Table tennis scoring rules.

A standard table tennis game is played to 11 points, win by 2. The first side to reach 11 with at least a 2-point cushion wins the game. So 11-9 finishes the game; 11-10 does not. If the score reaches 10-10, play continues until one side is two clear — 12-10, 13-11, 14-12, and so on. Unlike badminton there is no hard cap, but in practice deuce games rarely run more than a few extra points.

A match is normally played as best of 5 or best of 7 games. Best of 7 is the ITTF tournament standard for top-level singles, used at the Olympics and the World Championships. Recreational and club play almost always uses best of 5 — and casual home games often use best of 3. Whatever you choose, the per-game scoring is identical: first to 11, win by 2.

Worth knowing as a piece of history: before 2001, table tennis was played to 21 points per game, with each player serving 5 times in a row before service changed hands. The ITTF switched to the modern 11-point format in 2001 specifically to make individual games shorter, points more important, and matches more TV-friendly. Older players sometimes still default to "first to 21" — if you bump into them at a community centre, they aren't wrong, just nostalgic.

The serve is where table tennis's rulebook gets surprisingly fussy. Almost every "wait, that's illegal?" moment in table tennis happens during a serve. Here's what a legal serve actually requires:

• — The ball must rest on a flat, open palm above the playing surface of the table — not gripped between the fingers, not cupped, not held by the fingertips.
• — The free hand must be stationary and above the table at the start of the serve.
• — You must toss the ball vertically upward at least 16 centimetres (about 6 inches) — roughly the height of the net plus a bit. No flicking it sideways or barely lifting it.
• — You must strike the ball as it is falling, not on the way up.
• — The ball must hit your own side of the table first, then go over (or around) the net assembly, and bounce on the opponent's side.
• — The toss and the strike must be visible to the opponent at all times — you cannot hide the ball with your free arm, your body, or your shirt.
• — The free arm must be removed from the space between the ball and the net during the service motion, so it cannot block the opponent's view.

That last rule — the visibility rule — is the one that catches casual players out. The ITTF tightened the service rules in the early 2000s precisely because top players were hiding the contact behind their bodies to make spin reads impossible. If your opponent can't see the ball leave your hand, your serve is illegal, even if every other condition is met.

One more piece you'll see in tournaments: the serve in singles can land anywhere on the opponent's half of the table. There is no "diagonal" requirement in singles. The diagonal rule only applies in doubles (see section 6).

Each player serves twice in a row, then service passes to the opponent for two serves, then back, and so on. So the rotation looks like: A-A, B-B, A-A, B-B, all the way through the game.

This rule changes once the score reaches 10-10 (deuce). From that point onward, service alternates after every single point — A, B, A, B — until one side wins by two. The thinking is that at deuce, neither player should get a two-serve advantage at the moment the game is on the line.

Within a server's two-serve turn in singles, the server is free to serve from either side of their half and to direct the ball anywhere on the opponent's half. There is no requirement to switch sides or directions between your two serves.

If the ball clips the net on a serve and still lands legally on the opponent's side of the table, it is a let. The serve is replayed, no score change, and the same player serves again. There is no limit on how many lets in a row you can have — you could theoretically clip the net ten times in a row and just keep re-serving.

This is the opposite of how tennis treats lets. In tennis, a let on your second serve still counts as a second serve and you only have one chance left. In table tennis, every let is a free do-over. If you've come from a tennis background, the unlimited-lets rule takes a bit of getting used to.

A let is also called if a serve is delivered when the receiver is not ready, or if play is disturbed by something genuinely outside either player's control — a ball rolling onto the table from the next match, for example.

The simplest version of table tennis scoring is: if you can't return the ball legally, the other player gets the point. The detailed list of ways you can lose a point under the ITTF rules is longer than you might expect. The most common ones at recreational level:

• — Hitting the ball into the net or off the end of the table (missing the table entirely).
• — Letting the ball bounce twice on your own side before you return it.
• — Volleying the ball — striking it before it has bounced on your side. Unlike tennis, this is illegal in table tennis.
• — Double hits — your racket (or hand holding the racket) contacts the ball more than once in a single stroke.
• — The ball touches anything on its way over other than your racket or racket hand — your shirt, your body, your free hand.
• — Your free hand touches the playing surface during a rally.
• — You move the table, push the table, or the table moves because of you (leaning on it counts).
• — Hitting an illegal serve — wrong toss height, hidden ball, served before the receiver was ready.

The most common edge case is, well, the edge. The top edge of the table is in — if the ball clips even the very corner of the playing surface, the rally continues (or ends in your favour, depending on who hit it). If the ball clips only the vertical side of the table, the part below the playing surface, it's out. Top edge = in, side surface = out. This catches everyone the first time they see it, and it's worth knowing before the argument starts.

Doubles in table tennis adds three new rules to learn: a diagonal serve, a half-table restriction for the serve, and a strict alternation of strikes between partners.

• — The serve must travel diagonally from the server's right half of the table to the receiver's right half. (The table has a faint white centre line down the middle for doubles for exactly this reason.)
• — The receiver may then return the ball to anywhere on the opponents' side of the table — the diagonal restriction only applies to the serve itself.
• — After the return, partners on a team must strictly alternate hits: A, then B, then A, then B... If you hit the ball twice in a row when your partner should have hit it, your team loses the point.
• — Service rotates every two points just like in singles, but the receiving order rotates as well. Each time service changes hands, the previous receiver becomes the next server, and the previous server's partner becomes the next receiver.

The strike-alternation rule is the one that wins most doubles points at club level. Two right-handed players who haven't played doubles together before will reflexively step in front of each other to play "the easy ball" — and instantly lose the point. The legal way to play doubles is to step out of your partner's way after you hit it, even if the next ball comes straight back to where you are.

The expedite system is the table tennis version of a shot clock — a rule designed to break stalemates between two highly defensive players who would otherwise rally on a single point for several minutes. It's rare at recreational level, but it's a real ITTF rule and it's one of the most-Googled table tennis questions.

Expedite is triggered when a single game has lasted more than 10 minutes and at least 18 points have not yet been scored in that game. The umpire stops play, declares the system in force, and the rest of the match is played under expedite rules.

Under expedite, the receiver wins the point if the rally reaches 13 strokes. The server's first contact counts as stroke #1, the receiver's return is stroke #2, the server's next shot is #3, and so on. If the receiver successfully returns the 13th stroke, they win the point. The effect is to hand a free point to anyone who can stay in a rally against a defender — which forces the server to stop chopping and start attacking.

Service also alternates after every single point under expedite, regardless of whether the score is at 10-10 yet. Once expedite has been triggered in a game, it stays in force for the rest of the match.

The official ITTF equipment specifications matter less than the playing rules at a club level, but they're worth a quick rundown — partly because some of them affect what counts as a clean strike.

• — The table is 2.74 m long, 1.525 m wide, and 76 cm high. The playing surface should give a uniform bounce of about 23 cm when a standard ball is dropped from 30 cm.
• — The net is 15.25 cm high across the full width of the table.
• — The ball is 40+ mm in diameter and weighs 2.7 g. (Pre-2014 the ball was 40 mm celluloid; the modern ball is 40+ mm plastic, hence the "40+" stamp.)
• — The racket can be any size, shape or weight, but the blade must be flat and rigid and at least 85% natural wood. The covering must be ITTF-approved rubber, with one side red and the other black so the opponent can tell which side struck the ball.
• — Speed glue (a banned class of solvent-based glues that "supercharged" rubber sponges) was outlawed in 2008. Sponge thickness is also capped — 4 mm including the rubber and adhesive layer.

The legal-rubber rule has a knock-on effect on the playing rules: a ball struck cleanly off the wooden edge of the racket (not the rubber) is still in play and counts as a legal hit. Most beginners assume an edge hit is illegal — it isn't, it's just usually a bad shot.

If you're learning table tennis, the rules you'll trip over first aren't the ones in the rulebook — they're the assumptions you brought from other sports. The most common ones:

• — Hiding the ball with your body or your free arm during the serve. Illegal under the visibility rule. The opponent must be able to see the ball at every moment.
• — Tossing the ball less than 16 cm on the serve. A flick or a barely-lifted toss is an illegal serve.
• — Volleying the ball before it bounces on your side. Loses the point immediately, no warning.
• — Forgetting to alternate strikes with your partner in doubles. Two right-handers are especially prone to this.
• — Touching the table with your free hand while the ball is in play. Loses the point.
• — Serving from the wrong side of the table in doubles, or serving straight ahead instead of diagonally in doubles.
• — Replaying lets endlessly without realising service has already changed hands every two points.

Cross-reference: if you came to table tennis from the table tennis landing page and you're still figuring out which scoring format to use at your club, the safest default is best of 5 games to 11, win by 2. That's what every recreational scoreboard, including RALLY's, defaults to.