Table tennis isn’t our only competition. My cousin and me are always competitive… perhaps excessively combative. It might be as trivial as whom might eat swifter or just plain consume more… whom could eat slower or in smaller amounts. It didn’t matter. If there was a way one individual could outperform the other in something, we would contend.

Regrettably, the small abode my wife and I bought doesn’t have a ton of space for the many manners my cousin and I wish to compete. Following much deliberation, my wife and I at long last set on a billiard table with a Stiga table tennis conversion top. Essentially this provides us the capacity to enjoy either billiards or table tennis on one table in the same space.

So now my cousin and my infamous competition remains. Naturally, he incessantly kvetches that it isn’t the real thing. Even though he usually bests me in pool, every single time we set the table tennis conversion top upon the billiard table, it seems his game drifts.

To put it plainly, I think it’s because I’m just simply the better table tennis player. But regrettably, he possesses too numerous excuses. The elevation isn’t correct. The proportions are incorrect. The list goes on. So I procured the measuring tape. The elevation and dimensions were spot on to the official table tennis proportions. Then he claimed the table had the incorrect bounce; that in some manner the billiard table below affected the velocity and elevation of the ball bounce.

So we investigated the official bounce measurement (indeed, there’s an official bounce measurement). It is for every 30 centimeters of drop, there must be a 23 cm bounce. We tested the bounce in over a dozen positions on the conversion top. In every last place the ball bounced virtually perfectly straight up and nearly precisely 23 centimeters high. So you see, table tennis conversion tops do a perfectly respectable job duplicating a good game of ping pong. And my first cousin has no excuses. I am just the superior table tennis player.