rollback - September 11, 2003 - View Printer Friendly Version

Beer Pong Wizard? Forcebeer = Massping • Accelerationpong by Luke Stacks

I suck at beer pong. Every time I play, I lose. For much of my life, this was not a real problem. Early parties were small, between close friends, which didn’t change when I arrived here, largely because fraternities and I do not mix. But this past summer, the kind, gentle Luke you all know and love was thrust onto the bustling beer-pong scene. Suddenly, sucking at beer pong had become a big problem. How did this happen? How did I end up in situations so unbecoming to my general temperament?

It all started when I got a job at a restaurant this summer. At first I was focused on the money. I was working all summer and I didn’t need a social life. But then I started getting invited out to parties several nights a week, and visions of girls and alcohol started to dance in my head. By July fourth I was swallowed whole. Even if big parties weren’t exactly my scene, I found myself unable to resist the combination of alcohol and girls. It surely beat sitting on the couch in my underwear, watching TV. Now there are two things I do fairly well at a party: make polite conversation and drink in moderation. These values, pretty useless in the first place, were entirely stripped of meaning at our little gatherings. Besides drinking of course, I had four real courses of action at these parties, and reasons to avoid them:

1. Dance!—No amount of alcohol will make me good at this; similarly, no amount of alcohol would make me think I am good at this.

2. Smoke and change my whole perspective on shit—I rule this out on account of my already-raging paranoia.

3. Flirt with the ladies—Need I mention my already-raging sense of inadequacy? Plus, the ladies were either on the dance floor or playing beer pong.

4. Play beer pong.

For those of you who have little connection to the world around you, beer pong is a simple game with subtle variations according to personal and regional preference. All you need is one (1) ping-pong table or worthy substitute; beer (the cheaper, the better); approx. fourteen (14) Solo™ cups, six aligned in a triangular pattern at each end of the table, and two filled with water for "cleansing"; and two (2) ping-pong balls or reasonable equivalents. Teams are often composed of two persons, but there are many ways of playing this game right, and playing solo is one of them. The goal: to send your ball through the air into your opponents’ cup, forcing them to drink all alcohol contained within. The first team to remove the other team’s cups from play wins and sends their remaining beer over to the losers to be disposed of by rapid consumption. Generally, each team gets two shots in a turn. Often, if they make both shots, they get another turn. There are some rules, such as "bitches blow," re-racking cups, and bounces, that go into effect on a house-by-house basis; before playing one should peruse the "house rules" posted somewhere near the table.

One fateful night, I gave in to the peer pressure and signed up to play. At this particular house we played two cans of Beast to a side, two partners to a team. My partner, Amy, claimed to be the worst beer pong player she had ever seen. She ain’t seen nothin’ yet. If we went down, we were going down in flames. As we watched the other teams compete, and as names began to get crossed off the list, I grew increasingly nervous. There was a lot riding on this game, as no one had seen me play before. I tried to cultivate an aura of pong mystique. Nobody would know how I played! I would be just like the silent gunslingers of the Old West, and I dreamed of taking my opponents out on as few shots as possible. All was fine until the actual game started, with our opponents taking two key cups and me coming up empty.

And go down in flames we did. Our opponents, Jon and Jack, were on a major roll, having won four or five straight of the previous games. We only made one shot, and it wasn’t my doing. I was embarrassed. I walked home that night with my head hung low, shocked and awed by the complex emotions the game had stirred in me—anger, sadness, jealousy, anger, spite, hunger, and anger.

The next afternoon I awoke determined. I was going to learn, nay, master, the art of beer pong, and no one could stop me. I bought balls and cups, and started practicing. I played a few recreational games of wine pong and screwdriver pong with friends. Do not play screwdriver pong. Or wine pong. They are simply bad ideas. I consulted various experts. Incidentally, I was also learning how to be a master Scrabble player, so I alternated between playing myself at one game and playing myself at another, humming "Eye of the Tiger". Unfortunately, I failed to develop as a decent player of either.

Seeking advice led to many different techniques ("it’s all in the flick of your wrist!") but one unavoidable answer, the central maxim of beer pong players around the world: the drunker you are, the better you play. This response remains shocking to me no matter how many times I hear it. It flies in the face of everything I have learned about human mechanics: your reflexes are supposed to get slower and less precise with more alcohol consumption, at least mine did. After all, this is why you don’t (shouldn’t) drive drunk! No other athlete’s performance improves with alcohol.

My summer ended without becoming beer pong champion anywhere. In fact, my current strategy is to play to lose. Now that school has started up again, I don’t have so much time to work on my follow-through or test new techniques. But I think I finally understand a bit of the logic behind beer pong strategy. The Saturday of the Duke game I consumed copious amounts of alcohol and came home a little dazed. When I got to my room, I balled up my socks and threw them across the room towards my hamper: nothing but net. Everyone was right after all! My earlier argument about human mechanics turns out to be the right approach, but the wrong conclusion. The reason alcohol helps is because you become loose. As long as I remained tense about making the shot and burying my opponent, my mechanics were stiff. Getting loose is what parties were all about, after all. I was going into these things like I was invading Normandy, not like I was out to have a good time. My whole "spirit of competition" mindset was horribly misplaced in this arena. Beer Pong is about having fun, not winning, right? Right? Although with my new philosophy, my shot will be so silky smooth, my mind so relaxed, that I can’t help but win! It looks like once again I learned an important lesson about how the world works. Maybe it’s time to get those cups out and practice again.