Beirut (also commonly known as Beer Pong) is a drinking game that involves players or teams of players sinking a ping pong ball into each others cups. This drinking game is probably the more common and famous drink you’ll find. It uses the tried and true formula of adding alcohol to a simple task to make it difficult.
How to Play the Beirut Drinking Game?
Beirut involves two sides (Either solo players or teams of two or more) throwing a cup across a table with the intent of landing it in the opposing teams cups. Cups are typically set up in a pyramid shape of 3 rows, (3 cups, 2 cups, 1 cup) at both ends of the table. Whenever a cup is sank, the other team drinks it. Players alternate taking shots until one team is out of cups and is deemed the loser.
The game itself has a lot of intricacies and house-rules. Which seem to vary quite a bit from table-to-table. Here’s a few of the rules that might come up.
Blow/Fingering: This rule states that if the ball is spinning in a cup that the opposing team can attempt to save it before it lands in the drink. Typically guys must “finger” the ball out and girls must attempt to “blow” it out.
Redemption Shot: This rule means that once a team scores the final cup the other team gets 1 chance to redeem themselves. If they can throw the ball and sink it in a cup then the initial shot is nullified.
Loser Drinks: If this rule is in place it means that the losing team must drink every remaining cup they failed to sink on the winners side.
Throw Lines: Often throw lines will be set up to make sure players are shooting from a fair distance, this usually requires a ref to see if anyone is breaking this rule.
Origins of Beirut
Beirut itself was believed to have originated in Dartmouth college in the early 1950s as people would rest their beer cups on ping pong tables as they play a regular game of ping pong. From there it slowly evolved until it became what it is today.
Although the original game used paddles it slowly turned into a game that didn’t require them at all. Later is was renamed “Throw Pong” to avoid confusion with ping pong.
The origin of the name Beirut itself is highly disputed. But that’s what happens when most of the historians of the game were drunk. It’s often believed that the game was named after the capital of Lebanon because at the time of the games creation Lebanon was in the middle of a civil war that used a lot of Mortor Fire similar to how the ping pong balls are lobbed into the cups.
The Beirut drinking game has come a long way. Garnering a ton of global tournaments for massive cash prizes. Which has lead to some standardized Official Rulesets.