Triple or Nothing, a New Game of Ping Pong

Get into Triple-or-Nothing. Life's too short for regular table tennis. This is the next office Olympics!

It's Exciting

Hey, we’re super excited to announce a new version of ping-pong! We’ve been playing and refining this game for the past couple of years and we think you’re going to love it!

What's This New Game?

In regular ping-pong, when the ball bounces twice, stops in the net, or hits the ground, the point is over. But why can't you continue, if you feel like doing so?

Continuing the Point

Well, now you can do just that, continue the point. You may choose to do that for a couple of reasons:

  • To increase your advantage. Say your opponent served long. Normally, you would win the point. But now you can continue and return the ball in play after it, say, touched the floor. If you win the continuation you win extra points. The risk is that you miss and you turn the point over to your opponent, loosing your initial win.

  • To recover a lost point. Say your opponent served well and you returned in the net. The ball is still rolling and you choose to scoop it off the table and send it onto your opponent's side. You have the chance to take back the initial lost point. The risk is that you may miss and give your opponent the possibility to gain extra points.

See the scoring sections below for details on exactly how many points you win or loose in each of the scenarios described above.

You can continue any point that in regulat table tennis is considered over, as long as the ball has not stopped moving.

Players will often reach the other side of the table to try to continue a dead point. A scenario where that may happen is described in the Speed Bump 13/20 section below. Opponents should not prevent that continuation by blocking the player with their body or inconveniencing them in any way.

Expressing Intention

You need to be explicit and truthful about your intention to continue or not. You can't try to swing at a ball and decide mid-swing, after you determine that you made the wrong choice, that you didn't mean to continue. You made your intention to continue clear, now own it. You or your opponet should hold each other accountable for that.

Double-or-Nothing Scoring

We initially started playing a game we called Double-or-Nothing. This is a tamer version of Triple-or-Nothing. In Double-or-Nothing you can continue a point once for "double" the rewards. Here's how scoring works in Double-or-Nothing:

  • 1 point: just like in regular ping-pong, you win one point when you win the point and you choose not to continue.
  • 4 points: you win four points if you continue a winning point and win the continuation.
  • -1 point: you lose a point if you choose to continue a winning point and lose the continuation.

Playing for Serve

You play a point to decide who starts serving. This point is continuable. If you loose the initial point and win the continuation, you win the serve. If you win the point and also win the continuation you win the serve and also the chance to "double" your first point's value. We call this "double first serve". If you doubled your first serve, you double the value of your first point, even if your first point is a double (4 points) itself, resulting in 2 (12) or 8 (42) points.

Serving

The player who won the previous point, or game if this is the first point of a subsequent game, serves. They keep doing that until the opponent wins a point. In other words, you get to serve only if you win points.

Play to 21

A Double-or-Nothing or Tripple-or-Nothing game is played until a player reaches or exceeds 21 points. The highest score you can end a game with is 24 for Double-or-Nothing and 29 for Triple-or-Nothing. Reaching that max score in a game trully makes you day!

Speed Bumps at 13 and 20

To make it more interesting and risky, you cannot stop at 13 or 20. If you stop at 13, you immediately lose all points and you go back to 0. If you stop at 20, you go back to 13. This is to encourage you to "double" over those bump scores. It is illegal for your opponent to deliberately loose to get you to reach 13 or 20 and get bumped down. However, it is legal for them to allow a point to end (and not continue) to achieve the same effect.

Floor Matters

As you probably guessed by now, the floor becomes a play surface now. A bouncy floor makes the game more interesting. A soft carpet makes it more challenging because it's harder to continue from a surface without too much bounce. So, chooling a hard floor to place your table on makes it easier to begin with.

Before You Go Any Further

Before you go any further and start playing Tripple-or-Nothing, we highly recommend starting with Double-or-Nothing to develop your strategy. It takes ten or so games to become proficient in deciding when to continue and when to stop points. Once you do, it will become second nature and you will then want to start playing Tripple-or-Nothing.

Triple-or-Nothing

Imagine winning a game in only 3 points. It has happened many times for us and it trully makes your day when it does.

In Tripple-or-Nothing, there's an additional move you can make compared to Double-or-Nothing. You can make an additional continuation.

Higher risk, higher reward.

Here's how Triple-or-Nothing is scored, with the initial Double-or-Nothing scoring of:

  • 1 point: just like in regular ping-pong, you win one point when you win the point and you choose not to continue.
  • 4 points: you win four points if you continue a winning point and win the continuation.
  • -1 point: you lose a point if you choose to continue a winning point and lose the continuation.

Plus the Tripple-or-Nothing riskier add-on:

  • 9 points: you win nine points if you won the initial point (1 point), won the first continuation (4 points), and won the second continuation (9 points).
  • 4 points: you win 4 points if you loose the initial point (-1 point), then continue and win (1 point), then continue and win again (4 points).
  • 1 point: you win one point back if you won the initial point (1 point), chose to continue but lose the continuation (-1 point), then chose to continue and win the point that you lost back from your oponent (1 point).
  • -1 point. You lose one point if you win the initial point (1 point), win the continuation (4 points), then get risky and continue for 9 points but you loose the second continuation (-1 point).

As you can see, the scoring for Triple-or-Nothing may seem complicated at first, but after playing Double-or-Nothing and developing your strategy there, this scoring scheme will become very intuitive and easy to learn.

Enjoy the Game

On behalf of all of us that invented Triple-or-Nothing, we hope you like this little twist in your table-tennis routine.

Please, let us know what you think!

Sincerrely yours,
Steven K (@steven_brix), Shane G, Fabian T, Christophe P (LinkedIn), Daniel Z (@zilcsak)

NewsDaniel ZilcsakPing Pong / Table TennisComment