As we have ramped up the amount of beer pong we are playing, we have thought about the intricacies of the game even more. For example, lets consider your normal six cup game:



I almost always shoot at the 1 cup to start off the game. In my mind, the advantages are numerous. It leaves you with a nice rack to shoot at for the remainder of the game (we play no restacks, which is a rule that should be used by everyone), it is the closest cup, and it makes the "death setup" (the 1,4,5,6) an impossibility. However, is the 1 cup the optimal cup to shoot at right off the bat?

Here are, I think, the main considerations in determining what cup to aim at (no matter what stage in the game):

1) What is the stack you will leave yourself with if you hit the cup you are aiming at?
2) What is the likelihood that you will miss and accidentally hit a "bad" cup?
3) How easy is this cup going to be to hit compared to your other options?

Thus, if given a choice to have any cup removed from the starting six, which would you pick? I would take away the 4 or the 6. But why not shoot at the 4 or the 6 right off the bat? For two reasons:

1) The 4 and 6 are further away, and thus more difficult to hit than the 1.
2) Related to reason 1, you are more likely to come up short on a throw to 4 or 6. This would mean you might hit the 2 or the 3, which brings up the possibility of the death setup.

So, while hitting the 4 or the 6 leaves you with the optimal stack (probably), the chances of you hitting a bad cup are higher, and the chance of you even hitting the cup are lower than if you were going after the 1.

Of course, we do not have any hard data to back up the theory that the 1 cup is the correct cup to shoot at, as opposed to the 4 or the 6. We would need to track tons of games, where an individual player was shooting at the 1 to start, and then the 4 or 6 to start, and compare. We do not have a beer pong tracking program, and even if we did, it is doubtful that we would take the time out to track every shot. But there are numerous questions that have come up to which we have no clear answer for.

*When you have the 3,4,5,6 setup, which cup do you aim for? I choose the 6, unless I'm feeling particularly on, in which case I will go for the 4.

*When you have the death setup, which cup should you aim for? I choose the 1, but should I go after the 4 or 6? Probably not, as if I have a bad miss of the 4 or 6, I could hit the 5, which would leave me with the beyond bad setup of 1,4,6.

I guess further research will need to be done.