From Greg Letts,
Your Guide to Table Tennis / Ping-Pong.
FREE Newsletter. Sign Up Now!

In table tennis, as in many sports, it is important to know the rules of the game. A good working knowledge of table tennis rules is needed to make sure that you play within the spirit of the game, and to ensure that you are not getting an unfair advantage through your or your opponent's ignorance of the rules. Not to mention that knowing the rules will prevent any opponents from being able to take advantage of you!

In addition, as a ping-pong player, you may be called upon to umpire quite often in local competitions or leagues. As the umpire, it is your job to make sure that both players are playing within the rules, and to penalize them when they do not. How can you possibly hope to do a competent job of umpiring if you don't even know the rules in the first place?

In order to help you with getting to grips with the rules, I have written a Guide to the Most Important Ping-Pong Rules that Beginners Should Know.

But don't stop there. Once you have got your head around those important rules, it's time to fill in the rest of the blanks by taking a look through the rest of the Laws of Table Tennis, which I have categorized below for your convenience.

• The Table
• The Net Assembly
• The Ball
• The Racket
• Definitions
• The Service and the Return
• The Order of Play
• A Let
• Point, Game and Match
• The Order of Serving, Receiving and Ends
• Out of Order of Serving, Receiving or Ends
• The Expedite System