three days of drinking and playing with balls.

The tournament in Las Vegas is the largest beer pong in the world.  The game, sometimes called Beruit, was created back in the 1980s, but has enjoyed a dramatic growth in the past decade.  The game has become so popular, many schools and governments have attempted to ban the game (that always works soooo well).

The game is played on an eight foot long table, with 6 or 10 cups on each end.  Each team takes turns attempting to toss a ball into an opponent’s cup.  When a ball lands in a cup, the other team must consume the beer in the cup.

The three days of competition consist of six games played during the two days of preliminary rounds. Each game is tracked by who won and by how many cups.  The highest-ranked 128 teams move on to the finals.  The finals are elimination rounds where the winner continues, and the loser is off to find better beer.

The beer not only tastes like water, it is water!

The interesting part of the competition is you are not aiming to get drunk.  In the competition, only two of the cups are filled with beer.  Each player can drink only one.  The other four cups are filled with water.  Utah State University uses root beer for all cups in their games (sure they do).  I’m not sure if there is a penalty for the first person to “break the seal”.  The point is to keep the players sober, but they are free to use any other distraction including crazy costumes and insults.
What I find most interesting about this is beer pong’s ability to endure.  For a fad, the game is going on 20 plus years and is showing no signs of slowing down.  It could be the next “career” like professional video game player.  This is only the fourth annual tournament.  Future tournaments could have even more players and more money.

What’s next?  I’m predicting a rise in the game Cornhole.  Your heard it here first!