Beer Pong at the Green Tortoise

Tonight at the Green Tortoise, I played my first-ever game of Beer Pong. The aim of this game is simple: throw a ping-pong ball in one of the cups at the other end of the table from you. If your team gets a ball in one of the cups, then the other team has to drink the beer in that cup. If your team breaks any rules, then you have to drink the beer in one of your own cups. The first team to empty all the other team's cups wins. The better you do, the longer you go without getting completely drunk. My team (of 2) managed to get through the first round (knockout tournament), but we got beaten in the second.

Beer Pong teams lined up at their tables.

In the case of this tournament, we had a strong incentive to win more games and to drink less beer: the beer was free and unlimited, but it tasted really bad. I don't know what beer it was, but it looked like Guinness, and it tasted like shoe polish. My partner in the tournament was a Kiwi guy: we were both doing pretty well in the first game; but by the second, he was still shooting all the cups down, and I was all over the place.

I hear that Beer Pong is very popular in the USA and in many other places, so this may be the first of many games for me during my travels. The rules, apparently, are also different in every place.