Call it Beer Pong or Beirut, this game is considered by many (mostly college students) to be a sport, and like all sports, it now has a technical twist. The National Beer Pong League (NBPL)has a new ranking system to help determine which ‘athlete’ is the top beer pong player. The ranking system ranks the top players by their performance in every game they play in officially-sanctioned BPONG events.The statistics are not merely wins or losses, but a semi-complicated Elo ranking derivative (the method for calculating relative skill levels of chess players) specifically created for beer pong. The computation takes into account the type of event, the skill level of each opponent, whether a person won or lost and the margin (# of cups) of the win/loss. These ranking are available to the public on the NBPL website and smart phone app for Android. Additionally on the app, users can find tournament locations, affiliate their schools or greek organizations with the NBPL, read official rules etc.
Whether or not beer pong is a sport may be questionable. However there is no question that the NBPL is a business in its own right. Between the merchandise and sponsored events, the NBPL is working hard to add a little structure to this renowned drinking game. Ref. beerpong.com, wikipedia.org, wired.com Pic Ref. wired.com
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