The rules of Footpong

Updated 24 September 2026

Footpong is football tennis played on a table that curves upward at both ends. You may not use your hands. Everything else is the same argument every ball game has: keep it in, make them miss.

The serve

A rally begins with a serve from behind your own baseline. Press the action control to strike; holding it loads the shot, and the longer you hold the harder it goes, up to about eight tenths of a second. The serve has to clear the net and bounce on the far half, like any other shot.

The winner of a point serves the next one. There is no second serve: a missed serve is a point for the other player, which is a harder rule than tennis uses and makes a safe first ball worth more than a spectacular one.

Three touches

Each side may touch the ball at most three times before sending it back. The touches are yours to spend: you can return it first time, or take one to control, a second to set yourself, and use the third to attack. What you cannot do is take a fourth.

This is where the game is actually played. A first-time return is safe and predictable; a ball worked up through three touches can be struck from overhead, which is far harder to answer and far easier to get wrong.

The bounce

A returned ball must bounce on the opponent’s half of the table. Into the net, wide, long, or down on your own half — all the same result, a point against you. The curve of the table is the complication: the surface rises toward each end, so a ball that looks long often drops back into play, and one that looks safe can climb away from you.

What ends a rally

The ball bounces twice, or touches the ground off the table.
A return fails to reach the opponent’s half.
A fourth touch is taken on one side.
The ball is played with a hand or arm.

Scoring

Points are scored on every rally, whoever served. The first player to seven points with a lead of two wins the match. At 6–6 the game continues until somebody is two clear, so a match can run past seven, and the last points are played by whoever still has their nerve.

Against the machine, and against a friend

A quick match, a knockout tournament and the World Tour are played against the game. An online match is played against another person through an invitation link, with the match itself simulated on a server so neither player has the advantage of hosting it. The rules are identical in all of them.