Mike Filanowski, left, and Natalie Rams of West Hollywood, Calif., cheer their friends as they compete in the first World Series of Beer Pong, a three-day tournament held at the Oasis Resort Hotel & Casino in Mesquite last week. The costumes were part of their strategy to distract the competition. Standing on chairs behind the couple are tournament champions Jason Coben, left, and Nick Velissaris. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Matthew Callies, left, and Dave Balkman of Milwaukee try to distract their opponents in the beer pong competition Thursday. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Competitors play and drink in one of the final rounds at the World Series of Beer Pong on Thursday in Mesquite. Each team tries to toss pingpong balls into their competitors' cups. If they get a ball into one of the cups, their opponent must drink that cup's contents. Photo by K.M. Cannon. Jason Coben, left, and Nick Velissaris of Ann Arbor, Mich., celebrate winning the World Series of Beer Pong tournament and the $10,000 grand prize. The two were undefeated in the final competition Thursday. Photo by K.M. Cannon.

MESQUITE

After three days of competition, Jason Coben was outside on his cell phone jumping up and down.

"We won, Mom, we (expletive) won," the 23-year-old yelled, before he and his teammate, Nick Velissaris, also 23, ran back into the Oasis Resort Hotel & Casino Convention Center to collect a $10,000 check.

It's the call parents dream of -- or perhaps not.

The duo from Ann Arbor, Mich., had just defeated 162 beer-soaked competitors in the first-ever World Series of Beer Pong.

That's beer pong as in pingpong but with beer and no paddles, just well-tuned biceps. Sometimes called Beirut, the game, a cousin to the better-known game of quarters, is played with two teams, each with two players.

According to the rules used in the three-day tournament, each side has six cups half-filled with beer arranged on a table. Team members take turns launching pingpong balls across the table at their competitors' cups. If they land one in a cup, the other team drinks the contents of the cup in which the ball landed.

A team loses once it consumes all of its beer.

Players weren't required to drink during the tournament. Organizers gave competitors the option of using water instead of beer, though no one did.

Most players said they were at their best somewhere between sober and drunk. Some competitors even used breath alcohol detectors to assure they were competing at their optimum blood alcohol content.

"We've tried to play sober, and it's not the same," said Jesse Steinkamp, 23, a carpenter from California. "You need to have a few under you."

Each team played 11 games, averaging one competition per hour. That meant -- provided the players didn't drink between rounds -- a team would consume about 12 ounces of beer every 60 minutes.

IDs were checked at the door, and players were given wristbands each day to ensure everyone inside was 21 or older.

"Beer pong brings together alcoholism and competition into one symbiotic organization," said Chris Cobb, 29, a paramedic from South Carolina.

Beer pong requires skill and strategy, which during the tournament mostly involved trash-talking, efforts to create distractions and taunts.

"The chunky fellow with the horn, he had me psyched out," said Patrick Sherren, 25, from South Carolina. "The game probably looks stupid to most people, but it's all mental."

The majority of players at the tournament were men in their 20s. Most learned it in college and traveled to Southern Nevada for a chance at the cash or the male bonding, which was frequently expressed with chest-bumps and high-fives.

Two 24-year-old graduates from Carnegie Mellon University, Billy Gaines and Duncan Carroll, organized the tournament along with their friends. Gaines, now a law student at the University of Dayton, Ohio, and Carroll, who lives in San Francisco, also operate an online beer pong accessories company at bpong.com.

Competitors shelled out about $550 per team to participate in the tournament. Coben and Velissaris, both University of Michigan alumni, were sponsored by an Ann Arbor restaurant, the Brown Jug, and wore shirts advertising the business. The entry fee covered four nights at the Oasis, an all-you-can-eat barbecue each day, the beer and tournament time.

Gaines and Carroll stressed that the competition was an opportunity for fun in a controlled environment that did not encourage binge drinking. But, they added, the tournament was also about competition and a chance to showcase talent.

"These are everyday people who have an opportunity to do something," Gaines said. "They know, 'If I miss this shot, I'm out. If I hit this shot, I win $10,000.' "

While the competition was fierce, players approached it in different ways.

At one point, Coben tore off the shirt sleeve on his throwing arm to decrease resistance.

Mike Filanowski and Natalie Rams of West Hollywood, Calif., strutted into the convention center the first day of the tournament and promptly showed off their uniforms. He wore underwear, a dog collar and sneakers with no socks. She was dressed as a dominatrix and carried a riding crop.

"I believe beer pong is a very defensive game," Filanowski, 27, said. "It's a lot easier to play against the backdrop of two guys wearing Patriots' jerseys than it is a guy wearing pink tighty-whiteys, prancing around."

They lost on the second day of competition to Wes Jowditt, 23, from Virginia.

"It was a battle of distractions," said Jowditt. He had buzzed off 2 inches of hair above his forehead and slapped his partner with hot dogs while Filanowski and Rams were trying to shoot.

Mostly played at house parties, the game has grown in popularity. Some speculated the tournament could be a catalyst for its entrance into mainstream culture.

"We're trying to absolutely spread the word about the game," said Tom Schmidt, chief executive officer of tournament sponsor Bing Bong, a company that sells beer pong tables.

It's fun to play with water or juice, he said.

"We want to turn it into something like darts, a real pastime for all ages, men and women," Schmidt said.

Coors was listed as a sponsor until corporate headquarters learned of its association with the competition and pulled its sponsorship on Wednesday. Drinking game promotions are a violation of Coors' marketing policy, "because the game is generally associated with overconsumption," said Kabira Hatland, a company spokeswoman.

Members of Southern Nevada's medical community criticized the elevation of a drinking game into a national tournament. Binge drinking can be deadly, they said.

"What we're doing is glamorizing a sport, which is potentially damaging to the people who are participating, but also sending a message to other people that it might be OK to participate," said Chad Cross, director of the epidemiology and biostatistics department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a substance abuse counselor.

People play drinking games to get drunk, he said. When that happens at a bar, people often drive themselves home afterward, which can be dangerous because it takes a person about 40 minutes to feel the full effects of alcohol.

Organizers defended their competition, saying they had taken precautions.

"If you watch the way this tournament is run, they only play once an hour. That's one drink an hour. That's not binge drinking," Schmidt said.

And, players said, drinking is part of this sport.

"Either way, win or lose, you get to drink. Everybody wins," said Jeremy Lauthers, a college student and member of the Ohio National Guard who returned from Iraq in March.

He played one of the most celebrated rounds of the tournament. It lasted about 30 minutes, going into double overtime, with Lauthers' team winning.

Professional poker players Ashok Surapaneni, who won about $30,000 in the June World Series of Poker, and Jeff Brunelle played chess in between rounds to relax. They also kept a Breathalyzer in their room to maintain their maximum game, with Brunelle playing best with 0.14 blood alcohol content and Surapaneni at 0.12.

One of four Vegas teams, they lost in the second round of the finals Thursday.

"The key to beer pong is having the same technique and consistent formation," Surapaneni said. "You develop a muscle memory."

Kim Breen, 24, of Las Vegas, practices at home, where she has a beer pong table, or at bars. She asked for time off from her server and retail jobs two months in advance before the tournament and was the only woman to make it to the finals of the three who entered. "I'm hard-core beer pong," she said.

The rush of the game makes drinking competitions a favorite with college-age men and a particularly American activity, said Matt Wray, a UNLV sociology professor.

"It's easy to dismiss beer pong as just an excuse to do binge drinking. And it's easy to dismiss participants as alcoholics looking for excuses to glorify their addictions," he said. "That misses and sort of obscures the other reasons, which have more to do with Americans' penchant for games of all kinds and a desire to take chances. These things are really a part of the American myth of what it means to be an individual."